Giovanni Pergolese Stabat Mater Recorded by Rantos Collegium Musical Director Spiros Rantos Orchestra Manager Barbara Glaser

Singers Hartley Newnham Jane Edwards

Yannis Markopolous To Kariofili Mana Mou EMI/Greece - Columbia

Chansons der Trouvères Chanterai por mon Coraige Teldec/Carinia Records/Sydney

Music Effects Asher Bilu

Party Songs Elsa Davis

The film features the use of 'found' music on the soundtrack, typical of Paul Cox, with nothing by way of conventional underscore.

Elsa Davis sings a couple of songs at a birthday party (for more on Davis, see this site's 'about the movie'), and Robert Menzies' character Robert even uses the spines of a cactus to produce musical sounds - presumably these are the "musical effects" credited to the production's designer, Asher Bilu.

Apart from the use of a recording by Greek composer Yannis Markopoulos (he has a wiki here), the main music featured at start and close of the film and during a slow set of pans during a performance, is Pergolese's (as per film credits, also Pergolesi, and with a wiki here) Stabat Mater.

Hartley Newnham and Jane Edwards are the featured performers who appear in the film:

Hartley Newham:

Hartley Newnham had previously appeared in director Paul Cox's My First Wife, and at time of writing there was this short CV here.

Hartley Newnham's concert and stage experience as a countertenor ranges from medieval to contemporary music theatre. He has composed for theatre, dance and concert performance. He has sung with the Victorian State Opera, in Viennaʼs Summer Opera Series, for the ABC throughout Australia, the BBC, Radio France, and Hong Kong Radio, and with ensembles such as La Romanesca, and has also sung and appeared in the films My First Wife and Cactus by Paul Cox. He is the only male performer of Schoenbergʼs Pierrot lunaire.

There was a longer CV at a fund-raising site for Newnham, here:

Hartley Newnham was born in Queensland. After studying in Paris and London, and specializing in early music studies with Andrea von Ramm, he co-founded the early music group La Romanesca in Melbourne. As a member of the Ensemble of the Fourteenth Century, he recorded a vast anthology of medieval French and Italian music. In 2003 and 2005 he organised festivals of A Millenium of Music, covering 1000 years of western music. His repertoire is extensive, embracing not only early music which is the characteristic province of the countertenor, but also Lieder, French art song and a large corpus of twentieth century music.

He has broadcast for the ABC, the BBC and Radio France and sung several operatic roles. His performances of Pierrot Lunaire in the 1980s caused a sensation in Sydney and Melbourne and again in the 1990s when he performed in Gluckʼs Orfeo ed Euridice in Hong Kong he was lavished with rave reviews. He has been involved with film work, including Paul Coxʼs films My First Wife and Cactus in which he made cameo appearances. As well he writes his own compositions including music for theatre.

The unique quality of his voice, very different from the English countertenor sound, has inspired a number of composers from Australia, America and England to write for him. The renowned Australian, composer Ross Edwards, has written music for Hartley and will be present at the special benefit concert For Hartley on 5th March 2006.

(Below: Hartley Newnham)

Jane Edwards:

Edwards, who sings with Newnham in the film, is also well known within the Australian classical music scene. There is a short CV for her here:

Jane Edwards, soprano, has performed for every major festival and symphony orchestra throughout Australia. She was a long time member of the Song Company, and Lecturer in Voice at Sydney Conservatorium prior to relocating to Tasmania in 2006.

Career highlights include engagements with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Florilegium, Stockholm Bach Choir, Danish Radio Choir, and Victoria State Opera. She can be heard in the Oscar winning film Shine and Swoon II Collection. Other releases include Salut! for Walsingham, On a Poetʼs Lips and The Gentle Muse for Artworks, Down Longford Way for Tall Poppies, and for ABC Classics, Haydnʼs Arianna a Naxos, Synergyʼs Ethereal Eye, Scarlattiʼs Olimpia, and the song collection, Love Me Sweet.

Most recently, she appeared with the Melbourne, Queensland, Western Australian and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, Australian String Quartet, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Brodsky Quartet, Perth International Arts Festival, and Adelaide International Guitar Festival.

(Below: Jane Edwards)

Spiros Rantos:

The musical director for the performance was Spiros Rantos and his group Rantos Collegium provided the music for the film. Rantos has a good profile by Maja Jovic, done on the 27th February 2014, and available online here:

The chosen ones had the honour and pleasure to perform under the expert baton of two of the biggest composers Greece has seen: Manos Hatzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis. But being the mascot of the orchestra they conducted, as its youngest instrumentalist, and being good enough, at the age of only 14, to be conducted by the legends of Greek music was the privilege of Spiros Rantos, Greek Australian violinist and conductor.

Born in Corfu and raised in Athens, for Spiros Rantos music was a family matter. His uncle, Sotiris Tahiatis, was a household name of the Greek classical scene, many years as the leading cellist of the National Symphony Orchestra, the National Opera and Radio Orchestra. From the age of five, violin was a part of Spiros' everyday life - at the beginning unwillingly, he admits. The family obsession with music, he explains, began with his Corfu heritage, its rich culture and musical tradition. In his native Ionian island, Spiros says, almost everyone played an instrument.

