VIVID Live: Slow Music Night - Sydney Opera House (4th June, 2010)

7 June 2010 by Max Easton

VIVID Live is the Sydney Opera House's festival of music, lights and ideas, curated in 2010 by Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. As a part of this festival, the two hosted a showcase of the artists involved in the festival under the moniker of the Slow Music Night, featuring Marc Ribot, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Emily Haines, Doveman and the curators themselves.

There were two sides to the Sydney Opera House's VIVID Live week-long festival depending on where you stand. On one hand, it was a collection of some incredible artists of varying notoriety across a week of music and lights. On the other hand, the whole idea of the festival had all the trappings of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. It had unruly fiscal spending, class distinction (if you wanted to write it that way), a master of the arts and enough potential comedy to sustain a witty and insightful book by the man that only recently ceased writing on account of falling down a set of stairs in 2007. If he were still alive today, he would write a synopsis for the event as such:

A city council decides to host an arts showcase to demonstrate it's prominence as a cultural city. They act on this impulse by approaching their state government for funding, pooling their funds and using it to attract an aged, but legendary cult figure of music from overseas to curate their event. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are raised to convince him, and he arrives with wife in tow as co-curator. The two are then given full control to formulate a line-up of whoever they please to raise the artistic profile amongst the tourism industry. So they take this as trust in their judgement, subsequently taking that trust and huge sum of money to do absolutely whatever they want. They begin by organising a concert for dogs (which, incidentally, isn't an embellishment.) They arrange to fly in the aged musician's Tai Chi teacher - so he won't miss his daily Tai Chi routine - and puts that on the city's tab. They put on a night of experimental hard rock, and indeed, he plays a night himself consisting of 90 minutes of constant distortion and noise. They then arrange a slow music showcase involving an array of reputable acts, where said aged musician plays a focal point...playing two notes on an effect bathed electric guitar while his Tai Chi master plays with a fake sword. They then go home, a couple of million dollars in their pocket, and the city's mayor is left mouth agape at the foot of the Opera House in stunned confusion as to what had just happened.

That's what I like to think of as the trade unionist's review of VIVID Live. Yes, there were some moments over the week that were almost comical and left you wondering how exactly the big wigs who flooded their money into this project felt about the Metal Machine Trio's performance which reportedly divided its audience into either awe or hasty, disgusted departure. But what lay in the Slow Music Night multi-artist showcase was the closest thing to magic that you could get from a musical performance, and as far as I'm concerned an absolute justification for government spending.

 It featured a series of phenomenal moments throughout the night from almost all artists involved. Almost everything that occurred was received with an ovation born out of raw and complete awe. From Tim Bartlett (Doveman), Marc Ribot and Doug Weiselman's brilliant and inspired cover of Neil Young's 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' (featuring a spine-chilling saxophone solo from Weiselman) , to Jimmy Carter's wails within the Blind Boys of Alabama's version of 'I Shall Not Walk Alone', there was no shortage of moments where you were completely  ecstatic about shelling out your cash to be there.

Other moments like My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden and Colin Stetson's two song run as well as Holly Miranda's great, but brief appearance (singing the double entendre  "you wake up and you're next to nothing," which has stuck in my mind ever since it left her lips) impressed leading to a finale that for a night full of sweetened emotional moments, transcended all feeling that came before it. 

Lou Reed hobbled to centre stage a few times throughout the evening. Performing an ill-fated duet with Metric's Emily Haines earlier on, it was beginning to look like his once charming stilted vocal style wasn't going to hit any form of positivity at the Opera House. Yet, on his return at the night's end, sitting down once more with his guitar absent and hands on knees facing wife Laurie Anderson on strings, an air of romance had been brought to the stage. Playing Reed's 'Vanishing Act' whilst staring into each other from opposite sides of the stage pleading to 'float into a mist, with a young lady on your arm, looking for a kiss,' it left everyone in the Concert Hall gobsmacked and overwhelmed...in not too dissimilar a way to how that fictional mayor of Sydney was left at the foot of the Opera House with his festival spending disappearing on a plane back to New York.

There's rarely a case where you can ever truly put a concert into words and do it justice. If there's ever a better example of that than VIVID's slow music night, I'm yet to see it and I'm not holding my breath. Can you really adequately describe an avant-garde horn based funk number about zoo animals? Or a Himalayan throat singing four piece? It ranks as one of the finest nights of music that I've ever had the chance to see, not so much due to quality of its entirety, but in the number of brilliant and completely unique moments of music that came out of it. 

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