Entry #17 - The Cape Spear Project

Like much of the Sound Symposium, I have heard about the Cape Spear Project but have never attended one, until now. I was looking forward to it with much curiosity and anticipation.

Listening to the radio play "The Call" helped provide some perspective, but I still wasn't really sure what to expect. I don't know Moritz Eggert or his music, so the show was a complete surprise to me.

The opening with the car horns was great ("the Parking Lot Symphony") with the conductor standing in front of the car "ensemble" with his music stand and score. It was like Harbour Symphony meets late night drag race from Rebel Without A Cause.

Speaking of music stands, I felt SO bad for the poor girl in the miniskirt who was running around all night carring Moritz's music stand and keeping his score from blowing away all night. She worked harder than anyone all night, kneeling and squatting to keep her hands on those pages - and it was so windy, especially out on the point in the main bunker. I learned later that she wasn't there for that exact purpose, but happened to be part of the staff working the show. She was grabbed by Moritz to be his score-roadie for the entire night. She couldn't have been comfortable either, doing all that in a mini-skirt, not that I was checking her out. I hope they paid her well.

The way the event was explained, I thought there were different performances happening simultaneously, and all we had to do was go around and check them out at our leisure. So I went up the steps to the lighthouse and came down the other way, wishing to avoid the crowd, as I naturally tend to do anyway. This is where I came upon the Room of Echoes and the Room of Sound. However, when I made it over to the first gun battery, I had just missed the brass band performance. Blast it! This was when I realized that there was actually a linear progression of things, so I decided it would be better to follow the crowd after all. However, for the record, I just hate it when I'm told one thing and then something else entirely comes to pass. I know I'm a bit anal...I'm just sayin'.

The whole thing was pretty cool - I really liked the concept. I enjoyed the brass and percussion bands doing the marching music, and the guys in the gas masks carrying the Republic of Newfoundland flags (and the vuvuzelas - ha!) were a bit surreal (I like that sort of thing, though). The percussion piece and the final piece (this must have been "Breaking the Waves") were terrific, I thought. You could certainly hear the waves in the music. A bit repetitive, but once I realized that the music seemed to be evoking the endless, relentless push and pull of the waves hitting the rocks, again and again, since the beginning of time, then yeah, I was okay with it.

I though of the significance of this music, performed at the World War II bunkers by Newfoundlanders who surely had grandparents and other relatives who participated in the war effort (like mine did), being conducted by a German. I'm not saying this out of prejudice or bias. I just find the idea intriguing. Such a scene certainly would have been unthinkable in 1945. I'm glad we've come that far that we can try these things without opening old wounds or offending anybody (mostly).