Review Classical Music: Basquiat Strings | Roundhouse | composer

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The Review - MUSIC - Classical & Jazz with TONY KIELY
Published: 4 September 2008

Basquiat Strings

Music born of a collision of styles

REVIEW: BASQUIAT STRINGS
Roundhouse

SEATED in a semi-circle, engaged in strumming, plucking and tapping their gleaming instruments, the members of Basquiat Strings tease out a conversation in melody, with the similarities in musical traditions as their topic of discussion.
Each is a profoundly accomplished classical musician in their own right, and they speak a language long honed and nurtured.
Composer and cellist Ben Davis’ choppy rhythms are interpreted and reinterpreted by the vibrant quintet (two violinists, viola player, double bassist and drummer) to the point where no song will ever be heard the same twice.
Together, the troupe explore the boundaries of sounding discordant – at times lashing out at the canon from which they were born.
Even violinist Emma Smith’s soulful and smouldering solos and the gorgeous slow section in Bobbette 2, for instance, retain a rebellious edge throughout.
The 2007 Mercury Prize nominees’ largely unchoreographed “conversations”, presented in the guise of songs, often descend into conflict.
During one battle, Dominant Twin Syndrome, Vicky Fifield’s frenetic and melodious fiddling is forced to submit to Jenny May Logan’s sparsely executed musical one-liners.
Basquiat’s influences range from the workshop arrangements of Charles Mingus to the sublimely euphoric voice arrangements of Brahms.
Fluently tuning into one another’s riffs their sound slides, leaps and rolls from Hungarian to Middle Eastern folk, American 1950s jazz to Bossa Nova.
Synchronising and juxtaposing centuries of musical traditions with each other, Basquiat create a deeply funky and deliciously lucid sound, all of their own.
SARA NEWMAN

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