In Pictures: Wysing Polyphonic
With whistling, drone, choral ensembles, improv jazz and spoken word on the menu — plus no electronics to be seen – Wysing Art Centre’s annual art and music festival in Cambridge has built up a reputation for cutting-edge performance since its inception in 2010. Here, Wysing Arts Centre director and festival curator Donna Lynas guides us through her eight favourite moments from this year’s Polyphonic spree…
Above: The incredible skill of Barnaby Brown stunned festival audiences. He played a range of instruments, all of which were copies of ancient instruments some 2,400 and even 47,0000 years old. Here he’s playing the triplepipes, the ancestor of the highland bagpipe, which created a complex drone sound and required circular breathing to play.
Above: Laura Cannell performed directly after Barnaby Brown and her haunting compositions tapped into some of that ancient musical history revealed by Brown, through her use of double recorder and over-bowed fiddle, bringing it right into the contemporary.
Above: Richard Dawson gave an enthralling performance and this photo illustrates how immediate and intense the connection was between him and the audience were — with no microphones or speakers involved. Though Dawson had to borrow a hairbrush from a member of the audience to hold in place of a mic!
Above: Paul Purgas, a well-known electronic musician, really pushed himself by not only learning how to play the Shruti and Dhol specially for the festival, but by pushing those instruments in new ways to reflect some of his electronic compositions.
Above: Also taking themselves well outside their comfort zones, Jennifer Walshe and Tomomi Adachi completely improvised a set of intricate interlocking vocals with a physicality that was new to them, due to being freed from technology and with the whole gallery space to play with instead of the restrictions of a stage.
Above: Taking advantage of being able to perform in the round, in the centre of the gallery, the very talented Jenny Moore pulled together an ensemble of 12 musicians and singers to give a joyous and infectiously positive performance of signing, clapping, chanting and drumming. Again, the set was devised especially for Wysing Polyphonic.
Above: The inimitable Adam Christensen regaled with songs of love and loss, keeping the audience hanging onto his every word as he stamped out a rhythm with his stiletto heels and wrung a melody out of his accordion. The warmth between him and the people in that room was a very special thing to have witnessed.
Above: It was amazing to end the festival with anther incredible woodwind performance, this time by Evan Parker, who is a giant in world of free improvisation. He used continuous breathing techniques to achieve thrilling levels of playing.
Donna Lynas
Wysing Polyphonic annual art and music festival: held at Wysing Arts Centre on 2 July 2016, in Bourn, Cambridge. Check out their website for upcoming festivals, exhibitions, talks, residencies and other events
All images courtesy Mike Cameron for Wysing Polyphonic
