Melody McKiver Megaphono, Ottawa ON, February 9
Photo: Kamara Morozuk
Published Feb 10, 2018
To open their set, Melody McKiver recalled to their audience that their love of classical music had brought them to the National Arts Centre many times as a listener while growing up in Ottawa. Now, it was their turn to take the stage as a performer. Running their viola through a battery of effects pedals, their loop-based compositions were marked by sound technique: pizzicato playing for lower register bass loops, and string skipping for winding, arpeggiated melodies.McKiver performed a number of pieces from their recent score for Reckoning, a theatre production from Indigenous activist arts company Article 11 that focuses on experiences in residential schools. Their compositions here were cinematic in their own right. Long, reverb-laden draws of their bow held the audience in silence, at times adding lower, droning notes at the click of a pedal. In more vigorous moments of playing, McKiver's use of dissonance and dynamics created plenty of musical tension.