Anne-Isabel Meyer’s Bach is still playing in my head, days after her performance of the six suites for solo cello last week. On her annual visit to the Edinburgh Fringe, she performed the complete suites on three consecutive days in the beautiful setting of St Cuthbert’s Parish Church. On the fourth day, she performed the prelude and gigue from each suite, giving the audience a taste of the entire work.
Meyer went to the heart of each suite, conveying its character, exuberant or sombre, contemplative or joyful. The pairing of the C major with C minor (3 and 5) and D minor with D major (2 and 6) leaving G major and E flat major (1 and 4) for the opener, gave us a great contrast of mood in each concert.
This is the first chance I have had to hear Anne-Isabel Meyer since 2019 and her rich tone seemed even warmer than I remember. It was hard not to well up at the raw beauty of her Sarabande from Suite no. 5. The undulating phrases with open string pedal notes in the first and third preludes built momentum each time her bow touched the open strings and in each movement, she allowed the melodies to sing out freely whilst the underlying harmonies resonated throughout the church.
For me, the beauty of Anne-Isabel’s playing is that the music makes complete sense. Is it because the rise and fall of her phrasing and subtle dynamic contrast sound so natural or because she understands the structure of the whole and never loses sight of it? Whatever it is, I felt uplifted by her lively rhythmic dance movements and at other times felt profoundly moved.
Hearing this music live is good for the soul, it is life affirming and Anne-Isabel Meyer’s performances filled me with optimism, as I stepped out into the bright daylight of the bustling city.
To play the complete Bach cello suites is physically and mentally demanding. Speaking to her afterwards she explained how for her, it comes from the core: the centre of the body. She explained how her Pilates practice enables her to focus on the music rather than the fingers.
Her gigue from Suite no. 6, full of energy, is playing in my mind right now so although I am inspired to find my core* and resume my own journey with the suites, I’m still enjoying the gorgeous rich sonorities she created.
Way back in 1976, when my music student friends and I took our seats in Huddersfield Town Hall to hear the American composer Steve Reich and his band, we’d never heard of him. “Steve Reich. Who’s he?” we asked. Little did we know that he was to become one of the most internationally famous and influential composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Steve Reich and another band member stood before us and immediately began clapping a rhythm over and over. Then one seemed to go out of time with the other. It kept changing a bit and getting more and more out of sync. I was fascinated by it. The piece: Clapping Music changed my view of music forever.
Steve Reich (on the right) and Wolfram Winkel performing Clapping Music in Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 2016.
It’s so simple and so difficult at the same time. One person jumps forward one quaver (eighth note) after a set number of bars, and jumps again and again after the same number of bars until eventually the two are clapping in sync again. In the following clip, the pattern (for the hands on the right) changes every 8 bars and is indicated by dots. Here, the hands viewed on left side, stay the same all the way through. Try it!
I came back to thinking about my first Reich concert, during a Covid lockdown, when I watched a live stream performance of his music and a conversation between Steve Reich and his cousin, the artist Amy Sillman. She asked him about the influences on his early works.
Reich explained how he came to write Clapping Music. He recounted how, on a European tour with his band, they had gone to hear some flamenco musicians, while they were (no, not in Spain) in Brussels. It was not the flamenco guitar and vocals that had impressed him but the hand-clapping or palmas. He suddenly saw the potential to create music that could be played spontaneously, anywhere – no instruments needed. For percussionists, with their array of kit, this seemed an attractive idea.
Here’s an example:
Flamenco artists performing palmas, a style of virtuoso rhythmic clapping that sparked an idea that would lead to Reich’s Clapping Music.
The initial inspiration may have come from flamenco but the rhythm that forms the basis for Clapping Music shows the influence of an entirely different culture: Ewe drumming from Ghana. Reich had come across a book “Studies in African Music” by A.M.Jones who had transcribed some of the rhythms of Ewe drumming into Western notation.
“It was like looking at a blueprint for something completely unknown. Here was a music with repeating patterns … which were superimposed so that the downbeats did not coincide.” (Writings on Music: 1965 – 2000, Steve Reich. Oxford. 2002).
In 1970, Reich went to study Ewe music in Ghana with master drummer, Gideon Alorwoyie. It confirmed for Reich his desire to write music that he could perform with his own percussion ensemble, with new ways of composition, which he had already begun to explore.
The repeated phrase of Clapping Music is similar to a bell pattern found in Ewe music which you can hear in the following clip.
In Ewe music, the bell pattern repeats throughout whilst the layered drum parts create complicated poly-rhythms, as the musicians play in different metres simultaneously.
