Reviewed by Ray Smith, Wednesday 10th March 2021.
Adam Page is no stranger to the Adelaide Fringe, and his new show,
What's Your Story?, is the latest in a string of improvisational performances, based on input from the audience, by this extraordinarily talented musician and composer. Page has written major works for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Wellington, Zephyr Quartet, and co-composed on numerous occasions with celebrated Kiwi composer John Psathas but, tonight, he was composing just for us.
He described his compositional process as one of first finding the story, and then writing its soundtrack. The difficult part, he told us, was to find the right story that would trigger the work.
What's Your Story? is an invitation to offer a personal story for Page to use as the trigger for his composition, written and performed live in front of the storyteller and the rest of the audience.
It is an extraordinarily risky thing to attempt, and the potential for failure is very high, but this very experienced composer and highly skilled multi-instrumentalist set the challenge for himself, and jumped straight in. He approached the performance with humour, as he always does, and a gentle, generous goodwill that welcomes the audience warmly into his creative process.
A glimpse at his back catalogue is enough to inform the most casual observer that this is a musician and composer of a very high order indeed but, despite his extreme, almost innate creativity, his virtuosic instrumental skills, and his strict professionalism, it is impossible not to notice that he is a very, very nice man.
Wednesday's audience offered six, very different stories for Page to interpret musically. He listened intently to the tales, making hurried notes as he did so, the music forming in his mind, the tempo, the instrumentation, the form that the piece would take.
The first was a tale of New Zealand, a country with which Page is very familiar, and told of abseiling down a cliff above crashing waves, amongst birds and patches of flax. As soon as the story was told, Page said, "we start on the cliff" and launched himself into forming a picture of it for us, moving the air with sound, like paint on a canvas, as he drew the steep cliffs, and showed us the terrifying drop to the threatening, crashing waves below. Indignant birds flew close to our heads, angry at our audacity as we trespassed into their world of wind and sea and soaring.
Gentle piano arpeggios rippled over indifferent and unyielding drumbeats, while the flute and the sound of Page's breathe drifted over our heads. A ground trembling bass line spoke of the ever-present threat of falling to the impatient and hungry rocks below, wetting their bitter lips with an angry sea in anticipation of our fall, the waving flax whispering a warning. The growl of bass and drums begins to subside as the rippling piano begins to move away from them slowly but eagerly, until we finally join the original storyteller in safety at the top of the cliff, as the wind in the flax and under the wings of the forgiving birds sighs with relief.
It was quite extraordinary. Having the story so clear in our minds allowed Page to take us with him on his journey, as he described every aspect of the scene, the action, the danger, the quiet relief when safety was regained. It was a compositional master class.
The second story came from an eight-year-old girl, who related the tale of a school play and being usurped of the role of Princess by the teacher's daughter, and the anger that she felt. The third recalled floating in a pool in Alice Springs, watching soaring eagles against a wide sky, framed by the MacDonell Ranges. The fourth was that of a nurse working in the emergency department of a large metropolitan hospital, who would end her chaotic shift by walking through the deserted city at night, past the art gallery and the museum, to the calming sound of fountains and water features.
The fifth was a harrowing tale of a yacht trip from Kangaroo Island to a mainland marina; rough seas, high winds, and a failed engine. The sixth was a love story. Two people, who had lived only a short distance from each other since early childhood, with many shared experiences but no real contact, find each other as adults and fall in love. Six totally different stories, and six totally different pieces of music, composed and played after each one was told.
The stories fresh in our minds, we watched as Page retold each of them with a bewildering array of instruments, effects, samplers, and loop pedals, allowing us a deep insight into his creative process. What might seem at first to be abstract compositions have been given a back story, and suddenly have a discernible form, a clear meaning, an identifiable reference point, a beginning a middle, and an end. It was an incredible event to witness.
"The story you give me is just the start", he said. "It's the first chapter, and the process of composition continues the story." "This is part of my growth as a composer, and perhaps some parts of these pieces may later find their way into an orchestral work."
Adam Page's three performances of
What's Your Story? are available for viewing at Wheaty Live, the Wheatsheaf Hotel's Facebook video channel.
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