Page 270 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

Some might attribute this to “queering the performance”, an idea that encourages authenticity in
musical expression. Composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990) once summed up that spirit when he
told an interviewer: “What I am trying to achieve is to be what I am to the fullest – black to the
fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest.” While we didn’t have any Eastman in
the main hall – Jessie Montgomery’s arrangement of Eastman’s Gay Guerilla was performed in the
foyer prior the concert proper – Cassandra Miller’s Round hinted at his radical musical
minimalism, with trumpets positioned up in the balcony and an urgent, repeated motif. Sounds
swirled, programme pages turned.

Russell Thomas – in town to sing Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca at the Royal Opera House – was
joined by the LGBTQ+ Community Choir for Szymanowski’s dramatic Symphony No 3 Song of the
Night, an ecstatic work that is texturally dense – Thomas’s tenor rather got lost in the weave. The
counterpoint to this uplifting evening was the reminder that Pride is a protest movement, because
rights are still not universal. To that end, all proceeds from Classical Pride are donated to Rainbow
Road, Amplifund and the Terrence Higgins Trust. CJ

No further performances

Sound Within Sound, Southbank Centre ★★★★★

The Southbank's festival explores the concept of Sound Within Sound CREDIT: Getty

A sound within a sound – it’s a strange idea. How can one sound contain another? As the first
concert in Sound Within Sound – the Southbank’s festival of experimental music from around the
world – unfolded, it became clear. It means sounds of bewitching unfamiliarity: the booming and
gurgling and hissing of water and insects and bells, intricate and many-layered, like one shape
unfolding to reveal another. Sounds which – after a moment of resistance – you sink into
pleasurably, with a mysterious sense of connecting with something age-old.

This was the sound of Jitterbug by New Zealander Annea Lockwood, who back in the heady late
1960s became briefly notorious for recording the sound of burning pianos. “Not very green!” she