Glass is Philip; QE not half-empty

A perennial favourite at the (late) Ridge Theatre was the wordless 1992 documentary Baraka, which apocryphally (which is what writers say when they can't find their source and don't have the umph to get out there and locate it) played there more often and ultimately to more people than anywhere else in the world, often to sold-out rooms; something about its reverent internationalism must have clicked with multicultural Vancouver. No small credit for the film's success, here or anywhere, must be allotted to director Ron Fricke behind the lens, a visionary fellow who cut his teeth nine years earlier as cinematographer for a little film with a virtually unpronounceable title: Koyaanisqatsi, helpfully subtitled Life Out of Balance. Though the two movies' central theses are quite different, their shared wordless format (along with Fricke's involvement... and more than a few shot subjects revisited in the later film) lent the flicks enough in common for them to be almost invariable buddies, back to back on one of the Ridge's onetime good old repertory double-bills.

(Yes, believe it or not this is a music post, and not simply a mis-filed film one. We're getting to it!)

Perhaps its local association with the popular Baraka is at least partially responsible for untold legions (who knew?) of regional fans of Koyaanisqatsi filling the Queen Elizabeth Theatre last night for a now-rare screening -- but it's more likely that the main draw was the bonus of a live performance of its soundtrack by an ensemble led by its minimalist score's 69-year-old composer, Philip Glass.

(I'm just getting started!)

While west-coast cultural titan San Francisco had enough weight to extract screenings and performances of all three of the Qatsi trilogy's soundtracks last week, even scoring a single one of them from this important + influential composer was a major musical coup for Vancouver; you could discern the gravitas and decorum surrounding the occasion by the crypto-formal black leather jackets being sported by a significant portion of the middle-aged, upper-middle-class audience members. (Kudos, however, to the dame in the tubetop rocking the nosebleed section to the beat of a different saxophone with her Michael Jackson-style opera gloves. Dress for the occasion you want to have, I say, not for the occasion you expect.) Even the scalpers out front, out of respect for the proceedings, kept their pitches gently repeating in homage to Glass' distinctive and hypnotically-entrancing compositional style: buying, buying selling? buying tickets, selling tickets, selling buying selling tickets? Philip Glass? tickets?

We hustled to our seats (prefiguring the many scenes of accelerated pedestrian traffic awaiting us on the silver screen) to be presented with the entrance of the present composition of the Philip Glass Ensemble. In their defense, members of this team have worked with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Paul Simon, Mike Oldfield to David Bowie, Yo Yo Ma to Roger Daltrey, Laurie Anderson to Public Enemy -- there is no question as to their collective chops for even a moment. On the other hand, it's difficult for any nine individuals (as counted on stage), regardless of their multiple virtuosities, to effectively engage a work originally harnessing the combined talents of over 30 musical specialists logging studio time on the original soundtrack. Comparisons are unfair but inevitable -- when the Eye of Newt collective do live film scoring, they dodge this bullet by cleverly providing new soundtracks to old movies... then only the composition, not the performance, is held beneath the microscope. My gut response was: where are the rest of them?

I counted six keyboards operated by a team of five, including the esteemed Mr. Glass, with four other musicians on stage handling some miscellaneous musical duties -- flute, saxophone and vocals definitely among them. As the proud player of a piano accordion let me be the first to extol the versatility of keyboard instruments. That said, even with the phattest sample patch library at your disposal, nothing really compensates your bottom end (not even silicone pads) for the loss of a genuine tuba and french horn. As for the choirs, I somehow knew these guys would be kept too busy furiously arpeggiating to chime in with the refrain. The room dimming to the flickers of the title screen, I felt the floor drop out as the note in the program was confirmed: The bass voice heard in KOYAANISQATSI is provided by Albert de Ruiter and has been electronically replicated.

(It could be worse: about a decade ago, a touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar (well, there's my problem right there) retained the original Jesus and Judas from the movie made over 20 years earlier. If Ted Neely wasn't in fact periodically "electronically replicated" (a status in doubt at every improbable wail from the now-gruff codger) it would have been far more merciful to do so completely and without hesitation. Would that they had instead retained the relentless porn star who played the Apostle Peter... ah, but I digress...)

