When covering a contemporary music festival, one must expect to be thrown a couple of curve balls before the end of the festivities. Composers and performers alike are, after all, tasked with increasingly pushing and reinventing performance practice and compositional techniques; not to mention the advances in technology that contemporary composers often feel pressured to incorporate in their ongoing conceptions.
Having said all this, I was caught completely unprepared to review Ptitécouti, a piece by the Hanatsumiroir Ensemble who prepared a spectacle conceived specifically for children aged 0 to 3. You can imagine my feeling out of place as a moustachioed childless adult lurking about the Édifice Wilder scratching down notes while the babies, toddlers and their parents attempted to enjoy an afternoon of contemporary music.
Don’t say I don’t do anything for you, dear reader.
As concerns the music and spectacle itself: our principal performer Ayako Okulo made use of modular wooden shelving that housed in its centre, a transparent tank of water which she splashed, let drip from her hands, blew into, and on which she placed what seemed like sea shells that floated about and clinked together.
There were microphones placed strategically so that all the minute sounds and textures could be appreciated over the sound system. There were temporal delay effects employed as well and light up cushions for the children to repose themselves and take in the sights and sounds.
Okulo, then opened little compartments on the wooden shelves and pulled from them windchimes, she then made use of various ocarinas and her skills as a flutist became apparent as she employed fluttering tonguing techniques among others.
The whole thing was whimsical and put the term “play” into perspective where “playing music” is concerned. I could well imagine a preambulatory child being able to see themselves depicted, (if we assume for a second that self consciousness can precede walking), as the unfolding of the performance resembled that of a child exploring the contents of their toy chest.
The show notes tell us, in fact, that we were to expect music, scenography, and lighting that was “adapted to the psychology and understanding of the world of children under 3 years old. At the heart of the show: a luminous box full of surprises, made of various compartments and drawers.” It seemed that some children missed the memo, however.
Many goo-goos and ga-gas from the audience seemed to have been uttered out of boredom or otherwise reaching their limit with the display on offer. It is admittedly hard to compete with Cocomelon and iPads. Their parents shuffled them out of the room preemptively once they got the feeling the situation was untenable where attention spans were concerned.
This is not an indictment on the show itself, which I myself found charming, short, and sweet for the duration of its thirty minutes. Kudos from the aforementioned out of place mustachioed note-taking lurker.
