Gig review: Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble, Glasgow

There was a magical sense on Friday that the walls of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Gallery could speak, given how the miasmic fusion of Norwegian Jan Garbarek’s improvised saxophone and the four-man Hilliard Ensemble’s mystical singing found such ambient affinity with the building’s Italianate arches, vaultings and generous acoustics.
Jan Garbarek, left, with members of the soontoretire Hilliard Ensemble, produce a magical fusionJan Garbarek, left, with members of the soontoretire Hilliard Ensemble, produce a magical fusion
Jan Garbarek, left, with members of the soontoretire Hilliard Ensemble, produce a magical fusion

Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble - Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow

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This is the Hilliard’s 40th and final year of existence, prior to retiring. And for more than half that lifespan, the initially-accidental collaboration with Garbarek – as epitomised in their third joint album, Officium Novum, the basis of this programme – has been central to their public appeal. Proof of that lay in Friday’s full house.

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An album is one thing. The live experience was quite another, in which the unbroken 80-minute sequence of music – vocal repertoire ranging from 16th century Iberian composer Cristóbal de Morales to more recent Eastern European music, supplemented by Garbarek’s organically improvised integrated responses – took on a visual dimension as the performers made imaginative itinerant use of the entire, marble-floored central hall.

It was a long sit, but one you could easily tune in and out of, gleaning the subliminal as well as the real impact of these impeccable performances. And there was a definable musical shape to the evening, the momentum of which ratcheted up from soft, unassuming opening, to the near-motorised jazz minimalism of its climactic centre point, to the theatrical fade-out effected by the recessional exit of the musicians into a distant side gallery.

Seen on 14.03.14