AE News September 2015
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Issue 5, 2015: September AE NEWS newsletter of the Australia Ensemble @UNSW Never Stand Still Music Performance Unit September Events The creation of a new pearl Australia Ensemble @UNSW Several years ago, Ross Edwards’ piece Barossa Pearl made its name onto Free lunch hour concert a list of possible works for an Australia Ensemble concert program. It was a quintet dedicated to Edwards’ former teacher, Peter Maxwell Davies, who was Tuesday September 8, 2015 composer in residence at the 2000 Barossa Festival where it was fi rst performed. 1.10 - 2.00pm By contacting Ross Edwards to learn more about the piece’s suitability for the Leighton Hall, Scientia Building Australia Ensemble, it quickly emerged that it was a miniature, only 48 bars in Edwards: Binyang duration, and unfortunately not quite long enough for a subscription concert Moszkovski: Suite program. Maxwell Davies: Nocturne Australia Ensemble Artistic Chair, Paul Stanhope, had other ideas. He proposed Mozart: Trio ‘Kegelstatt’ to Edwards that a new work, perhaps a suite, be written for the Australia Ensemble’s 2015 season including the delightful miniature Barossa Pearl Australia Ensemble @UNSW as one of its movements, for the same colourful combination of instruments. Edwards leapt at the idea, and got straight to work on his fi ve-movement suite, Free lunch hour workshop Animisms, for fl ute, clarinet, percussion, violin and cello. Barossa Pearl was Thursday September 10, 2015 reworked to become the fi rst movement, Bubbles, as a celebration of affordable 1.10 - 2.00pm student wine, easy on the pocket but tough on the head the following morning. Leighton Hall, Scientia Building It has been reclaimed and extended in the composer’s words as a “cheerful Guitarist Karin Schaupp in a tribute to my teacher”. public masterclass with musicians As the fi nal touches were being added to the new piece in 2014, Ross Edwards from UNSW mentioned to percussionist Claire Edwardes that he had written the percussion part with her in mind. Claire Free, all welcome Composer Ross Edwards got in touch with the Australia [photo: Bridget Elliot] Ensemble, and immediately Australia Ensemble @UNSW came on board for the project, Subscription Concert 5, 2015 having enjoyed a long history Saturday September 12, 2015 with Edwards’ music. Claire 8.00pm noted some features in the Sir John Clancy Auditorium new work with which she has Maxwell Davies: Renaissance become familiar: “I noticed Scottish Dances that he has extended the marimba with temple blocks, Westlake: Songs from the forest a clever technique Ross used Edwards: Animisms (fi rst perf.) in his More Marimba Dances, Schubert: Piano Quintet in A which he wrote for me in major D667 ‘The Trout’ 2004. There are snippets of this piece which creep in and Burgundian Consort give Animisms a real Ross In love and war Edwards colouring.” Wednesday September 23, 2015 Like the shorter Barossa 7.30pm Pearl, Edwards has Sir John Clancy Auditorium dedicated the new work to Choral works of passion, devotion composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, with whom he and remembrance including studied at Adelaide’s Elder Gibbons, Parry, Pärt, Janequin & Conservatorium in the mid- Jackson sixties. Studying with him must have been an experience: www.music.unsw.edu.au certainly anecdotal evidence indicates he is quite the character. He was ‘cautioned’ in 2005 for the “possession of a swan’s corpse”, since all swans in the United Kingdom are the property of the Crown. During a visit to Las Vegas, he was temporarily lost - no one seemed able to locate him at any hotel, despite trying ‘Maxwell Davies’, ‘Davies’, ‘Max’ (his informal nickname) , ‘Sir Peter’ and every other possible combination. It was fi nally discovered that the hotel had registered him as ‘Mavis’, which inspired the composer to produce the orchestral piece Mavis in Las Vegas. Maxwell Davies recently retired as Master of the Queen’s Music at the age of 80, a role he declared himself an unlikely choice for as he was a Republican, although, as with so many other ‘Republicans’ his views changed when he had personal contact with the Queen. Ross Edwards’ dedication to his former teacher is for the occasion of his 80th birthday, which was celebrated in September 2014. Animisms’ sources are highly eclectic and contrasted, and the composer describes it as “light but not trite”. Edwards intentionally refers to Southeast Asian fl avours, indigenous Australian elements with a maninya (Australian dance chant) as often used in his music, a lovesong from his 1983 chamber opera Christina’s World, and the central Madagascan Percussionist Claire Edwardes folksong movement of his 1979 sextet Laikan, a work well-known to Australia Ensemble [photo: Monty Coles] audiences. Greg Keane & Sonia Maddock Inside the mind game The house