Brass Whanganui bringing Sound Canvas to Opera House after Covid-19 delay

Brass Whanganui's Sound Canvas show will be returning to the Royal Whanganui Opera House next month, after being put on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Originally scheduled to take place during Artist Open Studios in March, the performance will instead be over the weekend of October 31.

Brass Whanganui leader Bruce Jellyman said the show, like last year, would see the audience seated alongside the band on the stage, with art from those who had signed up for Artist's Open Studios projected onto larger screens.

"The Artist Open Studio very generously lend us a lot of the images they use to promote their event, and I have a look at them all and grab some music together," Jellyman said.

"I try to construct a sort of sensory thing around my emotional response to the art, and I try to get it all to hold hands.

"It's underpinned by poetry, movement, and lights, and it's all in one space so that the audience is very much in the performance.

"It's quite an intense experience for them, which is pretty cool."

Jellyman said that there "a few tricks" up his sleeve that he didn't want to reveal yet, but his plan moving forward was to use "increasingly higher amounts" of local poetry, art and music.

"Hamish (Jellyman, son and band member) and I are writing more and more music at the moment for brass band, so there's always some contributions there, and the idea over time is to get mostly local content in it.

"We've got some ways to go, and we're already talking about next year's show actually, but that's another story."

The 75-minute performance would be continuous, Jellyman said.

"Artistically for us it's just awesome fun, because it's not us sitting on stage doing a formal concert, which brass band concerts typically are.

"The feedback from our first go at this last year was outstanding, blown away stuff really.

"My ideal would be to have the audience actually freelancing and feeling like they can wander around, and a lot of the time the focus shouldn't be on the band but on the art, because we're throwing the art up on screens and on surfaces.

"We want the art to grab the attention of the people.

"Every time we do it we want to completely change the way we're doing, which will throw up a whole lot of different opportunities."

Jellyman said he and Hamish were in constant communication about the music for the performance, in order to create a "musical landscape".

"Landscapes don't end, they just change, so even the pieces we do play that are more traditional will need to intertwine and overlap."

Jellyman said Sound Canvas could be performed under alert level 1 and 2, with an extra show able to be added in the case of Whanganui remaining at level 2 in the coming weeks.

"On the stage at the Opera House, with the Opera House people, is just awesome.

"They are amazing, and they get as excited as we do about it because they've basically got an open slather (with lighting).

"They have a ball with it, and so do we."

Brass Whanganui's Sound Canvas shows are at 3pm and 7pm on Saturday, October 31, and 2pm on Sunday, November 1.

Tickets can be purchased from Royal Wanganui Opera House Booking Office.

Mike Tweed
Whanganui Chronicle 19/9/20