Review: String Contingent’s music liberates

To acknowledge losing loved ones to cancer, to take time to smell the flowers and to breathe in the beauty of the world around me – this was my sonic adventure with The String Contingent.

I had interviewed double bassist Holly Downes before the group’s Hamilton concert and was told I could expect a sonic adventure and an up close and personal experience with a fiery fiddle, a grooving guitar and a double bass like I’d never heard before.

Being a muso infant I had no idea what a sonic adventure might be but I walked into an intimate setting where 16 in-the-know folk had gathered to hear some acoustic chamber folk by The String Contingent.

The trio consists of Australians Downes and Chris Stone on fiddle, and Scotsman Graham McLeod on guitar.

I took my seat in Creative Waikato surrounded by courageous pieces of artwork depicting imprisonment and the sound coming from this attractive musical trio seemed the antithesis to it.

As the music progressed I found my eyes closing, my ears opening and a freedom to let the language of sound flood my senses. I felt untapped recesses within myself rattle to life. The passionate, vulnerable honesty of the music enthused me to fall into a space of security and liberation.

In the world of roadrage and rampage, The String Contingent makes the sound of breathing audible again.

Because there are no lyrics my adventure is whatever I choose it to be. So I have just returned from the concert refreshed, invigorated and charged with energy and enthusiasm for the world around me. The trio broke off pieces of themselves and I have taken my share. They are generous with their music.

They are observers, they are preservers and their art is not only in the creation and constant evolution of a unique unified sound but also in allowing at least this adventurer a safe place to jump on the journey and belong to something wonder full.