On one side of the orchestra: a supermarket trolley piled up with domestic castoffs (a drying rack, a lampshade, a Thermos flask, a couple of dustbin lids) and an industrial catering tray suspended from a frame. On the other: a Steinway concert grand piano. Such juxtapositions are typical of Bold Tendencies, the groundbreaking arts organisation based in Peckham Multi-Storey car park, which programmes a wide array of performances in its concrete concert hall a few minutes’ walk from the vivid scruffiness of the south London high street and a busy railway line.
Commissioned by Bold Tendencies, the world premiere of Garland, Oliver Leith’s large-scale “processional work”, fitted right into its world of equivocal, self-conscious semi-gentrification. Leith, the composer of the critically acclaimed Last Days, begins his hour-long piece with hymn-like piano chords and someone whistling a descant. Then the two tubas of an expanded 12 Ensemble entered with a hefty bass pedal, cueing the first of many slow journeys across the stage travelled by a community choir, the Bold Chorus, and professional vocal ensemble Exaudi. Initially they smiled and chattered before standing to join the pseudo-hymn, their sound warm and wholehearted. Later, grim-faced, they trailed thin ropes of bells, blew through straws, spun whirly tubes, and dragged planks of wood and lengths of aluminium tubing. A couple of singers pushed supermarket trolleys full of glass bottles, shaking them as commanded by scores propped on the child seats.
