Music and movement.

The title of this post comes from my childhood. As young children, we would do physical education to music, and that's what the lessons were called.

Anyway, the gig the other day reminded me of something.

I once went to see some live classical music with a full orchestra at the Liverpool Philharmonic. Quite apart from the music, what struck me was the visual spectacle it presented. All these disparate and discrete individuals, each with their own action and in their own time came together to make a coherent piece of music.

You could watch individuals sawing and plucking away at stringed instruments, and brass players pressing the valves or bringing their instrument up to their lips, or watch the percussionists percuss, but taken all together, the impression was of watching an impressively complicated and fascinatingly pleasing piece of machinery going through its well oiled motions.

The same thing occurred to me the other day, watching Ian McNabb and his band, but much less so, because there were far fewer people involved in the making of the music, and because they were obscured by flashing lights and dry ice.