Reich’s piece is very straightforward until the second player starts to shift one quaver forward. It’s a development of a “phasing” technique he had devised, where one part gradually shifts ahead of the other but here the shift is sudden. The resulting complexity is extraordinary. In fact, a few of the comments about the Steve Reich clip, mention the look of concentration on both musicians’ faces and the fact that they use notation. If you’ve tried it you’ll know why. Yep, it is tricky.
Hearing Clapping Music (and the rest of that Reich concert) for the first time made a huge impression on me because it was so unexpected and nothing like the Western classical music I had been learning and loved so much. It was new and intriguing. I was already open to listening to the new music we were exposed to, at what was to become the home of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, but unlike some of the works I had heard, I could relate to this immediately. And this was a composer I would continue to follow. I have listened to Steve Reich’s music ever since. And I’ll continue to practise Clapping Music till I’ve cracked it.
In that innocent time before the pandemic, I was at my dream concert. A brilliantly inventive cellist, Abel Selaocoe was playing music by another brilliantly inventive cellist/composer Giovanni Sollima.
It was October 2019 and I had arrived at the venue after a wander down memory lane in my childhood home town, Manchester. Nothing could have jolted me out of my nostalgia more quickly than the music that opened this performance of ‘Sirocco’ at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Lamentatio by Giovanni Sollima is exciting enough with its simultaneous vocals and ferocious rhythmic double stops but Abel’s interpretation, singing in Zulu, playing cello chords and moving seamlessly into a low-pitched throat-singing, is astonishing and yet it sounds as if it has always been a part of the piece. It’s received with rapturous applause from this friendly Manchester audience for Selaocoe, a graduate of RNCM. You can feel the wealth of support and appreciation from fellow alumni, staff and students. He tells us throughout the concert how grateful he is for the freedom to be creative that this college gave him: “I studied here, forever, they wouldn’t let me leave” he says!
How to follow the Sollima? With a piece by Lawes originally written for viols in the 1600s. It’s performed by three upper string players of Manchester Collective (Rakhi Singh, Simmy Singh and Ruth Gibson) who join Abel to make a string quartet. It is played with such exquisite and raw beauty, I have tears in my eyes already.
Then – can this get any better? Well yes, with an improvised African song from Selaocoe, with the superb playing of Alan Keary on bass guitar and Sidiki Dembéli on djembe and calabash. Together they form the band ‘Chesaba’. Their range of sounds is impressive as is their immaculate synchronicity. In collaboration with Manchester Collective they still have several African numbers up their sleeve, including a sublime arrangement of a song from the Ivory Coast. Shaka is sung by Sidiki, who begins with a gentle melody on the kamale ngoni (a West African harp) before an explosion of virtuoso djembe playing.
Initially, I had wondered how a programme that juxtaposes African songs, Danish folk melodies and music by Lawes, Purcell, Haydn, Stravinsky and Sollima would work. Abel Selaocoe guides us through the connections:
“Whatever the style or wherever the music is from, it is the rhythm that is the key that binds it”
Abel delves further into the links between the music in his programme by telling us a bit about growing up in his township in apartheid South Africa. He tells us how colonialism affected South African music, when missionaries taught their hymns and brought harmony to local vocal music. Abel and the Manchester Collective demonstrate the musical connection by pairing a Haydn quartet movement with a South African song, Ibuyile. This programming makes complete sense now: after an initial shiver of guilt at the thought of the British colonial past, I realise that Abel has absorbed these two worlds and is rewarding us with the result and a greater understanding of colliding cultures.
Enough of the history lesson and time to join in some of the rhythms, get up and dance: it has been difficult to keep still during the last few numbers.
Abel tells us he discovered a rhythm. Where? On the internet! He went to Sidiki to see if he knew it. Of course, he’s been playing it all his life! The rhythm and the name of the piece: Takamba from Mali.
For the last number, we need no persuading to dance along, singing and clapping with these delightful and brilliant musicians.
Playing to his ‘home crowd’ is obviously quite special for Abel, and he is keen to show his appreciation of his experience studying at RNCM, and to express his thanks in particular to his cello teacher, Hannah Roberts, who had encouraged him to explore his roots and find his musical identity.
And his advice for budding students is to be creative:
“Go wild whilst you can, before you have to pay the bills!”
It’s worth a try if this is the result!
From RNCM Manchester, Abel Selaocoe, Chesaba and Manchester Collective with Sorocco.
Abel Selaocoe – Cello; Rakhi Singh – Violin; Simmy Singh – Violin; Ruth Gibson – Viola; Alan Keary – Electric Bass; Sidiki Dembélé – Calabash, Djembe and Kamale Ngoni.
‘Sirocco’ was created by Abel Selaocoe, Chesaba and Manchester Collective. Recorded and mixed by Jamie Birkett. Filmed at RNCM (Royal Northern College of Music) in October 2019.
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