David Toop organised and orchestrated this conversation/collaboration/improvisation featuring Shelley Hirsch, Sofia Jernberg & Elaine Mitchener. Normal (eloquent) speaking voices drifting into and out of song as if shifting with unseen currents. Elaine Mitchener suddenly and unexpectedly demonstrating how she had spent the day looking for the structure in Kurt Weill’s ‘My Ship’ – singing fragments of the first line. Almost heart stopping in its brilliant, broken complexity.
An invitation to the audience to join the discussion made me feel protective towards us listeners…there was a lot of talk about control and the performer but I think that listening demands that control is relinquished or, at least, suspended. In this, listening is not passive but it could be seen as a form of surrender. Us listeners are not mere consumers just because we are ‘silent’…the act of listening can form the space of the sound as much as the production of that sound.
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