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Tomorrow evening Auckland concertgoers can catch some of the hottest and coolest sounds around town when 175 East takes the stage at The Basement.
"This is one of the most adventuresome programmes we've done," says group director Jim Gardner, pointing to three guest musicians who are aces in their fields - guitarist/composer Dylan Lardelli, violinist Johnny Chang and clarinetist Richard Haynes, an Australian "so busy you never know what continent he is on".
What does it take to tackle 175 East's brand of music?
"Fearlessness," says Gardner with a dry laugh. Then, "A sense of experimentation and exploring what the instrument can do. It's very pragmatic; there's a lot of problem-solving to do.
"Because we have pieces we have never seen or heard before, we can't work from a CD. If things present practical problems we have to address how to do these in a way that doesn't kill you but is faithful to what the composer wants."
To my knowledge 175 East has yet to lose a musician in pursuit of the technically fiendish, even if its players can deal out virtuosity with the best of them.
"But you can't come to this music if you don't have core classical training," Gardner warns. "Andrew [Uren] and Richard do a duet for two clarinets by Alexandra Hay that requires the same sense of ensemble and finesse as well as the same mutual listening and adjusting that you get in a good piece of chamber music.
"In fact, a lot of this music depends on chamber music skills, adjusting to others and knowing your place in a group. Intonation is very important and there are moments in Christopher Fox's schwebende Zeit where suddenly, out of nowhere, comes this pretty modal tune and it's got to be played in tune, in time and with a nice sound."
Some of tomorrow's offerings make more traditional connections.
One is Patrick Shepherd's Chamber Concerto, with rocketing figures that show the influence of both Mozart and the katabatic winds experienced by the composer on a 2004 visit to Antarctica.
"Patrick's work is upfront and rhythmic with lots of tunes," says Gardner, drawing attention to the important cadenzas that have the players putting down their scores and improvising.
Don't be frightened by titles like John Croft's eran volumen terrenal, sonido, with programme notes quoting Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and chatting about microtonal scordatura; this is a piece "all rooted in a dominant seventh chord", according to Gardner.
"You can hear the pitches are related and there is something logical and natural in the way that he moves through the harmony."
Tim Bowman's picnic at limbo ledge also comes from down south, inspired by a Bill Hammond lithograph that features on the concert's publicity.
"It was the perfect excuse to use the Bill Hammond image," Gardner laughs, but he finds strong links between artist and composer.
"It's like having something in simple shades of one colour. In this piece, you get the same sensation of waiting that you get in Bill Hammond pictures.
Tim has picked up that limbo quality really well, with melodic fragments passed from instrument to instrument in a very quiet way."
The Bowman and Shepherd works are just two that showcase the characteristic sound of the 175 East line-up, with its emphasis on darker and lower sonorities.
"You get pieces that don't sound like anything else ... Composers really enjoy writing something that has a grunty low end, which means we get to create our own very special repertoire."
Performance
What: 175 East
Where and when: The Basement, Lower Greys Ave, tomorrow at 7.30pm
