The Sound of Serendipity
Now this was a performance we were really looking forward to. Covering the recent release of pianist Belle Chen’s beautiful new album Ravel In The Forest for Flush wasn’t a case of ‘reviewing’, but a innate desire to share beauty, instil calm, restore inner peace, which it did with every single gentle glance of a key, or via the wonderfully idiosyncratic sounds that peppered the unspoiled virtual nature reserve that she created with the album.
It is an album of soft warming sun upon the skin, that deftly replenishes the mind with each listen. Where on earth could you bring these redemptive notes, that do it justice, for a live performance?
As it transpires, the perfect place was an old Presbyterian Welsh church built in 1888, that became the iconic gay superclub Limelight in the 80s, an Aussie pub in the 2000s, and now metamorphosed into the performance arts space Stone Nest. The venue clearly has a history of bringing its patrons to higher plains of worship, and this night was no different.
You can’t help but to have an almost haptic experience entering the venue. Through a tiny door on Shaftesbury Avenue, in central London, that you could walk past on a daily basis and never notice its incredibly discreet signage, there’s an immediate spontaneous wonder of surprise in actually noticing it at all.
Through the deceptive small entrance, you wander down into the basement bar, where a vast spacious high ceilinged room awaits, the senses are starting to giddily spin with joy and awe. Much like the album itself, what a genuine sense of discovery this is.
The performance area itself is back upstairs in the beautifully vaulted room that brought the historical masses to their heaven of choice. Tonight it was embraced in soothing shadows, subtle warm lighting, and as it transpired, a 360º sound system that had the capacity to trigger a state of rapture. Yes, this was indeed the perfect place to experience an aural prayer to humanity and nature.
Beautifully curated in the fact that it was a very intimate venue (you had the choice of seats, or floor cushions on rugs), with a small audience, which just increased the intensity of the moment. The musicians warming up gave a glimpse not only of their craft, but hinting at the incoming expanse of the sound, the 360º speakers (the same L-Acoustics system used at the BBC Proms), and the natural acoustics of the space seamlessly working in reverential harmony.
Then Belle walked out wearing a jumper with a giant smiley face on it, and my heart exploded.
Much like the album, from the first keys slowly sprouting like young seedlings, in no time at all, forests and vistas were painted all around us. The performances were immaculate, warm, soothing and a realisation immediately occurred to me. In all the great many listens of the album, I had never heard it this loud. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t abusive loud, but elevated, more expansive, more daring, adventurous, in such a way that it literally opened up the spaces inbetween the notes, like parting foliage as you walked through a forest, each parting exploding into ever surprising new views and once hidden valleys.
The spectrum of the tracks though directly inspired by nature, are quite aptly not corralled by any manufactured boundaries, it is genuine freedom, abandon, exploration and untempered growth, that starts with a seed that soon flourishes into a sense of a flight through landscapes, oceans, sky, space, history, time and genres. It was evident in the album, but in this venue, these artists and this sound system everything is on the verge of synesthesia, or pure transcendence.
A hard stone venue in the middle of bustling London, was skilfully nurtured into a microcosm of Earth, life and existence itself.
We were at the first performance of two that evening, and as much as we were swept away, I constantly thought how could we get as many others to share this gorgeous experience. That in itself is like an element of the album too. Some things just can’t be shared with everyone at the same time, but if you open yourself to experience the moment as much as you can, it changes you for the better. That change becomes you, and you begin to share it out in hopefully every interaction you have from then on. It radiates and echoes out forever more, like an ever expanding universe.
So yes, this was a very beautiful night, and a moment, that I will be sharing with people for a very long time.
Belle Chen is currently on tour, more information can be found at https://www.bellechen.com/tour