UKARIA Cultural Centre, South Australia
June 10, 2018

Like (C)age of Enlightenment the evening before, the third program curated by cellist Nicolas Altstaedt in this year’s UKARIA 24 program, Chronos and Kairos, opened with an unusual stage set up, this time a table spread with a variety of plant materials – including a pot of spiky native grass, a small tree branch in water, dead leaves, the caps of acorns and several cacti in pots. James Knight – one of four percussionists at the festival as part of the Australian Youth Orchestra’s Momentum Ensemble – performed John Cage’s 1975 work Child of Tree with a reverent and curious intensity. He conjured a gentle, tactile sound world of rustling leaves, twanging pine cones, shaking seedpods and clattering acorns, but the sounds created by the amplified cacti – Cage would also use amplified cactus as an instrument in his 1976 work Branches – were the most fascinating. The taller instrument, with denser, shorter needles, produced a sound when stroked not unlike dripping water or the purring of a large cat.

Chronos and Kairos was structured like an orchestral concert, so from Cage’s unusual overture, we swung into the concerto: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with...