The Auditorium and Concert Hall of Stockholm Culture House was set in a restful lighting. A large movie screen was strapped across part of the stage. On stage, at right, Professor Claudia Gorbman from University of Washington-Tacoma was giving a lecture on film music, as part of the three-day film music festival The Underscore Symposium. In front of me in the audience sat one of my heroes of electroacoustic music; Michel Chion.

Even though I’d listened to his music for decades, and even included his relentless Requiem in a radio series – Summer Fix - on classic electroacoustic music that I wrote and hosted (producer: Folke Rabe) for the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation in the 1990s, this was the first time I met him. Now the lights were subdued, a spot on Professor Gorbman, and a scene from a movie by Akira Kurosawa (Rhapsody in August) flashing by on the screen. At this moment I suddenly perceived the song of crickets from the right, from inside the dressing room, quite distinctly. Maybe Professor Gorbman didn’t react, because she’s used to hearing those creatures all the time in summertime Maryland – but in Stockholm they were out of place. I knew that those crickets were participants of a concert that was to be held right after Professor Gorbman’s lecture: The Great Learning Orchestra performing the music from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!

The crickets had been brought in by sound wizard Anders Erkéus, member of the orchestra. I hade met the crickets at the rehearsal the day before, as they were munching away at goodies in their box. At the concert they were miked and amplified, diffused through speakers, and in case they wouldn’t cooperate, Anders had mechanical crickets as a backup.

It was an absurd sonic situation, but wonderful! In this way, the crickets had already started the Chainsaw Massacre concert, supplying that southern atmosphere – and in front of me in the half-dark; one of the foremost composers of musique concrète: Michel Chion!

Great Learning Orchestra’s rehearsal no. 4 had been taking place on location in the Stockholm Culture House on 8th June 2006, the day before the concert, but there had also been a separate Country & Western band rehearsal on an earlier date, headed by Leif Jordansson. Pelle Halvarsson guided the musicians through the different sections on the 8th June rehearsal in the Culture House in downtown Stockholm.

There is a peculiarity at play when The Great Learning Orchestra rehearses for an event: there is always some attendant flux; i.e., the crowd showing up for rehearsals isn’t completely homogeneous. Some that attended an earlier rehearsal may not show up on a later one, and some musicians may not even show up until the last day. The explanation is that most of the members of the Great Learning Orchestra have many other obligations, and one must keep in mind that GLO is a loose-knit crowd of idealistic musicians who enjoy getting together for no pay to work on wild projects that usually aim at a final concert. Thus, GLO does not, and should not, execute the discipline of a symphony orchestra or a chamber ensemble. It’s a soaring crowd of musical freethinkers and innovators, who, without the stern regime of an institution, manages to accomplish the most wonderful and insanely creative results, in the happy and generous atmosphere of artistic voluntariness.

The 8th June rehearsal went pretty well, as Pelle took the GLO crowd through the sections of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For the first time the chainsaw appeared, played by a person that was brought in at last minute, since the original chainsaw player couldn’t make it. The chainsaw was amply tested, and there was some grumping from one of the technicians, who remarked that oil from the saw dirtied the floor, and who was afraid that the fire department would come charging when the fumes started rising under the ceiling over the stage. It would have been much easier to work with Jan Lilja, the technician who worked with the GLO in January, with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. Lilja is a man with true passion for, and an unrestrained interest in, complicated and crazy technical/musical events, and you couldn’t help but notice how much he enjoyed the Lou Reed concert preparations and maintenance. He never showed a sorry face. It was different this time, but in spite of the sad looks and the snarling comments of an unwilling technician, everything that needed to be done was done, although not in good spirits.

Looking back at the deeds of The Great Learning Orchestra, one notices that the projects have become increasingly wilder. In the beginning GLO played Terry Riley’s In C and a little later his Tread On the Trail. They also did a 24-hour orchestral version of Satie’s Vexations; a feat wild unto itself, to say the least, but still an easily comprehended concept, and they did a celebrated Satie concert in the King’s Garden in Stockholm with The Furniture Music. A few years ago they worked with Gavin Bryars and Dave Smith in Stockholm workshops lead by the composers.
However, with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, a crazier, wilder concept was introduced, and the musical setting of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is easily the wildest thing The Great Learning Orchestra has done. There was a setting available; the Underscore Symposium – a framework for other cinematic musical events as well, like Nino Rota music played on trombone, a work called Portrait of Hitch (Hitchcock) for solo piano, a guitar version of the Psycho music, another version for string quartet and percussion… and much more.

I have attended all rehearsals except the country band one, and it was highly interesting to see how the initial concept slowly – but faster that I’d expected – got down into the mold, was rendered shape and form and musical palpability, from the very first meet when we watched/heard the movie in a small studio at SAMI - Swedish Artists’ and Musicians’ Interest Group – and just barely touched upon the means of execution of the initial idea.

