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Brass: Fractal Sparks at Durham Cathedral

Something of a last minute plan but M and I had high hopes of the 18th July Fractal Sparks event based on information from the people at Brass: Durham International Festival. The show was billed as a multimedia spectacular featuring Jo Hamilton, Lanterns on the Lake, Durham County Youth Big Band (DCBB) and The Band of the Royal Corps of Signals. 

Arriving early at Durham Cathedral, the venue filled up in a relaxed manner, and was completely full by showtime. The event was effectively 2 concerts and the first concert featured Newcastle band Lanterns on the Lake with DCBB. This 45 minute-odd set was a very relaxed affair. We hadn't heard any Lanterns music before, but they have a keys/guitar/violin/drums setup mixing low-fi indie and post-rock sounds. The band seemed a little nervous (slightly limited stage talk) but we enjoyed the set. The songs which worked best with DCBB (and at least 1 song had been written especially for this concert) were 'To My Soul', 'Crawl' and 'Tricks'. The audience was very polite throughout (maybe also awed by the surroundings) but were very enthusiastic at the end of the set, especially for the DCBB.

After a rather long interval, we had complete darkness (and a few moments of complete, expectant silence) just before Jo Hamilton started her set. The visual aspect started off very well with a full-length screen behind the stage. The six members of the Signals were seated behind the screen with lighting used to highlight or hide them as the set went on. Initially the 'complete' concert worked well, but this second half then went downhill. We were no more familiar with Jo Hamilton's work, however after the first 15 minutes or so her songs started to become repetitive, with no structure for the evening, or harmonic/rhythmic development between songs. We found her vocal range limited but pushed; there was little or no melodic instrument line; the other band musicians (bass, synth/keys and drums) all looked very bored. After some excellent scenes (such as a cycle of blossoms falling from a tree - changing seasons) the visual works became rather tame and there were a few technical issues with the video. Jo's songs had not been sufficiently arranged to allow for brass accompaniment so there were rather fewer brass elements than many attendees would have liked. Indeed the general audience atmosphere changed from expectantly excited through to mildly bored, with applause becoming more muted. The high point of the second set was a trumpet solo about half way through. Superb solo, shame about the rest.

The concert was and remains a good thematic idea but the implementation didn't work out. We stayed until the end of the main set, however there were people leaving early; an unfortunate end to what had started out as an excellent evening.    
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