Owing to scheduling glitches, I missed last year's edition of the annual walk-through avant-garde concert held at Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland's ornate columbarium and mausoleum. But I got there this year, nabbing a nearby parking space by arriving 2.5 hours early, with my lunch packed in my car.
Unfortunately many of my favorite performers didn't get there this year. So instead of focusing on them, I decided to emphasize the walk-through aspect and prowl around until I found things worth sitting and listening to for a while.
Garden of Memory always begins at 5 pm rather unpopulated, but although the organizers limit attendance, it tends to get more and more crowded over its four-hour length until it becomes deucedly uncomfortable. So I figured I'd start at the part of the building that gets the most crowded later on, the east end of the old wing, and I headed straight for the room designated the Garden of St. Matthew. Instead of being a niche like many of the "garden" rooms, it's along a major pathway. When I've been there before, interesting music was always going on, but I could never stop and listen to it but had to proceed directly towards the exit on the other side of the room, and the reason was that the room was so crowded that, if you stopped, you were blocking the only (and invariably busy) pathway.
So this time I got there early to get a spot where I could stop and listen, and found singer-songwriter Majel Connery on double-tracked vocals and electronic keyboard, accompanied by Felix Fan on electronic cello. I'd actually heard Connery here before, and was impressed with what I heard, but I'd never sealed her down as one of my favorites. I have now. I found this stuff enrapturing; unfortunately nothing of hers online really sounds like what I heard, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.
Proceeding onward, I wound up in Laura Inserra's old stomping grounds (she's not there this year), the Garden of Eternal Wisdom, where I found violinist Shira Kammen, hammer dulcimer player Robin Petrie, and Celtic harpist Shelley Phillips playing what sounded like Celtic folk music with a Middle Eastern edge to it. I was able to grab the only chair in the room and sat in comfort for quite a while to listen to this charming stuff. Getting lost in the building is part of the experience, the publicity says, and as always in this room I noticed someone starting at the event map trying to figure out which room they were in. (I whispered it to them.) When I left, I found the twisty passage leading to the room was packed with people waiting for an opportunity to enter and listen, so again I had been wise to get there fairly early.
At this point, I found it was time for a set I wanted to hear in the largest venue, the Chimes Chapel, customarily shared by 3 or 4 performers. This was a contemporary classical art song recital, mezzo Silvie Jensen accompanied by pianist Sarah Cahill (founder of this concert series and a regular performer here) in songs by Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and some other younger composers whose names I didn't know and didn't catch. The Glass and Monk sounded very typical of their composers although I hadn't heard these particular pieces before.
I then hung around for the next set, which was the women's chorus Kitka - which I first encountered here, many years ago - applying their standard nasal vocals to their usual repertoire of obscure Eastern European and Central Asian folk music. As always, a half hour set by Kitka is easier to take than a whole concert. Talking with the people next to me beforehand, I found they'd never heard Kitka before. This is going to be unusual, I warned them.
By this time it was 7:30 and I moved onward to the new wing, which I'd avoided earlier in the day, as it's more spacious and is consequently better saved for later when things are more crowded. Here I passed by a lot of performers of ambient noodling, none of which attracted me enough to make me want to sit down and listen for a while. So eventually I meandered back down to the entrance and left just before the closing time of 9 pm.
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