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PROGRAM I. Larry Sitsky THE CHAOS OF HESIOD (2008) No.9 from Dimensions of Night Allan Walker HOMAGES (2015) 1. Fast (...RC with HH in the background ) 2. Adagietto flessibile (... DM ) 3. with rhythmic precision and drive (... MB ) 4. Leggiero ma con energia (... AS ) first performance Andrián Pertout FOUR ETUDES from Luz Meridional (2012) 4. Balada (to Arthur Benjamin) 6. Danza de Guerra (to Peggy Glanville-Hicks) 10. El Bosque (to Fritz Hart) 12. Retrospectivo (to Alfred Hill) Paul Grabowsky "...AUS DER TIEFE..." (2015) Michael Kieran Harvey BEES (2015) No.8 from The Green Brain first performance Michael Kieran Harvey, solo piano I n t e r v a l II. Martin Friedel DANCE OF THE BEE (2015) I. Harmonic Series 2. Imitation and Elaboration 3. Fifteen Short Sentences 4. Transition from Darkness to Light first performance interspecies performance and installation pianos, voices, bee-hive and video I. A PIANO SWARM As one of Australia’s leading pianists, Michael Kieran Harvey is unparalleled in his commitment to this country’s contemporary composers. A huge variety and quantity of new works have resulted, composed specifically for him over several decades. A selected ‘swarm’ of such works in this program serves as a gateway to the large collaborative project with Martin Friedel around the subject of bees. Extending from images of chaos in Larry Sitsky’s composition, after the ancient Greek writer Hesiod, to those of the ordered natural world of the bees in the pianist’s own new composition, these works also look sideways at styles and modes of organization from other composers over the last century and beyond. Larry Sitsky , Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University, belongs to a grand tradition of the pianist-composer, tracing his own lineage back to the greatest piano figure of the early 20th-century, Feruccio Busoni. He wrote the massive cycle Dimensions of Night for Michael Kieran Harvey in 2008 as a 10-movement work based on religious- philosophical themes. “The Chaos of Hesiod" is the penultimate movement and presents a vision of Hesiod's Works and Days, bringing together all the major themes from the cycle. Allan Walker marks his 60th year with four Homages that reflect on the multifaceted modernist tradition of which he is an expert scholar. The first piece of the current cycle (still ongoing in composition) acknowledges both Ruth Crawford and Herbie Hancock; further pieces relate to Donald Martino, Milton Babbitt and Arnold Schoenberg. Andriàn Pertout likewise composes a series of homages – to more tonally-inclined composers – in the 24 etudes of his Luz Meridional , written for Michael Kieran Harvey between 2009 and 2012 on commission from Julian Burnside. They bear no relation to the styles of these composers however, having their own unique Pertout sound and character. Paul Grabowsky is a prominent figure in many domains of Australian musical life as jazz pianist and composer, artistic director, and founder-conductor of the Australian Art Orchestra. "..Aus der Tiefe…” (Out of the depths) is the first of a set of pieces for Michael Kieran Harvey which have been under discussion for two decades, since the premiere of Grabowsky’s Piano Concerto in 1995. The title refers to J.S. Bach's cantata based on the Hebrew Psalm 130, ‘Out of the depths I cried’ – the new work embracing both jazz- inflected arioso material and chorale-style fragments. Michael Kieran Harvey’s new piece “Bees” forms part of The Green Brain , a piano cycle of 20 movements based on various insect species, with inspiration from the science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. No.8 “Bees” uses insect morphology to generate the musical material, along with the 'figure-of-eight' dance of the bee, which suggests to the composer the more frenetic ethnic dancing of Eastern Europe. Harvey writes: “Like the bee, the contemporary composer and pianist is under threat of annihilation from introduced ideas or chemicals promoting fascist mono-cultures. The bee's disappearance is definitely more worrying though.“ II. THE DANCE OF THE BEE Martin Friedel is unique among Australian composers in his series of works exploring and exploiting scientific material and history, written over the last 25 years since 1990, and premiered in the Astra series. Celebrating his 70th year in 2015, The Dance of the Bee is likewise based on a great deal of scientific knowledge, as well as the composer’s lifetime pursuit of bee-keeping. A colony of bees lives alongside him, three metres from his work studio in Brunswick. "If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live." – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee (1901) Dance of the Bee is a creative collaboration between the composer/ beekeeper and pianist Michael Kieran Harvey, drawing in three other pianists and choral voices – and joined by a transparent bee-hive, containing a small colony of bees, with a contained pathway to a feeding station. The