Notes – Birdsong At Dusk 2019

Gerard Brophy Beautiful Birds (2019) Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, Ironwood, Decibel, Sydney Festival, and Vivid Sydney. She Beautiful birds showcases: is an international advocate for gender equity I. Lyrebirds - skittish, quirky birds with a and diversity in music.

mischievous temperament and an Kate Moore Blackbird Song (2018) astounding penchant for mimicry;

II. Flamingos - elegant, stately yet Blackbird song is an expansive melody written slightly melancholic creatures; in response to the early morning cantillation of III. Hummingbirds - fluttering, quivering a Merel. In the earliest twilight hours of the souls flitting from one gorgeous morning, before the sunrise chorus of birds, a blossom to the next. tiny unassuming blackbird clad in shiny jet- black feathers perches upon a high post and Gerard Brophy is a composer and educator. sings with all its might an epic melancholic tale After an increasingly musical adolescence, of adventure and fantasy with its yellow beak Gerard Brophy began his studies in the pointed toward the heavens. Without knowing classical guitar at the age of twenty-two. In the it the bird has captivated the imagination of late seventies, he worked closely with Brazilian the listener, who, despite being unable to guitarist Turibio Santos and the Argentine understand the vocabulary and grammar of its composer Mauricio Kagel before studying language, is taken along on a journey of the composition at the NSW State Conservatorium blackbird's worldly and otherworldly of Music. Over recent years he has developed experiences. a keen interest in collaborating with artists from other disciplines and he is particularly Tristan Coelho Daybreak (2018) active in the areas of ballet, dance and Daybreak portrays Australia’s rich and diverse electronica. birdlife including a wide variety of songbirds Felicity Wilcox Yurabirong (2016) including the lyrebird, satin bowerbird, magpie and pied butcherbird. In addition to singing Yurabirong blends Western musical idioms their songs, such birds display the ability to with sonic references to an ‘imagined’ pre- perform highly sophisticated and seemingly colonial world, to describe country around the organised fragments of other species' tunes composer’s Sydney home. Wilcox consulted which are often transformed uniquely. This with D'harawal man Gawain Bodkin-Andrew piece, Daybreak, for flute and live electronics and collaborated with clarinettist Jason Noble is based on this idea of birdsong mimicry and over 2 years to develop extended techniques draws from experiences I’ve had exploring and customised to this work, to explore more inclusive frameworks in non-Indigenous appreciating the sounds of nature. Transcribed musical expressions of country and identity birdsong is weaved into the piece as well as that consider Indigenous spaces and additional song-like musical ideas inspired perspectives. The composer and performer directly from the lines conjured up by birds. acknowledge the Gadigal people as traditional Tristan Coelho is an award-winning Sydney- owners of the land that inspired this piece and pay our respects to their elders past and based composer who specialises in art music present and all Aboriginal people. and film. His music draws inspiration largely from either nature, especially the idea of Felicity Wilcox has composed music to over 60 amplifying the otherwise soft and delicate film and television productions and has been sounds around us, or conversely our digital, commissioned to compose new concert works data-driven world. for leading Australian festivals and ensembles, including Song Company, the Australia Page 1 of 4

Composer Notes – Birdsong At Dusk 2019

Fiona Loader Lorikeet Corroboree (2015) MacDonnells, 6.6km before the road terminates at Ross River in August 2014. The Lorikeet Corroboree was written for Ensemble first 90sec. of this composition feature a Offspring in 2015 and explores the idea of ‘countersinging’ duet, with both similar and birdcall in music. Fiona transcribed actual bird unique phrases, and occasional contributions call from mainly Australian birds including by a third soloist. The flute and bass clarinet lorikeets, magpies, butcher birds and even a cleave to the transcription. The vibraphone nightingale as a musical tribute to Lamorna explores the same motifs, often at a slower Nightingale the ensemble’s flautist. There is . much dovetailing of bird-like motives especially between the flute and clarinet Hollis Taylor is a violinist/composer, whilst the marimba provides the rhythmic zoömusicologist, and ornithologist as well as a impetus and syncopation and washes of Research Fellow at Macquarie University. Her colour. double CD, Absolute Bird, and her monograph Is Birdsong Music? Outback Encounters with In the middle section, both the flute and an Australian Songbird, were both released in clarinet indulge in bird cadenzas - very 2017. rhapsodic leading to the climax of the work which shows off the virtuosity of the Violinist, composer, and improviser Jon Rose instrumentalists as they make the final has created large environmental multimedia dazzling sprint to the end. works, engaged with interactive electronic systems, built Fiona Loader majored in piano (performance)- instruments, and created radiophonic works. Bachelor of Music and composition (Masters) Kronos Quartet commissioned him to write graduating in 2016 from Sydney and build Music from 4 Fences for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 2016 she was a Opera House. He was awarded the 2012 Don composition fellow at Trinity Grammar School. Banks Award for lifetime achievement and She has had works performed or contribution to Australian music. With support commissioned by the Halycon Ensemble, from a major grant from the Australia Council, Ensemble Offspring, Sydney Conservatorium their concerto for recorder virtuoso Genevieve of Music early music ensemble, Theme and Lacey premiered with the Adelaide Symphony Variations team of pianists, Leichhardt in 2017 and was performed by the London Espresso Chorus, The choir of Christ Church St. Sinfonia in 2019, along with five more of their Laurence, St. Andrew’s Cathedral choir and birdsong works has had works recorded for broadcast by ABC FM, Fine Music and has had works performed Hollis Taylor/Jon Rose Owen Springs Reserve as part of Musica Viva and the Four winds 2014 (2015) festival. Owen Springs Reserve is based on a pied Hollis Taylor/Jon Rose Bitter Springs Creek butcherbird nocturnal song recorded west of (2019) Alice Springs (5:20am, 27 August) and paired with the original recording, Owen Springs Bitter Springs Creek takes inspiration from the Reserve 2014 belongs to the twenty-first MacDonnell Ranges, which stretch out for century, to be sure, but the music sung by 320km east and west of Alice Springs. This these birds is ancient, extending back millions tilted red rock library of time consists of of years. Although they may share some parallel ridges with dramatic gaps and gorges. phrases, each bird has its unique songs that Here Hollis Taylor studies one of the world’s develop and transform from season to season. most extraordinary songbirds, the pied A degree of what we may describe as butcherbird. This nocturnal recording was improvisation pertains to each performance made at Bitter Springs Creek in the E Page 2 of 4

