Elsie Stockdale - CD Review : The Kennedy Experience (And the walls came tumbling down!)
Canada, 1999
Having spent the last 50+ years listening to classical music only, I approached this CD with some foreboding. I struggled with Kafka, (sorry, Nigel !) and came out victorious with just three tracks Fallen Forest, Melody in the Wind (naturally!), and, for some reason that completely eludes me, From Adam to Eve. Not a very promising beginning! But I have to say at once that The Kennedy Experience is something else entirely. Here is contemporary music that is infused with that all-important element that I find almost all-contemporary music lacks passion. And the passion in these pieces is white-hot! I understand perfectly the imagery of the fiery violin and Nigel engulfed in flames on the cover. The whole CD glows with heat, from the tongues of fire of the driving rhythms to the embers of the quiet intervals to the flickering flames of the melodies. To find all this in contemporary music usually so cold, so strictured (to use Nigels word), so cerebral well, it was a revelation to me.
What we have is a dazzling array of musical colours as the moods change, coming and going, one fading into another. Nigels violin seems to take on a life of its own, off on its own explorations and yet always at the centre of the musical universe he has created. I understand that he wrote out the parts for the cellos, flute, and oboe and left the violin and the guitars to make their own way in a more improvisational manner.
One thing is sure no matter what Nigel may say, his classical training shows! He can reach for the extremes of virtuosity and grasp them every time. Some reviewers have heard echoes of Lark Ascending and the Walton Violin Concerto others talk of Moeran and Charles Ives. Everybody comments on the Celtic overtones and Nigel has said himself that he found those right there already in the Hendrix originals.
There are six tracks:
- Third Stone from the Sun: what a way to start the disc! Meltdown!! It starts out with a kind of brash assertion that demands that your (my?) classically conditioned ears really pay attention but really! Don't fight it adjust! Then we are instantly rewarded for making the effort by peaceful passages, soothing enough to lull us into unwariness until were blasted awake again by dazzle and what seems an unbearable contrast of darkness. It leaves me gasping for air but what an exhilarating feeling!
- Little Wing: if you want to be seduced by music, this track with its insistent rhythmic figures is your track. Just lie back and let it happen! Orgasm guaranteed (by me, not by Nigel!) but, alas, not the physical kind!
- 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to be): this track has got everything musical that you could ever hope for or imagine. Its almost impossible to find words to describe the incredible variety of sounds you hear, including those made by striking the violin with the hand. Yet overall, the impression is one of open-heartedness (if there is such a word!) the heart laid bare for everyone to see. It's incredibly moving.
- Drifti
ng: something created out of all the dreams you ever had. It brings together little shining bits of music and makes them into a whole which you feel you have always known while at the same time you experience it as something new and strange. The title tells you how to listen to this track.
- Fire: the title says it all. Think of all the things fire can do smoulder, blaze, flame out, etc. and this track does them all.
- Purple Haze: I'm ashamed to say I had never heard this before I listened to this CD! It doesn't seem as if I have to say anything about it because you've all heard it already but I need to mention the sheer inventiveness of it, its revolutionary distilling of rhapsodic emotion. It speaks to me in a language that I never thought I understood until now.
- Most reviewers I have read have succumbed to The Kennedy Experience, even if, like me, they felt challenged by it. As for me, guess what I'm going to do now? I'm going to take my newly educated ears and go listen to Kafka again to see what I missed the first time!
