|
Martin Wesley-Smith's 2008 BLOG |
1946 the |
1956 perilous |
1988 passage |
.gif)
1994 of |
2006 time |
an incomplete and opinionated ramble through miscellaneous events, performances etc so far in 2008 ...
2007
|
2006
|
2005-1999
|
bottom of page
|
*
Wednesday Sept 3 2008:
The Charisma performance of db on Sunday was excellent. Not an easy piece, I'll admit, if forced to ... A recording of a live performance of this piece, by The Australia Ensemble, is allegedly coming out soon on a Tall Poppies CD of some of my my chamber music. If you would like to be notified when it has been released, please email me here.
*
If you care about human rights in China, and you don't care about split infinitives, you might like to sign this Amnesty International petition.
*
Sunday August 31 2008:
Last night's Sixth Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival, with pianist Robert Constable, was a great success. It was all good: the sound, the music, the visual presentation, the atmosphere, the supper, and so on ... Robert played for Keaton classics My Wife's Relations, The Paleface and The Seven Chances. To read the program sheet (pdf, 280KB) handed out last night, click here. For the website, click here.
*
Am off to Sydney today for a performance of my piece db, for flute, clarinet, piano & cello, played by Sydney group Charisma. The "db" refers to Australian composer Don Banks, a colleague and friend who died in 1980.
*
Monday August 25 2008:
The little choir I sing in and conduct gave a private performance last Saturday night to friends in Kangaroo Valley. Went pretty well! We won't ever be a great choir, even a good one, and we don't intend to perform in public, ever, but we're enjoying singing together, and the audience seemed to enjoy listening to us. There are seven of us: Nell Britton'n'Alex Holliday, sopranos; Janette Carter'n'Patsy Radic, altos; me, tenor; and Peter Morgan'n'Peter Stanton, basses. We sang, in order, I Want to be Ready (a spiritual), Mad World, My Dog Has Fleas (by Peter Wesley-Smith and moi), the Sweet Honey in the Rock arrangement of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Chil' and When I Fall in Love (first bracket), and, second bracket, the barbershop classic Sweet Adeline, our brother Jerry's song Special Days, Peter's and my love song Old Coat, Paul Kelly's Meet Me in the Middle of the Air, and the classic Manhattan Transfer songs A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (arranged by the late Gene Puerling) and Java Jive. We're now about to start on new repertoire, including my a cappella choir [SATB] arrangement of the traditional spiritual Ev'ry Time I Feel da Spirit (it's available here as a free download (five pages, 124KB)).
*
Yesterday's www.tomdispatch.com contains an article by Chalmers Johnson called The Smash of Civilisations - The Past Destroyed: Five Years Later. It consists of an article first published in July 2005 plus a new preamble that puts it in today's context. Tom (Tom Engelhardt) writes in his introduction:
An excerpt from Johnson's article:
to read more, click here
*
Saturday August 23 2008:
In 1980 the Con took delivery of a Fairlight CMI Series I, an instrument I called my own. It was a complete composing and production system, and came with the world's first commercially available digital sampler, an additive synthesis page, a Music Composition Language, and other goodies. I would be working on it in one of the rooms of the Con's Electronic Music Studio (which I'd established in 1974) when one of the Fairlight's designers, Peter Vogel, would pop in with a floppy disk containing the latest system software for us to try out. Thus our machine became, eventually, a Series IIX. In 1986 I presented one, on behalf of the Australian government, to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, People's Republic of China, and taught a class of students how to use it (I was described by the institution's Head back then as "The Father of Chinese Computer Music"). The new Series III, with its 16-bit technology, replaced the 8-bit Series II. But some of the pieces I composed back then - e.g. White Knight & Beaver and For Marimba & Tape - are still played today, and the tape parts still sound good ...
*
Monday August 18 2008:
A performance coming up in Sydney: my piece Janet, for flute, percussion & piano (1995), to be played by Alexa Still (flute), Daryl Pratt (percussion) & Daniel Herscovitch (piano) at 6pm on Monday Sept 15 at Recital Hall West, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. I called it "Janet" because [a] I couldn't think of a musical title, [b] I thought the piece deserved a proper name, [c] the piece had a sort of Janet-ish quality, and [d] I didn't know anyone called Janet and therefore couldn't be accused of painting a personal musical portrait. Funnily enough a couple of years ago I bought a male alpaca called Kerry, a name that for idealogical reasons I detested. Looking for a new name I discovered that his original name was "Janet" (don't ask), so he simply took back what was rightfully his ...
