Timely therapeutic: Michael Bawtree conducts Calcutta Chamber Orchestra

Sitting through the performance of Stephen Rush and Robert Newcomb at the Lincoln Ro-om, American Center, courtesy US Consulate General and the Calcutta School of Music Jazz Listeners’ Forum on August 6, one was reminded of H.L. Mencken’s comments ? “criticism is prejudice made plausible”.

One is hard put to label the sort of music this duo creates. Rush is a versatile musician, straddling the guitar and sitar with seamless ?lan. It is what Newcomb does that at once impresses and irks. When a laptop replaces a huge array of percussion, and a bonsai synthesiser exudes a vexing supply of techno-ambient sounds, and all in a quest “to extend the fabric” of music, the effect, can, at best, be ? charitably put ? novel.

And Newcomb’s claim of “playing the laptop” is a sufficiently worrisome approach to music as we ought to know it. Gratifying though, was the absence of spontaneous applause throughout the show, which, at the same time, proved that the pair’s love for things Indian also included our flexible attitude towards time: the concert overshot by as much as 45 minutes.

Thus, Unbounded Optimism was a kedgeree of Rush’s sepulchral and hurried strains on the sitar, Newcomb’s inhibited vocals and laptop-induced percussive fervour: at best, a sense of mystique reigned.

The following piece saw Rush’s greater fraternity with the guitar ? swifter rifts met Newcomb’s deeper and heavier bass with a touch more cohesiveness. And the piece that sought “intimacy of the beyond”, reassured, on one hand, thanks to Rush’s rich and calming invocation via the sitar, and unsettled, on the other, with Newcomb’s mismatched display of unchiselled singing skills and deft manipulation of the laptop.

Air Dance, for its part, was a happy amalgamation of Rush’s urgent guitar and a far more viscid offering of piercing and wavy sounds from Newcomb. Cyclical, ranging from the slow to stridence, Newcomb’s flair for “looping samples” shone as Rush’s sitar oscillated from the staid to the rapid during the show-ender, Bliss Cycle.

What next, guys? ? an iPod replacing the guitar?

The Fourth Monsoon Concert at the Calcutta School of Music on August 7 was a timely therapeutic, featuring the zesty Calcutta Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Cantab import Michael Bawtree. Edvard Greig’s Prelude (from Holberg Suite) delighted with its mix of restraint and pluck, while the lilting and folksy backed by a stately bass marked Jig & Intermezzo (from St Paul’s Suite) by Gustav Holst.

Mozart’s brief Adagio K426 was a tribute to the orchestra’s versatility; they engendered a m?lange of contrasting moods, tender, moving and tense. And it continued to impress under the baton-ship of Bawtree. Therefore, Edward Elgar’s Serenade for Strings Op. 20 encompassing a cornucopia of emotions ? the tranquil, the quietly playful and the soulful ? all found a place amid controlled amplitude.

Inspired further perhaps by gubernatorial presence, Bawtree’s wards aptly chose to reserve their best during Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite, which again uncorked a compendium of rhythms, with the violin section expertly juggling the spry, the lachrymose and the funereal, kindling visions of lazy pasturage, ale tankards, unfettered hoedowns, et al.