Messagio Galore VII was at City Hall in January. rob mclennan’s description gives some background if you’re not familiar.
In April there will be Messagio Galore VIII at writers festival, with a different take as each is, some of the same performers, maybe some more as well. Each performance is a unique thing with its own character and effect. The troupe changes fluidly as the material does.
This last performance was about 2 hours before about 5 dozen or so who attended. It is a very hard thing to describe, even for sound poetry.
Voices wove in and out of each other to the points where it became sound rather than individuals. Sometimes there are words, sometimes a range of sounds the voicebox or body can make. It would misconstrue to call it beatboxing because it is not so metrical as that. Sometimes it feels like choral singing but it is using varied emotional expression of tone not melody. Some of it was group improv, some rehearsed to the fraction of a second. Some was material scored to be sound poetry and some was interpretation of visual texts. People fell in for some pieces or stepped out of as instruments in an orchestra might in different arrangements for different amount of richness of voices.
Pictured are Grant Wilkins, Lesley Marshall, jwcurry, Christine McNair and Alastair Larwill in one formation.
People moved from piece to piece without introductions as one might through a classical music program. Programs listed all the pieces that were to be done. It was rather a gallery of sound with some being serious, others humorous. Some with cacophony, some with swells of harmony and resonance.
At points the audience seemed to fall as if into a group meditation where there was not an extraneous move, cough, shift or glance around, completely inside the sounds for extended minutes. It was a rare sort of transport to see performers own a room like that.
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