Wednesday 22nd November 2011

Monday night to Kentish Town. Miss Lamore Cellina, formerly la dame au cello, as seen on TV, to launch unexpectedly into revue at the age of 34.

What that woman hasn’t given to the ‘cello! It she lives by, for and with.

By tradition her programme includes a goodly range of works by Eastern European composers who committed suicide in the 60s and require the instrument played with the back of the bow.

But now – a show! A One Woman Show!

What would it be?

Let me tell you, it was suffused, wreathed, perfumed with ‘cello. And was un gloire absolut, completely new, you’ll never have seen anything like it, an astonishing tour de force of different radical footwear and metamorphosis only partly through costume change.  One minute, Miss Cellini was a pathologically polite concert goer, the next,  a floral, elderly ‘cello lady from the 3rd desk of the Woking Philharmonic, giving a highly variable and intermittent Dying Swan. She also sang, blew into bottles to suggest a recorder (this was her early musical life, just the single, stolid notes with random gaps in between), and, in the form of  Madame Sosostris, got through to the beyond, where she received two notes from Pierre Boulez before a catastrophic intervention by Stockhausen; an Application for Arts Funding was rendered in the manner of Steve Reich, possibly, as different faces and voices rotating in complex series, all self-done on the spot. As I recall, ‘Applic…’ was a soaring soprano, while ‘ca’ was a grunt  and ‘tion’ was an electronic hiss. There were other faces and voices for  ‘educational confluence’ (something like that), ‘community’ (especially self-loving) and ‘evaluation’ (like a dalek).

But it wasn’t a sketch show. It was a  piece of music.  Always there was the rhythm and rigour of music underpinning, regardless of  whether any actually being played.

Astonishing and brilliant and marvellous.

Miss Lamore Cellina Getting Through to the Beyond: Boulez on the Verge of Transmission

Miss Lamore Cellina Receiving After Music from Dead Boulez

Miss Lamore Cellina: Stockhausen Ousts Boulez Unexpectedly

Miss Lamore Cellina: Exceptionally Diaphanous Phase

Miss Lamore Cellina as Third Desk of Woking Phil About to Give Private Perf of the Dying Swan at an Am Dram Meeting: Such Feeling, Very Few Notes

Miss Lamore Cellina: Standing Up to Men in a Rubber Dress, 'Cello Bow to Assist