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Past Event Reviews
Mouth, Feet, Sound, Birmingham ICC, 29th January 2006
The weekend of 28th/29th January saw the NSC involved in a prestigious project led by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, rehearsing and presenting Salvatore Sciarrino's evocative exploration of a ghostly sonic landscape, Il Bocca, i piedi, il suono ('The mouth, the feet, the sound'), scored for 100+ saxes and sax quartet.
Apart from an exhilarating Saturday afternoon workshop with John Harle, there was very little actual playing involved, and instead the choir and its guests spent the time key rattling, heavy breathing, sighing and softly trilling, all while moving zombie-like through an audience sprawled on the arena floor. It was an impressive, grave occasion, and Christopher Morley's review in the Birmingham Post (31/01/06) captures the atmosphere very well (see below).
The national press also covered the event, The Guardian awarding it four stars and The Times, three. Their verdict on the Sciarrino was a little more wry than the Birmingham Post (see below), Geoff Brown of The Times (02/02/06) also describing it as a "novel way" to get "your head emptied".
Reviews
"an extraordinary if enervating climax to an extraordinary all-Italian event" (3 stars)
Geoff Brown, The Times
"[the] sense of arcane ritual [was] strangely compelling." (4 stars)
Andrew Clements, The Guardian
"...Solo saxophonists (John Harle, Christian Forshaw, Simon Haram, Kyle Horch) signal to each other from the four points of the compass. Sustained pitches bounce one to the other, clicking, almost plucking keypads add percussiveness, virtuoso harmonics slide chromatically and eerily.
A rustling like the approach of hordes of distant locusts becomes gradually apparent -- over 100 saxophonists (the National Saxophone Choir and others) rattling their keys, breathing life into their instruments. They begin a slow procession down the staircases into the auditorium, shuffling at random among the audience, the lowing, quiet wailing and clicking of their instruments a constant, gently overwhelming presence.
Suddenly a louder sequence of notes from the soloists coerces the masses to turn numbly towards a single exit, only for the action to freeze before they can all disappear. Some subtly brilliant logistics brought about this stunning ending, enthusiastically applauded by the rapt audience."
Christopher Morley, Birmingham Post
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