The Zephyr Quartet. Queen’s Theatre. 25 May 2014

The Zephyr Quartet have a well deserved reputation for being at the cutting edge of contemporary serious concert music (or modern classical music if you will), and their latest concert adds to that reputation.  Entitled ‘Between Light’, Zephyr invited five composers to write music in response to the somewhat vague theme of ‘light and dark’.  In performance they included the additional elements of place and managed light (or its absence).  The end result was five disparate short compositions for a classical string quartet (about 10 minutes each) performed in five separate locations within the stark and harsh confines of the hollow and hostile Queen’s Theatre (and you had to carry your seat from one location to the next) with five distinct atmospheric and empathetic lighting designs by master lighting designer Geoff Cobham.

Did I say concert?  Perhaps ‘production’ or ‘event’ is more apt.

The string quartet is an unforgiving ensemble:  inaccurate playing is immediately heard, and uninteresting music has nowhere to hide, whereas excellent technique and inspired writing can almost eclipse an orchestra in full flight.  Zephyr’s playing is sound, very sound (excuse the pun) but the compositions as a collection were sometimes lacking in colour, depth and texture.

Lyndon Gray is a bassist and his ‘Lighter, Fluid’ strongly favoured the mellow register of the viola and cello in what felt like a semi improvised/semi through-composed piece that didn’t fully unleash the contrasting voice of the violin.

Tony Gould’s ‘Songs in a Gentle Breeze’ had a dreamy rhythmic feel about it with harmonious and nicely structured contrasts between the outer voices of the violins and cello.  Cobham’s exquisite swirling lighting design amplified the mellifluousness of the composition.

Andrea Keller’s ‘Light, Dark, Depth’ was almost an inventive study in improvising on broken chords that emulated the contrasting states of being carefree and then being bound in seriousness.  This was underlined by Cobham’s design that cleverly created a wall of light that begged to be broken with the hand (and some audience members could not resist the temptation), and light that danced through a smoky haze.

Stephen Magnusson’s ‘Dirt–Hue/Value/Chroma (Bound)’ (now there’s a title!) was the most obviously jazz inflected composition of the program and at times begged for a contralto voice to accompany it.  At times it almost had the ‘feel’ of the fold-song inspired quartets of Béla Bartók.

Matt Keegan is well known for being a superb saxophonist and the performance of his composition  ‘The Light Within’ was perhaps the most striking part of the evening, and the multilayered lyric was almost overshadowed by the lighting design (again, pun not intended!).  Zephyr faced each other in a semi-circle and played in almost complete darkness expect for small point sources of light that danced above their heads like fireflies and bright electric heaters that syncopated on and off with the music.

Zephyr can be counted on to combine art-forms and toy with our multiple senses.  What next?

Kym Clayton

When: Closed
Where: Queen’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed