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NATIONAL

12'284

Yes, but could 'they hum a few bars?

ByMAXWYl\IAN
Vancouver musician-composer Don
Drulck is still, by his own admission,
trying to find himself, trying to work out
what he wants to do or say in his music.
In recent seasons he has worked with
two local music groups - the Vital
Baton Music Co. and Musique Par Coeur
- in explorations of new musical possi­
bilities.
Musique Par Coeur, he thinks, is com­
ing to the end of its usefulness for him,
and at noon Wednesday in the Vancou­
Yer Art Gallery, Durick and a trio of
friends presented the first concert in the
Musique Par Coeur farewell series.
Already, the title of the group has
been reduced to Musiqu Pa Coe (the
omitted letters in sequence spell erur,
but he says that is not deliberate, ah,
mistake) and the title will diminish fur­
ther as the series progress�s.
The program included three works:
Nameplay, by Albert Mayr; Druick's
own Cherchons; and The Singularly
Strange History of Gasping George, by
Steve Wilkes. The printed program car­
ried a little slogan from Jean-Luc God­
ard: "Toujours le sang, la peur, la poli­
tique, l'argent" (Always blood, fear, pol­
itics, money).
The inclusion of the slogan may have
been gratultous; on the other hand, it
may have had real significance - to do.
perhaps, with the con£Iicts of creating
something that must exist in the real
world, to do with the difficulties of being
an artist, the difficulties of communicat­
ing.
In an interview with Dorothy Metcalfe
a recent issue of the Vancouver Art
�allery publication Vanguard, Druick
alked at length about his desire to get
Jose to audiences - which springs from
a desire to give to others.
"I think we have to help each other
get to the point where we can be totally
liberated from the things which are
blocking us from feeling the moment at
hand •..
"I love great performances and I
don't really care what the performer is
doing; it doesn't seem to matter what
the work is because a great perform­
ance always goes beyond the content,
because somehow the content isn't
what's happening. It's the relationship
between the audience and the perform­
er. together as one group ...
"People do all sorts of things in order
to feel closer to each other, in order to
hreak down barriers.
For that's where the magic is. And il
comes and it goes. You have to be con­
stantly working on it. It's not something
which you can just lock inlo and il slays
there ...
4 Squares
to the Inch

COMPOSER DRUICK

. trying to find himself

''That seems to be the important work
to do right now. It's the only politically
viable course open, to liberate the possi­
bility of tenderness."
In the past, Dni.ick has been involved
in electronic music; currently he is ex­
ploring loops - tape loops, music that
repeats' itself in loop-fashion - and his
work Wednesday was a continuation of
that concern.
Against a short, taped. spoken phrase
repeated without pause. Steve Wilkes
played a sequence of musical phrases on

the viola. The effect of this also came
close to multi-repetition, except that the
human-error factor meant that, unlike
the taped phrase, the live-performed
pieces were each time slightly different.
The work - no plot, stressed Drulck
- had a pleasant lulling effect; at one
point, Greg Simpson drowned everything
out with a gradual, ferocious roll of
drums; the viola and tape then re­
asserted themselves, and the piece came
to an end with a rising scream from
Druick.
Nameplay comes in three parts; ·its
structure is dictated by the performers'
names, which are fed into a computer
and translated into various note-values
and sequences. The names involved
Wednesday were Don Drltlck (mouth in­
struments), Ross Barrett (organ and
saxophone) and Greg Simpson (drums).
I may have been trying too hard to
hear significance; all I picked up from
the piece was a series of raging crescen­
does and sighing pauses, albeit in some
interesting sonic colors and combination�
The Wilkes piece was the most formal
and accessible of the three, and perhaps
the one most obviously admitting "the
possibility of tenderness." Influenced,
said Wilkes, by Prokofiev's Lieutenant
Kije ( a sulte of musical adventures
centred on a mythical character invent­
ed to perpetuate a Russian Czar's mis­
take) the Gasping George composition is
an imaginary history of a real person: a
street musician Wilkes used to hear out­
side The Bay.
He takes a theme he heard the street­
musician play and works on it in a vari­
ety of ways, principally affectionate.
managing at the same time (it seemed
to me) to include a wide number of
sounds heard at the corner of Georgia
and Granville.
The enduring impression of the piece
was one of warmth perceived and com­
municated - and that was, indeed, the
enduring impression of the concert as a
whole. If that is what Drulck means by
going beyond content, by the possibility
of tenderness. then maybe he is, indeed,
finding himself.

Ca lboard: The $1 000 pl
Ar ward ol $1,000 will be given for
the be
iadi n first l}O el published
Distiller
during 975 by
adian G
Lld.. o
ntr . m conJ
o with
the Canadian Authors Association. To
qualify, authors must be a Canadian cit­
izen or hold landed immigrant status, al­
though the autllor need not be living in
Canada or have had the novel published

he . o furth r information, 1Tite:
B an J. ud lph, �085 Union v . Swte
86 Montreal, H3 1B9.

*

Orgamst Patric Wedd will perform
works by Hindemith, Franck, Kagel and
Reubke at Christ Church Cathedral,
Georgia a!1d Burrard, at 8:30 p,m., Jan.
29.