Peter Twomey
For the average youth, going to a concert consists of: buying a ticket, getting drunk, standing in-line, getting even more drunk, sweat stains, bad dancing, pushing and deafened ears. It’s the kind of experience we’ve all grown to know and love. As such, tonight’s affair is indeed an alien one to the majority of the TCD faithful who braved the stormy conditions and flocked into the winsome Exam Hall. For all the effort vested in the procuring of a ticket for this sold-out, charity performance, we are treated to the best musical talent Trinity has to offer. Comprising of over 100 musicians, the spectacle that greets us mere amateurs to the classical form is both captivating and zestful. We are privileged to have the full Trinity Orchestra, Trinity Singers as well a random assortment of other musical groups associated with the college come together to put, what was described in the programme as being, “more than a total of 60 hours” preparation time for this much-anticipated show.
Talent is one thing though, but even the very best can’t make substandard songs and arrangements sound good. Luckily, this is not an issue tonight. The basic premise of the Daft Punk show, according to the curator Rob Farhat, is to shift away from the easily transferable rock music that the orchestra has concerned itself with in the past. Radiohead and Sigur Ros, although high quality music, made for a very similar experience to what the bands’ own records offered. Music like this is, in many ways, created for an orchestra to play. The same can certainly not be said for Daft Punk.
A crammed stage matched the equally crowded audience, there literally wasn't a spare seat to be had
For those of you who are unaware (and if so, why are you even reading this?!), Daft Punk are a duo of electro-pop spewing robots…or so their much celebrated headwear would have you believe. They are also extremely influential and have dominated the dance genre for the past two decades. What they aren’t, however, is designers of music that can be easily shifted to a classical composition. They make use of synth, electric guitars and keyboards and seem to be the antithesis of what classical music stands for. Blending the two would surely be an arduous task.
Luckily for us, what is billed as ‘a unique concert which is the first of its kind’ is most definitely a roaring success. The fact that an ordinary 3rd year PPES student could compose and manage such a tremendous project is an exoneration on Trinity College as a whole. Each song from the album is treated as a separate entity, with a wide range of singers being roped in to meet each track’s specific vocal requirements. Although in certain places, such as ‘One More Time’, voices get lost in the high ceilings of the Exam Hall, on the whole they are more than adequate, none more so than on the penultimate track ‘Too Long’, where Robbie Kitt proved to have the kind of verbal faculty that make hairs stand up on the back of your neck. The true highlight of the show, though, is the orchestral performance. As previously mentioned, much of the audience tonight is a virgin to shows like this, yet the delicate beauty of the violin as well as the impassioned saxes, mixed with everything in between, cause gargantuan stirs in the crowd. Unsystematically, spectators dance, cheer, clap along, whistle and sing, creating an atmosphere that Trinity Orchestra are probably not quite so accustomed to. Ending with a medley of the whole album along with ‘Around the World’, the performers leave the stage to a lengthy standing ovation. One can only hope that they’ll be back soon, preferably with something even more taxing. Passion Pit anyone?
