Inclusion Fusion

I little knew what was in store for me when I went along to the Arts Centre’s Butterworth Hall on Wednesday evening. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement: Warwick Fused II reinstated positive connotations to the term ‘fusion’ with an ensemble of ensembles, an orchestration of orchestras and a medley of melodies from around the globe.

“This year’s project was, altogether, infinitely more ambitious than last year’s.” Warwick Music Centre’s Associate Artist Ruairi Edwards commented on the event’s vastly increased scale, which helped this concert of 215 performers to draw almost three times the audience of its predecessor, whose musicians numbered only 48.

The stage seemed cramped enough with its inaugural inhabitants of the Warwick World Music Group (WWMG), the University of Warwick Symphony Orchestra and Warwick Chinese Orchestra Society who were later joined by the Warwick Indian Music Ensemble, Drumsoc, the Afro-Caribbean Society Choir, Amapalo and ultimately the 110-strong University of Warwick Chorus.

The concert opened with a piece marrying WWMG and the Symphony Orchestra: the former’s bassist Matt Truscott and pianist Edwards impressed me particularly whilst nonetheless remaining perfectly balanced with the latter, whose violinists were especially enjoyable in the overture. We then enjoyed a gospel number with fantastic lead vocals from WWMG’s Matt Esan.

The first half of the evening also demonstrated the talents of the Indian Music Ensemble. It brought some all-too-often-absent steel pans to the stage and “Butterfly Lover” combined East and West with Paul McGrath and YiYi Liu conducting the Symphony and Chinese orchestras respectively. To have such familiar European instruments performing side-by-side with their Sino-counterparts is a rare treat — certainly not one of which I’ve had the pleasure before — and is testimony to how the absence of a music department at Warwick has in no way infringed its ability to unite students through music.

“The Music Centre exists to provide non-music students with an opportunity to perform and rehearse in ensembles,” explained Edwards. “With ever-larger numbers of international students there is a heavy need to represent Warwick’s increasing diversity through its music provision.”

With the display of such diversity as the simple but lucrative idea behind Warwick Fused, for me the greatest success of the night was “Arrival,” a variation on a trance music piece which saw its headily ambitious arrangement for the World Music Group and Symphony Orchestra mesmerise everyone in the venue ahead of the interval.

There was yet more globetrotting after the break, with Amapola bringing Latin America to the concert. However, it was Christos Michaelides of WWMG who stole the show with his guitar solo; I’ve seen guitarists aplenty, but I have never seen anything so captivating as his acoustic soliloquy.

A percussion ensemble also joined the residents of the stage before Chorus piled their hefty numbers alongside a return of the Afro-Caribbean Society choir for the penultimate concatenation of talent. A finale involving every single act followed, epitomising the theme and level of ingenuity shown by Edwards and the Music Centre’s Director of Music, Paul McGrath, in writing and arranging the music for WWMG and the Symphony Orchestra, which was featured throughout the night.

Elsewhere we had seen the two headlining groups of WWMG and the Symphony Orchestra accompanying one of the vast array of other groups, but in the final piece we had the vocal polyphony between Chorus — whose high number of members from outside the University show that the Music Centre can unite the University to its often estranged local community — and the Afro-Caribbean Society backed by the Symphony and Chinese orchestras, the percussion ensemble, and everyone else in a pleasant mishmash.

It made being part of the audience feel a privilege to be able to tune into the piano for one moment and the Chinese strings the next, being all the while bowled over by the scene of countless conductors managing their respective groups and the practiced ease with which the various sounds fused together.

Of the concert’s legacy, Edwards, who had been working on Fused II since October, was most enthusiastic. “We want there to be increasingly large numbers of international students participating in music events at Warwick in the future. In real terms this means: more non-Western music ensembles, more students involved within the existing world music ensembles, and more concerts showcasing these ensembles. Funding is always an issue but the more we do events like Warwick Fused II the more chance we have of these goals being achieved.”