All Reich Now

As I said a couple of days ago, Saturday would be spent at Birmingham Town Hall, at a performance of Steve Reich's Drumming, along with his Clapping Music, Nagoya Marimbas and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ.

The joy of them is partly the sheer skill involved in phasing together between 2 and 15 people playing similar lines often on the very same instruments, and partly the revelation that rhythm at its purest can be transcendentally emotional. Clapping Music is a virtuoso show piece: two people, a microphone and five minutes of clapping, occasionally resolving into synched sound, often 'out of phase'. Nagoya Marimbas is all glockenspiel and marimbas and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ uses the voices and organ as filler between the mallet instruments rather than, as you'd expect, carriers of melody.

Drumming isn't just drums - it's all the other percussion too, and it's hugely intense. Given that it lasts over an hour, it's hard work for the players and for some of the audience too. You can take it in two ways: zone out in some areas and let it wash over you, or listen intently for every tiny change - I mixed both methods. Letting it wash over you is a weird experience. There's so much going on that you start to hear instruments that aren't there: I heard clarinets, bar alarms and cellos, despite the fact that every instrument on stage was something to hit, other than a whistle!

I was a bit spaced out by the end. Luckily, next day saw me go home for my grandmother's 97th, which culminated in a mass family and friends snowball fight, as there's 5 inches of the stuff up there.

I let my grandmother win. It was her birthday, after all.

Swine flu update

All showings of Babe in the City are henceforth banned.

Kermit has quarantined Miss Piggy.

Porky has been put to the sword.

Squealer, Napoleon and Snowball have been purged - they will never have existed once the records can be altered.

Piglet ran away in a cowardly fashion.

The third little piglet and the wolf have succumbed to the fever, as has Charlotte, thanks to Wilbur's cross-species overfamiliarity.

This flu clearly originated with The Black Pig - the northern Irish symbol of evil and death.