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General Information About Australian Music Australian choral works with orchestra Given modern Australia’s British roots, it is no surprise that the Choral Society, or its heirs and assigns, survives as a major musical organisation in most capital cities. And as well as merely serving up a diet of Messiahs and Belshazzar’s Feasts, many have commissioned new works. Resident composers since Isaac Nathan, who arrived in 1841, have composed choral works of various kinds; Eugene Goossens’s The Apocalypse of 1954 out-­‐Waltoned Walton but failed to set the world on fire. Subsequent choral-­‐orchestral works have in the main tended to be in the oratorio tradition, often specifically for public ceremonial events, such as Barry Conyngham’s Antipodes for Victoria’s sesquicentennial celebrations in 1985, or Peter Sculthorpe’s Child of Australia for the national Bicentenary in 1988. Others, like Moya Henderson in her recent work based on the Anna Akhmatova Requiem, use the choral-­‐orchestral forces to explore important humanitarian and political issues. We purchased our music from this the Australian Music Centre based in Sydney, Australia. http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/about The Australian Music Centre (AMC) is the national service organisation dedicated to the promotion and support of both the artform of music and the creators and performers of contemporary classical, improvised jazz, experimental music and sound art in Australia. The AMC’s aims are to increase the profile and sustainability of the sector and to facilitate the performance, awareness and appreciation of Australian music for diverse audiences across Australia and internationally. The AMC fulfils its aims by representing Australian composers and sound artists; managing development programs for young and emerging composers and sound artists; presenting annual and biennial awards; providing communications services such as news, reviews, analysis and critical discussion; publishing books and sheet music; producing secondary and tertiary education kits; and through its library collection that now includes over 30,000 items by over 600 artists, including notated composition, electroacoustic music, algorithmic composition, improvised music (including contemporary jazz), experimental music, electronic music, sound art, sound installation, film composition plus sound found in multimedia and online forms. The AMC is a member of the International Association of Music Information Centres (IAMIC), a worldwide network of organisations promoting new music. The AMC is also the Australian Section to the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). The ISCM presents the annual ISCM World Music Days Festival which features new music from around the world. The AMC has always had a strong focus on the documentation of Australian music. For 40 years it has been the nation’s key source of information, resources and products relating to Australian composers, performers, works, events and critical discourse on the broader landscape of Australian music. In the past five years, the AMC has dramatically increased its impact and relevance through its fully integrated online model, providing access to its services and its ever-­‐growing collection. An ambitious plan has been undertaken to digitise the entire collection, to embrace cutting-­‐edge technologies in database management and to customise the latest innovations in library cataloguing systems to deliver a new service which provides deeper, more meaningful connections to the world of Australian music and offers new opportunities to the artform, its composers and sound artists, and the diverse audiences with which they connect. The AMC is grateful for the generous assistance it has received from the Australia Council for the Arts; the Australian Research Council, the University of Western Sydney, and Edith Cowan University; ABC Classic FM; the Australasian Performing Right Association; and the National Library of Australia, who have all been partners in the success of this major undertaking. The AMC would also like to acknowledge the generous core support it continues to receive from the Australia Council for the Arts, as well as the funding and support from the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), the Federal Department of Education, and project partners including The Song Company, Perpetual Trustees and ABC Classic FM. Dreams and Visions John Peterson (2011) SATB, Mezzo-­‐Soprano/Baritone soloists, string quartet and piano 50 minutes Composer website: http://research.unsw.edu.au/people/dr-john-peterson
Work Overview The texts for this work are derived from a broad range of poets, and explore essential themes about life that would be of interest to everyone: environmental concerns, the tragedy of death and the loss of loved ones, the nature of love and desire, and the need for everyone to work together as a community. The music is often very aggressive and rhythmic, but is also passionate and evocative. Work Details Year: 2011 Instrumentation: SATB mixed chorus, mezzo-­‐soprano and baritone soloists, string quartet, piano. Duration: 50 min. Difficulty: Medium Contents note: Part 1: Dreams -­‐-­‐ Part 2A:The Fire of Annihilation -­‐-­‐ Part 2B: The Song of the Earth -­‐-­‐ Part 3A: A Dream that was not all a Dream -­‐-­‐ Part 3B: A Litany in a Time of Plague -­‐-­‐ Part 3C: Let Me Rest / Lux Aeterna -­‐-­‐ Part 4A: I Sing the Body Electric -­‐-­‐ Part 4B: Love's Pure Flame -­‐-­‐ Part 5A: Ours is the World of Love -­‐-­‐ Part 5B: Interlude -­‐-­‐ Part 5C: We are the Dreamers of Dreams. Dedication note: Dedicated to the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir on the occasion of their twentieth anniversary. Commission note: Commissioned by Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir with funds provided by City of Sydney. First performance: by Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir, Sarah Penicka-­‐Smith at Dreams and Visions (Marrickville Town Hall) on 5 Nov 2011 John Peterson was born in Wollongong, NSW, in 1957. He studied composition at the University of Sydney under the guidance of Ross Edwards, Eric Gross and Peter Sculthorpe. He completed his Bachelor of Music degree in 1990, Master of Music in 1994, and his PhD in Composition in 2003. As a composer, Peterson has written chamber music for many ensembles including the Contemporary Singers, Sydney Mandolins, the Shostakovich String Quartet, Halcyon, and the Omega Ensemble, Sydney, and he has had several works for orchestra performed and/or recorded by orchestras across Australia and New Zealand. His choral music has frequently been performed by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. In 1992, Peterson was a finalist in the Jean Bogan Prize for Piano Composition, and was a finalist in the Corbould Orchestral Composition Competition in 1995 and 2000. On two occasions (1997 and 2001), he was shortlisted for 'Masterprize', an international competition run jointly by BBC Music Magazine and the London Symphony Orchestra. The orchestral works selected for this competition, Rituals in Transfigured Time (1997) and Illawarra Music (2001), were recorded and subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in the United Kingdom and Europe. John Peterson's music generally reflects his interest in tonal idioms, as well as the energy and rhythmic propulsion inherent in many popular music styles. A typical work of this type is Shadows and Light, a large-­‐scale composition for SATB symphonic chorus, SATB semi-­‐chorus, soprano and tenor soloists, string orchestra and percussion; this work was premiered by Sydney Philharmonia, conducted by David Porcelijn, in November 2004. His music is available on several CD recordings, including Narratives and Detours, performed by Jeanell Carrigan (piano); Australian Song Cycles Vol. 1, performed by Wendy Dixon (soprano) and David Miller (piano); Ancient Rivers, performed by John Martin (piano); Hinterland, performed by Barry Cockcroft (saxophone) and Adam Pinto (piano); and After the Dark, performed by the Silo String Quartet. John Peterson won the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award in 2005, and subsequently composed the chamber work Guilty Pleasures (2006) for the Australia Ensemble. He also won the Australian Flute Festival Composition Competition in 2015, with a flute sextet titled Emergence. In 2011, he was commisisoned to write a large-­‐scale choral work to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir: the resulting work Dreams and Visions was premiered in 2011, and is currently available on a CD recording performed by the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir. In 2013 John worked with choreographer and dancer Sue Healey to create Double Entendre, a work for dancers and instrumental ensemble that was premiered at the 'Movement to Music' Festival at the University of New South Wales. In 2014, Peterson's book The Music of Peter Sculthorpe was published by Wildbird Music. This book is an analytical study of most of the major compositions written by Sculthorpe throughout his long and distinguished career. John Peterson is currently Senior Lecturer in Music Theory and Composition in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. John Peterson — current to October 2015 The Wanderer Dan Walker (2006) SATB, piano and strings 3 minutes Work Overview The Wanderer celebrates the joy of flight and adventure. The title refers to the Wandering Albatross, great traveller of the southern skies. The vocal lines in the first section are long and interrupted, reflecting the effortless soaring of these magnificent birds. The second section consists of a canonic melody which is then layered with ostinati in Indigenous Sydney language. The words, "Wumera, and Wara-­‐wara" are words for flight and ocean. This piece has become very popular, sung all over the world, and would suit voices of all ages. Work Details Year: 2006 Instrumentation: SATB choir, piano, strings. Duration: 3 min. Difficulty: Medium Written for: St Aloysius' College Lyrics by the composer. Indigenous words from Gadigal language. Artist website: http://www.facebook.com/musicofdanwalker Melbourne composer, conductor and performer Dan Walker is one of Australia's most in-­‐demand choral specialists. His compositional output includes commissions for Gondwana Voices, the Birralee Blokes, the Nittany Valley Children's Choir of Pennsylvania, Halcyon ensemble and the Sydney Children's Choir. He has been composer-­‐in-­‐residence for the Moorambilla Festival for the past six years and is often engaged to compose for ensembles both in Australia and abroad. His work, Out There, is a featured piece in the 2014 South Australian Primary Schools Choral Festival, where it will be performed by some 14 000 young singers in numerous venues across the state. Dan is an also active arranger and regularly produces work for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and record label ABC Classics. His work for television includes the iconic 2009 I Still Call Australia Home advertising campaign for Qantas. As a performer, Dan is a member of Sydney-­‐based Cantillation, Pinchgut Opera and the Consort of Melbourne. He is a keenly sought-­‐after conductor, often appearing as chorusmaster for the Sydney Symphony, and was an associate conductor of Gondwana Choirs from 2006 -­‐ 2014. He is now both musical director of the Melbourne group, Choristry, and the newly created 'Habeas Chorus', a choir for the Melbourne legal community. Dan Walker — current to April 2015