work is a reflection on the complex and fragile relationship between us, homo sapiens and apis mellifera , the European honey bee. The four stages of the composition point to four metaphorical ‘takes‘ in musical sound – sonic parables, perhaps, of the systems of organisation that underpin the bees’ eternal struggle, between the perfect internal order of their hive and the chaos of the world outside. The musical score of each movement contains much detailed composed material, but its realisation leaves open space for the performers to improvise and vary their contributions to the resulting complexes of musical sound. BACKGROUND REFLECTIONS BY MARTIN FRIEDEL We will struggle to survive this time, the Anthroprocene , the age of humans. We find it difficult to accept that we must create a "safe operation space" and acknowledge that our existence depends on creating a harmonious equilibrium between us – the dominant tenant and all other inhabitants of this blue planet, from the largest to the smallest. Consider this : An average bee colony consists of twenty thousand to fifty thousand individual workers carrying out myriad intricate individual and collective tasks. The life of a single worker bee – a mere 21 days – is totally supported by and dedicated to the survival of the super-organism that is the swarm. A single bee cannot exist outside its community, the swarm. Understand that bees, in their present form have been around for longer than 65 million years – much longer than us – and their pollination activities have helped shape the benign, and vastly complex ecology of flowering plants that sustains much of the animal kingdom including seven billion voracious and wasteful humans… The abilities of the bee are many. It can recognise the human face, count up to four and possesses a remarkable capacity for memory and complex communication, the most astonishing of which is the dance. The dance of the bee is a set of mathematically precise body movements combined into dances. Using this dance language – performed in the darkness of the hive – an individual worker bee creates a map and flight instructions to lead fellow workers to a flowering plant which may be several kilometres away. The domestic relationship between apis mellifera and homo sapiens is over 5000 years old and has been mutually beneficial despite occasional minor misunderstandings. The bee gained shelter and protection from the worst marauders in exchange for honey and wax. The pollination of flowering plants by bees has enabled us to cultivate a cornucopia of edible plants.. Our age, the Anthroprocene Age started with the industrial revolution. The human population exploded, accompanied by an exponential demand for food and plant material. Huge tracts of temperate forest, grassland and wilderness have been destroyed and replaced by industrial-scale single crop cultivation. High yields are achieved using artificial fertilisers and an armoury of highly toxic pesticides and herbicides. Pollination of vast mono-cultures is achieved by huge numbers of bees, whole sole purpose is fixed to the transport of pollen from one plant to the next identical plant. It is calculated that about one third of the food we consume requires bee pollination. Our very existence is increasingly dependent on the health of this remarkable little creature. But apis mellifera is now endangered: artificial breeding has led to a diminished gene pool; indiscriminate use of antibiotics has reduced resistance to infection. Lack of genetic flexibility, combined with neurotoxic pesticides and exotic parasites – spread by globalization – have delivered mass death. There is colony collapse disorder (varyingly called spring dwindle, May disease, autumn disease etc), affecting hundred of thousands domestic and wild bee colonies throughout Europe and the US. What can we do? We need to be in awe of our friend and companion, the honey bee. We need to develop empathy and understanding which will lead to meaningful action. We must protect the honey bee from the consequences of our blind greed and must learn that we, the dominant species will only have a future, when other living things have a future. If we do not learn this lesson quickly, Gaia will casually sweep us into the fossil record and give our place to another species. Creative Team Dance of the Bee: Composed by Martin Friedel Piano/Prepared Piano Michael Kieran Harvey, Peter Dumsday, Joy Lee, Kim Bastin The Astra Improvising Choir directed by Joan Pollock The Astra Choir directed by John McCaughey Sound Michael Hewes Video Mim Whiting Lighting Eduard Ingles Sculptural Consultation Robert Bridgewater Beekeeper Martin Friedel Piano works: Composed by Larry Sitsky, Allan Walker, Andrián Pertout, Paul Grabowsky, Michael Kieran Harvey Solo Piano Michael Kieran Harvey Dance of the Bee has been supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria; The Robert Salzer Foundation; and the City of Melbourne through Arts House.

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