View all newsletters
Sign up to our newsletters

Support 110 years of independent journalism.

  1. Culture
31 August 2017

A concrete epiphany from the Multi-Story Orchestra

This concert in a Peckham car park offered an unusual sonic experience.

By Antonia Quirke

Yet again, the Prom of the season was broadcast from a car park in South East London (26 August, 3pm). “This is going to be a performance of thrilling intensity,” promised Tom Service, who’d been listening in on rehearsals of John Adams’s three-movement, Mahler-ishly shattering Harmonielehre, played by the Multi-Story Orchestra.

In Peckham, the venue was so rammed that the orchestra was sitting almost amongst the audience, the sounds of the street rising loud from below, even though the concert was happening on a floor near the very roof of the building. My sister was one of the orchestra’s violinists, and she said that when the time came to start, you just picked up your bow and immediately felt the music in your blood. It was something to do with the heat of the afternoon and the low ceiling of the space and the smell of meat and bread being sold in the shops beneath, and the fact that people were crying – players and audience – rattled by each flinch and pulse of the opening surge of E chords. These had been inspired in Adams by the sight of a gigantic tanker in San Francisco Bay, and some of the rest of the piece came from a dream about his young daughter flying through the cosmos on the back of a medieval theologian.

“I could feel my belly fat wobbling,” texted my sister later, still experiencing the near-neuralgic reverberations that had been concentrated and amplified to such a degree that the car park had acted as one immense concrete speaker flinging sound across the city. What exactly had she been doing on her instrument? “Slow high tunes with precise bow control. Solid rhythmic quavers crossing all the strings. Harmonics, fast tremolo, glissandos…”

Occasionally, we heard the cry of nearby trains hurtling past, “casting our applause into silence” as Service gasped during his radio commentary. He sounded increasingly like someone experiencing great love for life. When he interviewed members of a local youth choir, also singing on the programme, one of them – 12 years old perhaps – said that the afternoon had made him want to rise up and think. Somebody should print that on a T-shirt.

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU

Content from our partners
The promise of prevention
How Labour hopes to make the UK a leader in green energy
Is now the time to rethink health and care for older people? With Age UK

This article appears in the 30 Aug 2017 issue of the New Statesman, The decline of the American empire

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU