Music / Dual Attractor Album Launch Tour, Claire Edwardes Solo, The Street 2. August 9. Reviewed by DAVID WHITBREAD

An almost spiritual atmosphere was created from the first sonorous notes from her magnificent five octave marimba. In absolute stillness and silence, soloist Claire Edwardes mesmerised her audience for 70 minutes, demonstrating why she is one of Australia’s finest percussion recitalists.

Our Canberra winter audience, with not a cough, provided a reverent and beautiful space for her to concentrate and communicate through her outstanding musicality. And they represented all age groups. All responded enthusiastically to each performance (and track in the corresponding album).

Each work was written by a female composer; each one still alive and writing in their corner of the world. Often collaborating with the performer on the arrangements.

Starting softly with brushlike mallets in ever more mesmerising rhythms, and then swapping to more traditional mallets, Caroline Shaw’s In Your Hands (in manus tua) explored the full range of resonance and attack possible on the beautiful wooden keys of the marimba. It was reminiscent of Asian temple music, and quoted a 16th century Thomas Tallis hymn towards the ends.

With the marimba you can hear the note of the key that is hit and also the reverberation and deep resonance of the pipes below. This provides a multilayered sound. The player then guides your ears through different attack and techniques like tremolo to create a bed of sound. Or using different parts of the stick, including the end and side. This is pitched percussion, so has all features of music, including harmony, melody, rhythm, sonority and dynamics. Each wonderfully delineated here.

Edwardes moved to the vibraphone for the second work on the program, by another US composer Missy Mazoli, originally for piano and electronic pulsing backing track. Starting with the recording seemingly sending messages from beyond, the vibraphone harmonies created swirling layers.

But the next work was a highlight. Emberstrike by Canberra composer Natalie Williams for solo vibraphone really showcased the glorious magical qualities of this metallic instrument, with Edwardes scampering and dancing across the keys, often with such tenderness they rung like a celeste.

Then a three movement work by New Zealander Gemma Peacocke called I Promise Not To Poison You xoxo started with Nightshade ,notably mysterious to depict poison, moved into Hemlock with an eerie stillness of tremolo depicting paralysis, and the final movement Crocus Sativus with its bouncing tune over rich sonority depicted passion using great dynamic contrast.

The program then began its ecstatic unravelling, according to our personable guide Claire Edwardes: with Anna Meredith’s Bumps Per Minute: 18 Studies for Dodgems. This was arranged for Edwardes and sideshow backing track by Jessica Wells. This was a great example of electronica overlayed with vibraphone, with the three imaginative movements Joy Subdivision, Tom Cruise Run and Norcanoe performed.

For Claire Edwardes grand finale, she chose the only performance with untuned percussion, relying solely on rhythm and dynamics. It’s the title track of her album, Dual Attractor by herself and Paul Mac. With a backing track performed on the same three ever deeper drums she performed live, featuring complex cross-rhythms, this was a work of great physicality and urgency, hypnotic and, indeed, mesmerising.

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