"The decision was with my parents and uncle Sotos. When I started at age five I really didn't have much say, but by the time I was fifteen I started performing in my teachers' orchestra in Athens, and having many 'professional' engagements," Spiros tells Neos Kosmos. It was the experience with the legends of Greek and European music, Hatzidakis and Theodorakis, Spiros says, that later led the Athens orchestra to participate in music recordings of the two famous composers. According to many the most prolific composition ever by Mikis Theodorakis, Axion Esti was recorded for the first time in 1964. Written for classical and popular orchestras and male soloists, recitant and choir, Axion Esti was recorded with Grigoris Bithikotsis and Manos Katrakis. In the historical recording, young Spiros Rantos played violin, following in the footsteps of his uncle who was the cellist of most of Hatzidakis' and Theodorakis' original recordings. No wonder that with a 50 year plus career behind him, the 68-year-old Spiros Rantos is today credited as founder, director, conductor of numerous Australian chamber and other orchestras, with an international reputation for his brilliant violin playing and conducting. At the age of only eighteen, Spiros Rantos held the position of first violinist at the Opera in Linz, Austria. In Vienna, he completed the academy and specialised in original baroque instruments. Until 1976, when he left Vienna for Australia, he had over 60 LP records behind him.

As a member of the Vienna based chamber music group Ensemble I, which was based on the idea to perform with different instrumental combinations in every concert, Spiros came to Australia in 1976. Alongside him was Israeli-born pianist Brachi Tiles, first his professional chamber music partner and soon after a life companion. Invited originally for six months as artists in residence at the Victorian College of Arts, they decided to stay permanently. "It was a bit difficult as I had already built a steady career in Austria and Europe, but also it was quite appealing to do something new, in a new environment," he tells.

Soon after, from Melbourne Brachi and Spiros moved to Toowoomba, to start the musical department at Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, today the University of South Queensland, where they stayed for the next eight years. In 1979, Spiros founded the Rantos Collegium, that would become an integral part of cultural life in Victoria until 1996, participating in many major festivals, touring country centres with the Victorian State Opera and presenting its own series. Many years later Paul Coppens, who owned the business name of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, became impressed with Spiros Rantos' solos at the Russian Ballet dancer Nureyev's performances and offered him use of the title. "We operated with this title from somewhere around the early nineties. In 1995 the orchestra stopped operations as the Kenneth government cut down the arts budget and we didn't have any money to put on concerts. At the same time I was offered a senior lectureship at the university of Queensland which I took up in 1996 and I've stayed in Brisbane since then."

When Mikis Theodorakis visited Australia last time in 1995, as a 70- year-old, he toured the country conducting Spiros' Rantos Collegium.

"Soon after it was founded, the Rantos Collegium emerged as one of the main chamber orchestras in Melbourne, like the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) now. International touring took us to many countries.

"The background of music was very different, to be able to compare Australian and European music. I can say that Australian music was then like Greek classical music - there were a lot of people with wonderful ideas and many wonderful musicians, but because of the nature of the country they were a little bit doomed to a local presentation and didn't come enough to international attention. With Collegium, we were the first orchestra for many years to go out of Australia, for international touring. Now, with the emergence of ACO, an internationally renowned orchestra, the setting has changed," Spiros says.

Since 1976 till today, Spiros Rantos says there has been a kind of 'explosion' in performances in Australia, that Rantos Collegium was part of.

"When we came, composers wrote European style music, with a strong European flavour. Now naturally, with people trying to create more local identity and culture, we have many examples of young composers creating music with an Australian flavour.

"We played to a lot of young people and got their attention. Most of them who are in the field today were part of the Collegium in the '80s, until '95, when the funding was cut."

Melbourne Youth Orchestra, MCAE Symphony orchestra, the Chamber Strings of Melbourne orchestra, Brisbane Chamber Orchestra, the Toowoomba Concert Orchestra - are just few of many Spiros Rantos was involved with, while teaching at the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Southern Queensland and University of Melbourne. Today, many of Spiros' students are recognised teachers in schools around Australia, while others have pursued performing careers around the world, or with leading Australian orchestras.

Now retired from the full time job, Spiros and Brachi keep active performing as a duo. Their playing is often described as combining Viennese finesse with Mediterranean temperament. Together they have extensively recorded duo repertoires ranging from the classics to contemporary.

In 2014, Spiros says amongst their engagements are the river boat concert cruise in Myanmar in November, a festival in Samoa in October, a 4MBS Mediterranean concert cruise in June and more orchestral conducting.

In 2015, if everything goes according to plan, he wants to perform Mikis Theodorakis' work around Australia with his orchestra, as a tribute to the Greek songwriter and composer on the occasion of his 90th birthday. (Below: Brachi Tiles and Spiros Rantos)