lights go down, an amplify the problem, making it expectant hush falls over the even harder for performers to audience and there you are side- play with emotional abandon stage, peering out from behind the free from the anxiety of being black curtain, wishing it could envelop judged. you so you didn’t have to go on Fortunately, stagefright doesn’t stage… Your hands are freezing, your happen TO us: we do it to heart is pounding, you’re quivering all ourselves and recognizing the over, and a deluge of anxious mind enemy inside is a huge fi rst chatter tortures you: “What if I fail? step towards helping ourselves. What if I have a memory lapse? What It’s also important initially to if I get stuck in that fast passage? differentiate between fear and What if the audience doesn’t like my anxiety, both of which can performance?” contribute to stagefright: And the inevitable question : “Why do Fear is a reaction to a real I do this to myself!?” danger. For example, it’s Almost every performer has reasonable to be worried experienced some variation of this about a performance if one scene at some point, and many, even is musically ill-prepared. seasoned professionals, silently and Preparation is key and musical habitually suffer in this way before education typically provides and during every single performance. strong skills in this area. Guest guitarist Karin Schaupp is also a Experience helps some, but in many Anxiety, however, is an irrational researcher in performance anxiety cases the problem actually worsens reaction to an imagined danger, [photo: Matt Black] as a performer’s career progresses one we create in our minds. Both fear and anxiety often trigger the and the stakes become higher. Anxiety is at the root of much of what fi ght-or-fl ight response, an ancient Sportspeople spend years learning we refer to as stagefright and this physical survival response designed many forms of mental training (and is where our education is lacking. to help us to fi ght or fl ee physical have done for decades now), yet This anxiety requires a multi-faceted danger. Our nervous system ‘means musicians are largely left to fend for approach, but there is no question well’ when it triggers this response themselves with minimal education that it can be effectively overcome. in our bodies, giving us a burst of about handling the substantial Performers can help themselves in adrenalin, taking blood away from pressures of a performance situation. a deep and lasting way with a series the extremities to the big muscles, Somehow it’s still taboo to admit of self-help techniques borrowed to a hastening our breathing and heart- that you suffer from stagefright, large extent from sport psychology, rate to give us extra brute strength even though it is no indication of namely: relaxation, imagery, for survival. All of this enables us to a performer’s talent, dedication or systematic desensitisation and perform great physical feats, but we ability. In truth, stagefright is much cognitive restructuring techniques lose fi ne motor control and we are not more widespread than we care to combined with a healthy dose of in a balanced state of emotional ease admit and the exams and competitions philosophical soul-searching and Zen. and openness, all of which makes so many musicians grow up with often musical performance very diffi cult. chatter can also be reduced through a word for this: they call it “fl ow”, a Using relaxation techniques, some simple cognitive techniques state where even the most diffi cult it’s surprisingly easy to learn to called cognitive restructuring. and complex tasks become effortless consciously control this otherwise Thus by employing rather basic self- and the athlete feels completely at automatic nervous system response help techniques we can learn to regain one with him/herself and the universe. and thus reduce the physical control over much of what feels for so I daresay this magical state is the symptoms of performance anxiety. many of us uncontrollable. ultimate goal for all musical performers As for our subconscious expectations, And once we’re free of the cold shaky also, the pinnacle of years of hard work we can learn to infl uence these hands, the mind chatter, the negative and of facing our imagined limitations. through combining relaxation and expectations, the deep inner doubts It is a place beyond ourselves, beyond imagery techniques in a specifi c and the pounding heart, we can ask our ego, where stagefright becomes technique called systematic ourselves some important questions: deeply irrelevant and we can discover desensitisation, in which we gradually “What is musical performance all our true calling as vehicles for the undo our subconscious anxieties about? What am I actually doing on beauty of music, that which cannot be around performing. We can use stage? Why am I driven to do this and properly expressed in words.