I saw/heard Jo Quail last night, UK based cellist/composer visiting Australia just now. It was a small but captivated audience at the Toff in Town venue but I kept thinking of how she would have resonated in the gorgeous Melbourne Recital Centre (where I heard/saw The Necks just over a week ago) I found Jo Quail’s music a couple of years ago and, since, it has been inspiring much choreography and fuelling hours of improvisation.
Here’s what I wrote on the tram ride home last night after the show…
“She dances her loop pedals like a prima ballerina doing her petit batterie (but with a tango touch).The layers build like an epoch, a single cell, a fragment of DNA that sets up a ghostly foundation upon which civilizations rise and emigrate, seasons pass, tides rise and recede, landscapes bloom and decay.
Now and then she smiles,
eyes closed,
as though spying a long lost friend,
or recalling some exquisite taste.
She builds each piece like a live film edit
dropping in a crucial shot
an extreme close up of a sleeping body
the rise of a sword
a sharp inhale
flocks of birds spiralling
the edge of the world
a lunar eclipse
a whisper
wringing out a bloody cloth
pouring grain through her hands.”