Composer Notes – Birdsong At Dusk 2019 and this quality of flexibility is key to our birdsong works. Performer Biographies.

Jane Stanley Glow (2019) Ensemble Offspring are champions of new music. Presenting concerts of seminal Glow features three distinct sections though chamber music to , which there is a build towards the flute, alongside the creation of striking clarinet and vibraphone playing together. The interdisciplinary productions, the group piece opens sparsely with the flute playing embraces open-minded music making in all its agile and intricate bird-like gestures, forms. Ensemble Offspring is led by acclaimed complemented by claves and finger cymbals. percussionist, Claire Edwardes, and features some of Australia’s most innovative All three players also sing at various points performers. The group has toured to locations during the opening, producing faint chant-like such as Hong Kong, London and Warsaw, are utterances. The bass clarinet then enters the regularly featured at MONA FOMA, Sydney foreground with a melody, at which point the and Melbourne Festivals, and have a cult flute recedes into the background slightly. following at their Sizzle series at Petersham Then the percussionist, who up until this point Bowling Club. Passionate about nurturing the has been playing claves and singing, proceeds work of emerging, as well as established to play a passage on bowed vibraphone whilst , Ensemble Offspring has premiered the flute develops a second melodic idea and over 200 works in its 23-year history. the clarinet continues in conversation with the The 2019 Birdsong At Dusk program is other two instruments. The piece closes with performed by Claire Edwardes (percussion), the return of claves, recalling the opening. Lamorna Nightingale (flute) and Jason Noble (clarinet). Glow evolved from ideas originating in an earlier piece of mine entitled D-re-A-mi-N-gl-Y Claire is an internationally acclaimed (2015/2018) for mezzo soprano, piano and percussion soloist, chamber musician and percussion. The journey in composing Glow is Artistic Director of Ensemble Offspring. She is something of a departure from Jane’s usual the only Australian musician to win the APRA working method. Ensemble Offspring played Art Music Award for Excellence by an an integral role in helping to shape it. They Individual three times (2016, 2012, 2007), and created an improvisation based on ideas from is the recipient of an Australia Council and Freedman Fellowship and the winner of D-re-A-mi-N-gl-Y, and their realisation served numerous European instrumental and as a key reference point for Glow. percussion competitions, as well as 1999 Jane Stanley (1976) is a UK-based, Australian- Australian Young Performer of the Year. born composer. She specialises in composing Lamorna has been performing with Ensemble chamber and orchestral music. Her music has Offspring since 2007. She appears regularly been performed and broadcast throughout with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the the world, having featured at festivals and Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, and the conferences including Tanglewood, ISCM Australian Chamber Orchestra and as a guest World Music Days, and Gaudeamus Music artist with The Song Company, Synergy Week. Jane received her PhD from the Percussion, Halcyon and Kammer Ensembles. University of Sydney and in 2004-5 she was a She has produced two recordings of new Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. She is Australian flute music: Eat Chocolate and Cry a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of and Spirit of the Plains, and created several Glasgow. Her music is published by Composers pedagogical volumes of repertoire for young Edition in the UK and the Australian Music flute players through her publishing company, Centre. Fluteworthy. Page 3 of 4

Composer Notes – Birdsong At Dusk 2019

Jason is specialist in all members of the clarinet family including the bass clarinet, saxillo, clarinis and glove bagpipe. An integral member of Ensemble Offspring since 2002, he also collaborates with popular musicians Sally Seltmann and Holly Throsby, soprano Jane Sheldon, the Indigenous women’s choir of the Tiwi Islands, Nick Wales and the Shaun Parker Dance Company (in the production Am I), Halcyon, and The Song Company. He has twice travelled to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul as an educator and clarinet teacher.

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