At times, the keyboard-triggered horns and occasional synth-vocals had a palpable MIDI quality to their attack and decay, as though you were listening to a Philip Glass celphone ringtone (hold on, I've got an important call from my calculus prof!) or playing an exciting video game about the inevitable alienation resultant from domination by the military-industrial complex. (One of those oldschool arcade games where, much like Koyaanisqatsi, the pace just gets faster and faster until success and, yea, even survival seems unlikely.) (Actually, the film does visit a sped-up arcade -- while Pac-Man and Q-Bert aren't the best fits, Robotron or Defender (both shown) would work well enough for my (by now, far over-)indulgent metaphor.) This became less jarring as the evening progressed (perhaps just through acclimatisation) as the filmic setting progressed from natural landscapes to the postmodern nightmare of modern industrial sprawl -- slightly tacky synths are a much better fit for the swagger of fashionably brash Americans, large and in charge at the end of the unapologetic '70s, checking their chunky hotness out in mirrors (practically the only smiles you'll catch throughout the entire film) and swinging their back bacon on a strobing discotheque floor with built-in light show. (Slightly tacky? Hell, bring on the Giorgio Moroder!)

But enough about the arrangement, you say: how was the performance? We'll put it this way: James Brown is certainly older than Philip Glass, but brings a better game as far as stage presence is concerned. (Not another tired James Brown vs. Philip Glass comparison, the audience cries. This cliché is played out!) If the performance was lacking, however (and who really is big enough to fill the shoes of the hardest-working man in show business?), as far as supporting visual projection you can do far worse. (While James Brown may well be the most frequently sampled sound source in modern music, Koyaanisqatsi is almost certainly the head flick whose visuals have been hijacked (when Madonna's not ripping it off for her Ray of Light video) to lend ambience to the most raves and neo-tribal dance parties.)

Having blown a Helfgott gasket in my time attempting to memorise Bach fugues, I can well imagine that despite the often-sedate pacing, the swirling repetitions mustn't have been a walk in the park for the crack squad in the Philip Glass Ensemble, especially with all the crowd love being drained away by the celluloid images flickering away above their heads. For these dedicated individuals, there were to be no scissor kicks or stage dives; since our collective headspace was "at the movies", there was no applause at the successful completion of challenging solo passages -- we were just too distracted watching atomic bomb tests and building demolitions to fully consider the demands made of the little people, sometimes almost forgotten, sweating under our noses.

While I am sure that they are well-remunerated (to say nothing of the prestige of having Philip Glass's name on your C.V.), I suspect the primary appeal of this work for these musicians must be the opportunity to conduct a kind of long-form meditative ritual framed in the context of a performance. It has been claimed by some that movie soundtrack music is most effective when it works only to subtly reinforce and complement the action on screen, always supporting it and never distracting from it -- and hence if a viewer ever exclaims to themself "Self, this is some bitchin' music!", the score (however bitchin' it may be) fails as a soundtrack, upstaging the main attraction unfolding for the eyes. For this house packed with what amounted to a congregation gathered to bear witness to a devotional exercise (come now, the casual laymen could rent the DVD for one tenth the price of the cheapest ticket), a single stumble could well have caused the whole house of cards to tumble. The Philip Glass Ensemble expertly constructed for us a bridge of music to sleepwalk across, notes fitting flawlessly beneath our every unaware footstep.

I can gripe about the lack of a full orchestra and choir (boo hoo, my diamond earrings are too tight and my pony is just the wrong colour) but in the end I can find no fault with the performance. As the seamless suite concluded an hour and a half on I leaned over to my friend and cracked a joke that was admittedly funnier the first time I said it, at the end of the Beans' legendary 48-hour marathon concert at (the sugar refinery) August 10-12th, 2001:

"I can't wait to see what these guys do for an encore!"

Three curtain calls, no encore. (Perhaps it's just as well that we didn't have the full 30-person orchestra -- a band three times the size would have warranted at least three times as many calls to re-take the stage, and not only would we have been there all night our furiously clapping hands would have been worn down to bloody little nubs of wrist cartilage.)