The Armed Man

For Valentine's Day, Kyenta got us tickets to a performance of Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man. The concert was put on by the Vancouver Bach Choir at the Orpheum on March 15, 2008.

The show was a double bill. The Armed Man was preceded by the premiere performance of John Estacio's The Houses Stand Not Far Apart, which, though I applaud its anti-war theme, was a somewhat pedestrian piece overall. During the intermission I was hoping that The Armed Man wouldn't be in the same vein. Luckily for us, it wasn't.


The Armed Man is subtitled "A Mass for Peace", which is an apt summary. The piece is anti-war, and takes its structure from the Christian Mass, with a Kyrie, Sanctus, etc. Jenkins, however, doesn't restrict himself solely to Christian hymns, effectively blending in Muslim (the Adhaan, or Call to Prayers), Hindu (The Mahabharata), and Japanese (a Toge Sankichi poem) texts.

For me, the section that impacted me the most was definitely the "Call to Prayers (Adhaan)". We were seated in the centre section of the Orpheum's balcony with a great view of the orchestra and choir. They'd just finished performing "The Armed Man", the introductory section that opens the concert, and everyone had quieted down.

On the balcony to our right, a man dressed in black with a high collar, surrounded by a calm and serene air, stepped forward to the rail, closed his eyes and extended his arms. He then sang the Muslim Call to Prayers a capella, the way it's meant to be performed.

I managed to find the version of this song that comes on the official Armed Man CD, sung by Mohammed Gad.

For me, it doesn't quite capture the simplicity and melody of Hussein Janmohamed's performance. And though the Adhaan is sung from mosques by muezzins five times a day, every day, in Islamic communities the world over, I've never heard a more beautiful rendition than the one by Janmohamed that night.

Lisa Gerrard in Concert

Last night, Kyenta and I went to see Lisa Gerrard in concert at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. The show was spectacular, anchored and transcended by her stunning voice.

Live at the Forum, Melbourne, Monday 2 April 2007 (from Wikipedia)

The first time I heard Lisa Gerrard was during the denouement of Gladiator. Maximus has just defeated the Emperor Commodus, at a mortal cost to himself. What could have been merely tragic is elevated to triumph with the exultation of "Now We Are Free":

I decided I had to hear more of Gerrard's work. I discovered that she had been in a band called Dead Can Dance before going solo. Previous to Gladiator, she'd also provided the music for The Insider (with Pieter Bourke). I picked up a couple of her solo CDs -- Duality and The Mirror Pool -- fully intending to listen to them immediately.

For some reason, I never got around to it, until some friends and I decided to go on a road trip to Alaska. We loaded up the car, grabbed a stash of CDs, and hit the highway.

When we finally got to Lisa Gerrard, we were somewhere in the Northern British Columbia Interior, driving along the Alaska Highway. It was really late, around ten or eleven p.m. This was in July, and we were far enough north that there was still light in the sky that late at night. The road was dead straight, lined with firs as far as the eye could see, and the arctic light was quite surreal.


This sort of landscape was made to be paired with Lisa Gerrard's powerful, haunting vocals. My soul was lost.

Watching her in concert, I had no idea how such a distinctive sound could be produced by any human, let alone this woman. The way she uses her voice is less "singing" and more like playing an instrument. When she did speak -- briefly, to introduce her fellow musicians, and to thank the crowd -- her voice was breathy and slight and completely dissimilar from her performances. She explained that singing stressed out her voice (no kidding) and made her light-headed; in fact, for each piece in the show she used the support of a stool for balance.

Her works and her voice don't speak to my conscious mind. They thrum around in my unconsciousness, stirring my heart, filling the spaces between the atoms. They are both melancholy and triumphant, both desolate and beatific. They are an elegy for the world.

If a voice had created the universe, this was it.