Concert review: Darkness Visible: Âme, Lawrence Power (viola)

Connecting the mood of Dowland’s ‘In darkness let me dwell’ with a phrase describing the abyss in Milton’s Paradise Lost, the title of this event – devised by Lawrence Power and Jessie Rodger, co-founders of the creative studio ÂME – reflected the idea of darkness that reveals ‘new forms of perception’. Intertwining live and filmed performances (the latter projected onto a full-height gauze) and with atmospheric lighting, the action shifted between the stage and the streets, with Power wandering out of the Barbican and into various City venues – the Great Hall at Bart’s Hospital, the Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral.

The musical palette zigzagged too, between Ives and Dowland, Mozart and Jonny Greenwood, Prokofiev and Cassandra Miller, with the quality of performances unblemished by the technical or conceptual context. Power’s on- and off-stage collaborators, singer Maddie Ashman, violinist Vilde Frang and actor Anna Madeley (riveting in the death scene from Romeo and Juliet), made vivid contributions.

The production and execution generally oozed quality but the musical/narrative arc was not always cogent – the motivation for a Greenwood/Ashman/Walton sequence, for example, was unclear and it was hard to align a counterpointing strand exploring human connection with the idea of darkness. But there is visionary thinking here, and a genuine reimagining of the concert experience, a pursuit Power is sure to continue as one of next season’s artists-in-residence at the Barbican.

EDWARD BHESANIA