It needs to be said that a massive effort was put in by Leif Jordansson, Peter Bryngelsson and Pelle Halvarsson even before the start of the rehearsals, when they transcribed a third each of the movie for the musical score that The Great Learning Orchestra then studied.

The second rehearsal on board Yann le Nestour’s M/S Svalbard was more musical, getting down into the nitty-gritty of the various parts and sections, Bryngelsson, Halvarsson and Jordansson explaining the details, while the musicians got the opportunity to try out different ideas and performance practices.

Then third rehearsal was again held at SAMI, in another small studio. The chainsaw wasn’t part of the group yet, and the percussion was made up of cookie jars etcetera – but things had materialized quite well. You began to see the proportions and the progression, as well as the overall spooky atmosphere of the music.

Not until the fourth rehearsal on location in the Culture House the day before the concert did we experience the chainsaw, managed by bandoneon player Micke Augustsson, and that was also the first time that the radio voice was heard, spoken by George Kentros, who, despite his name, originates in the US. This was also the first time I heard the fully-fledged Country & Western band, with lead singer Leif Jordansson in all its Southern brilliance, so good!

The dress rehearsal on the day of the concert was quite jagged, not at all very coherent, with some lack of concentration, some misunderstandings and even some nervous bursts of temper, and I was a bit apprehensive as the time for the real live concert with audience and all approached – but there was no call for that. It all came together in brilliance and sublimity!

After Professor Claudia Gorbman’s lecture, with the crickets overheard from the dressing room, there was a short break for everything to get in order on stage, but after a while the audience seeped into the auditorium, lights were lowered and the stage lit up, with all those instruments and other gear in place, and welcomed by applause the Great Learning Orchestra entered and took their positions.

Pelle Halvarsson, behind his Theremin, raised his hand as silence fell, and as he gave the signal, the concert started. My apprehension dissipated almost immediately, because now the orchestra was fully concentrated and extremely sensitive to the overall sonic expression. It felt like they’d played this music many times. It was so tight, so palpable – really together: a major wave of force through space, overwhelming, spooky and… disturbingly beautiful.

As the concert proceeded, all had their say: the crickets in their box, Anders Erkéus thrusting his big pneumatic drill into a slab of rock, Jonna Sandell bearing down on her violin bow in a creaking series of downward glissandi, the mighty wind section with former ISKRA member Jörgen Adolfsson and distinctly dressed ship owner Yann le Nestour with Charlie Malmberg up front and Klezmer band Sabbath All Week member Andreas Hedwall in the back, directing fellow wind musicians Gustav Nygren & David Liljemark in their car horn honking executions, Leatherface impersonator Girilal Baars center stage mimicking barn-yard domestic fowl and pigs, the amazing percussionists Johan E. Andersson and Anna Gustavsson at left, Peter Bryngelsson driving his Moog like a gasoline generator, and Lisa Ullén placed below and in front of the stage, playing her East German grand piano with soft clubs directly on the strings – and of course the chainsaw musician up front, raising his deadly, fuming and roaring instrument like Swedish warrior king Gustav II Adolf raising his sword in face of defeat through the fog across the battle field at Lützen in 1632… as the fumes from the chainsaw thickened, the acrid stench rising through your nostrils!

The country band was amazing, so good at what they did that I wouldn’t mind a full concert with just them playing real, down home country, but maybe I’m biased, with my collection of Hank Williams records and my former habitat in Dallas, Texas, where I and wife Judy went to the Saturday Night Jamboree each weekend… The country band in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre concert with the Great Learning Orchestra was comprised of Leif Jordansson, guitar and song; Peter Lindroth, piano; Malin-My Nilsson, violin, Niko Röhlke, pedal steel, and Anders Leffler, bass guitar.

The female screaming choir, comprised of Anna-Kerstin Källman, Lily Bigestans and Gerda Fransson-Bergquist, was equally outstanding. I have to give Gerda Fransson-Bergquist some extra recognition. She was amazing, and I’ll never forget it. She gave her role complete and full attention, identifying 100%. Her whole existence was reduced to the scream, her body became this scream, her whole anatomy was only this shattering, piercing scream. I got goose pimples, I tell you. Great, Gerda!!! You gave me one of those very rare moments of exhilaration and wonder!

When the concert started, it was like a roaring furnace exploding in a library, or something to that effect. The academic – but interesting! – atmosphere that had settled on the auditorium with Professor Gorbman’s lecture was torn to shreds, and like Nietzsche’s sculpture, liberated out of the rock by the stubbornly chiseling artist, the relentless magnificence of one of the very best moments of The Great Learning Orchestra opened up a fierce and malignant beauty out of the grand silence from whence all sounds arise! Holy smoke!

This will be hard to follow up, but knowing the wild thinking and venomous artistry of The Great Learning Orchestra, I know something will surprise me again, in a while. Congratulations!

More pictures will be published in a separate file shortly.