Take one violinist and add a looping station. The result is a spectacular one-woman show that sees what happens when modern technology meets contemporary classical music. 

By OLIVIA CLARKE

For some Melbourne Fringe shows, getting there is half the adventure. And when you do arrive, you often find the venues are intimate and cosy. You're up close to some talented folk.

Wandering through the Preston streets, I was prepared for this. I  had spent the night before wandering through Kensington for my first Melbourne Fringe 2014 show.

But for now I was following the chalk-marked road to Feat Theatre in Preston for the premiere of Through The Looping Glass. Performer and violinist Helen Bower describes it as getting inside the music and taking the risk, something performing at the Fringe encourages.

During the show, Bower uses a loop station. This piece of technology can record a sound and play it back  on a loop with various other effects, such as a change in pitch.

The station gives just the same amount of time for each loop,  allowing a build up of a world of sound from the same length of loops.

Bower says she wants to explore how digital equipment could work within classical music. During Looping Glass, I realised it did so much more.

Sometimes during the performance, I felt like the rest of the string quartet was just hiding behind the door, ready to join her. It was mystifying how one violinist could create such a sound with just a loop station.

But Bower was more than just a violinist. She was the conductor of the orchestra as well as its first violin. Sometimes she was also the percussion with the way she used her instrument.

It was spectacular to see how Bower played the loop station simultaneously while playing her violin. Something in my few years of performing, and watching classical music, I have never seen before.

Bower has to time each loop exactly, otherwise the mistake would catch up with her in every new loop. It's one of the limitations she loves about the loop station.

With every layer the individual four pieces came together. Bower's violin was sometimes lost in the sound of the loop station. It could become much more than an extension. Looping created a whole new world of sound that could be lost forever in one step of Bower’s foot on the pedal. Every performance of Bower’s four pieces will be different, just by using the loop.

This blending of  classical and contemporary worlds, albeit with the limitations of the station, was just harmonious. Bower is embracing it, which is an opportunity she holds Fringe responsible for.

At the end, the sound of applause didn't need a loop station, it went on for a long time all on its own.

Helen Bower's Through The Looping Glass is on at the Melbourne Fringe, October 3-5. You can buy tickets here.