Eleven years ago I moved to Auckland; eleven years ago I started going to Vitamin S.
Anyone who knows me well will have at one point heard me harping on about Vitamin S, and might have even been coaxed along once or twice. But what is Vitamin S, exactly? (good question that)
I was once told that the ‘S’ stands for ‘Sunshine’, though seated in the Wine Cellar on a Monday night you’re probably about as far away from the sun as you can get (ignoring Pluto). To sum it up, it’s a weekly musical experience, in which two duos that have been randomly drawn perform together for half an hour each without first discussing what they’re doing. In other words, it’s improvised. Non-musicians also perform (ie dancers, artists, cleaners, archers), and anyone is free to join up and give it a go. Sometimes it’s incredibly good, other times you wish you didn’t have ears. But it’s always worth going to.
This weekend is the 2015 Vitamin S festival, four days jam packed with unexpected noise.
The above link gives you the whats and the wheres for all the events, but as for me, I’ll be playing (something) on Saturday night, at the Audio Foundation on Poynton Terrace, starting after 8.00pm.
I. K. Paterson 
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