Celebration of our differences

By WILLIAM DART

It doesn't seem eight years ago that composer James Gardner launched his 175 East ensemble, now a mainstay of contemporary music scenes.

Gardner, about to take up the first of Victoria University's composer residencies, says three of the five main works on 175 East's Sunday programme are by New Zealanders.

txt msgs, by Rachel Clement, is "a very lively duet for clarinet and flute", he says. "Without being too literal, it's two people texting one another."

Dylan Lardelli's bas calls for low, muted instruments with three sections that "each illuminate a different territory".

The third piece comes from Dorothy Ker, an Aucklander making a name for herself in Britain. Gardner outlines the Proustian significance of its title, le kaleidoscope de l'obscurite, catching the moment "when Marcel is falling asleep, talking about going in and out of sleep and staring at the kaleidoscope of the darkness".

"It's quite a cinematic piece," Gardner says. "You get little flashes of a scene, then the silence of darkness, then another flash. Gradually they coalesce and come together."

This man invests music that might be daunting to some with the same approachability as the James Bond soundtracks he presented on Concert FM last year.

Gardner is open to music of all persuasions and today's is very much "a continuum. We're not in boxes any more. There is a continuity between dots-on-paper music, improvised music, visual arts and sound design."

Audiences are important to the group and "there are no party lines. Ideology is the enemy of creativity", he stresses, with a note of fervour in his voice. "You embrace ideology at your peril because it rules things out, it doesn't include things."

Prime evidence for Gardner's policy of inclusiveness is the Microscores project. Composers have been invited to send in 30-second pieces, and 25 will be aired on Sunday.

Tune the Harp, by Chris Cree Brown, of Aeolian Harp fame, "simply expands on a low D, and it is very beautiful to hear the progress of each instrument as it opens up".

I draw a parallel with the opening pages of Das Rheingold and Gardner laughs, "Exactly!"

Microlament sees Auckland composer John Elmsly paying tribute to the late Ron Dellow in a score Gardner finds remarkably self-contained.

"One of the problems with writing a 30-second piece is that it can sound like a fragment of something bigger. This sounds like the whole piece."

In these times when some are obsessed about New Zealand music making an impact in the world beyond ours, Gardner has just had a clarinet quintet premiered in London. Reputable British composers like James Saunders and Bryn Harrison are happy to have their works played by 175 East because of the professionalism of the performances and the superb archiving Concert FM offers.

Gardner feels Sunday's performance of James Saunders'

270604 may appeal to the electronica set, as it is "like an electronic piece done with acoustic instruments - a sort of acoustic glitch music, operating at the edge of audibility with sounds you wouldn't ordinarily want from the instruments".

Bryn Harrison's Octet will use "the big band", as Gardner affectionately calls it.

"All eight musicians are playing quite a lot of the time but it's not a big-sounding piece because each has a weaving line. But there's an energy that, on a good night, will draw the audience in without beating them over the head."

Performance

* What: 175 East

* Where and when: Hopetoun Alpha, Sunday, 7.30pm