concert review: Garden of Memory

Owing to the vagaries of the Gregorian calendar, the summer solstice this year actually fell on June 20th, but the annual solstice walk-through concert at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland went on as usual on the 21st, but without, so far as I could tell, the customary bell-ringing ceremony at sunset.

Last year they saved money by not printing a map of the labyrinthine venue and the locations of the various artists parked among the chapels, niches, and crypts, and sent out an e-mail telling attendees to download the map from the website in advance. I did, but a number of people missed the announcement and apparently were rather cross, because this year there were plenty of copies of a big glossy 11 x 14 sheet version.

The curious thing is that, although the event opened at 5 p.m. and the artists were, so far as I saw, all in place by then, most of them weren't ready to start yet. Having already been sitting in my car for an hour eating an early dinner, because arriving early is a necessity to find a parking space within reasonable distance, upon entering I made a bee-line for the secret restroom hidden in the basement, the one that was unoccupied then but had a line of ten people in front of it two hours later. Then I went back up to the niche occupied by my favorite of the returning artists, Laura Inserra, who specializes in padding drum sounds. But she wasn't ready. Tinkered with a few of her instruments, then left the room. Some ten minutes later, I and the other person who'd been waiting gave up and left. Meanwhile other people had been wandering into the room and quickly leaving, some of them after scratching their heads at the map trying to figure out where they were.

Some time later when I returned, Laura was apparently playing but the niche, and the niches in front of it, were so full there was no chance of getting in, let alone getting a seat, which is what I'd arrived early for.

So I wandered around and heard other things. What I liked best, and was able to find a seat for half hour sets of, were people who did vocalizations over what I'd best describe as landscapes of electronic sound. Briana Marela sang fragmentary lyrics above soft shifting sounds, and someone named SoRIAH performed Tuvan throat singing over throbbing beats of unutterably deep darkness. It didn't have the harshness you'd expect of rock-type music of that description, it was just firmly enveloping of the listener. A little like Dead Can Dance, actually, but much stronger and darker.

I heard various odd blurring sounds from other performers as I wandered about, but spent the most other amount of time at the atypical for this venue, but Garden of Memory regulars, the Orchestra Nostalgico, a ten-or-so-piece sax-and-clarinet-led band that does vaguely jazzy stuff, of which some Henry Mancini was the only thing I recognized.

Then I left early, which I hadn't done before. It was getting too crowded, the elevators were malfunctioning, and I didn't think I was missing anything I really wanted to hear.