harp and sho

rhodri davies  /  ko ishikawa

There are differences and similarities, and some striking inversions of expectation in this duo. The instruments themselves, for example, are both constructions of parallel lines: the vertical tubes of the bamboo mouth organ – the sho – and the vertical lines of the harp strings. Sounds emerge from the sho largely without attack, as if seeping into the earth’s atmosphere from some far-away place, and though this is diametrically opposed to the customary brittle attack of the harp, Rhodri Davies’s use of E-Bows subverts the passive-aggressive romanticism of the harp, bringing its vibrating strings closer to the sho’s vibrating reeds.

Perhaps Davies places the instrument on its side, so vertical becomes horizontal to align with vertical. A series of thin cutting lines counterbalances a series of hollow tubes.

Auras of national identity have collected around these two instruments – the role of the sho in Japan’s ancient gagaku court music and the place of the harp in Welsh cultural history – but Ko Ishikawa and Rhodri Davies, though connected to these histories in subtle and complex ways, approach their collaboration almost as mathematicians rather than cultural envoys. Together they can sound like oracles to the court of some unknown country, engaged in soundings, forecasts and experimental transmissions, testing the density of air and the elasticity of time. But this is deceptive. In the best sense, they make plain music of few associations, modest yet resilient, music that seeks for a clean silence in which to exhale.

david toop