*
The little choir I sing in, and direct, is preparing for a private performance that's coming up soon. We don't plan on doing public performances, ever, but we needed something to focus on so that we could achieve our best possible standard. The group's diverse repertoire includes the late Gene Puerling's arrangement of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (as sung by Manhattan Transfer) and my arrangement of my late brother Jerry's beautiful song Special Days.
*
Sunday August 17 2008:
from an article by Mike Whitney called Putin's Winning Hand, about the current problems in Georgia, in today's Information Clearing House:
These facts are not in dispute by those who followed the developments as they took place. Now the media is revising the facts to manage public perceptions, just as they did with the fictional WMD in Iraq. Many people think that the media learned its lesson after they were exposed for using bogus information in the lead up to the war in Iraq. But that is not true. The corporate media - especially FOX News, CNN and PBS (the smug, liberal-sounding channel) - continue to operate like the propaganda arm of the Pentagon ...
In a 2006 referendum, 99% of South Ossetians said they supported independence from Georgia. The voter turnout was 95% and the balloting was monitored by 34 international observers from the west. No one has challenged the results. The province has been under the protection of Russian and Georgian peacekeepers since 1992 and has been a de facto independent state ever since. If Putin applied the same standard as Bush did in Kosovo, he would unilaterally declare South Ossetia independent from Georgia and then thumb his nose at the UN ... But Putin and newly-elected Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have taken a conciliatory attitude towards the international community and tried to resolve the issue through diplomatic channels. So far, they have conducted themselves with restraint and avoided any confrontation ...
[more]
Someone calling him/herself angryaussie, in response:
There was a time when many journalists shared a pride in their profession and strived to maintain a certain ethical standard in their reporting. This ended when Rupert Murdoch gained a foothold in the media and the distortions began.
As someone who spent a lifetime in news and has studied it the way an entomologist might study ants or bees, I place the blame for the current state of the world on this man who has sunk so low as to present to the world a genial presence that covers a mania for money and power exceeding that of any predecessor in the media or any other field of business.
I believe him to be the principal force which is driving our planet towards extinction.
I agree. Murdoch, and his money and influence, are feted the world over, like war criminals Blair, Downer, Howard, Kissinger et al. There can't be effective democracy when the media are used as propaganda machines by their owners, who are almost always in bed with government.
As so often, I turn to David Michael Green and his The Regressive Antidote, this article called My Army Went To Iraq And All I Got Was This Lousy Airlift: The Bush Doctrine Meets Reality. Reality Wins.:
In fact, Iraq and the Georgia war are joined at the hip in too many ways to recount, and must be understood as just such. Altogether, we are now beginning to see the consequences of the Bush Doctrine of foreign policy in all its full glory. And if you liked Katrina, you're really gonna dig this.
It was, to start with, remarkably jaw-dropping to see the buffoon-in-chief fulminating this week about Russia's transgressions in violating the prime directive of modern international law and politics: Thou shalt not invade another sovereign state's territory. Um, excuse me? Are you freaking joking? Do you mean like, Iraq, for instance? Only George W. Bush could be so practiced in the art of deception so as to say this with a straight face. It's not clear that he any longer even knows when he's lying these days, so routine has it become.
In fact, the two incidents are nearly identical in concept, with the minor exception that Putin's war was slightly more justified by the semi-reckless quasi-provocations of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was likely egged on by the Bush loonies and other neocons, including one of John McCain's top advisors. Iraq, alas, was even more of a false pretext. The country had no weapons of mass destruction (and so what if they did, anyhow? - dozens of countries possess these), Bush knew they didn't, knew that the case for war was "thin", knew that Saddam had not attacked nor threatened us, and therefore just plain lied the US into the war.
Your average American is going to have a hard time seeing the Iraq war as morally equivalent to the one in Georgia (let alone even less justified), but that is simply because he or she is American. The rest of the world has no such problem, and never has. An invasion of a sovereign state is an invasion of a sovereign state, pure and simple. It was just that when Hitler invaded Poland and France, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, when Saddam invaded Iran (with US encouragement and assistance) and Kuwait, when Bush invaded Iraq, and when Putin invaded Georgia. Of course aggressors are going to make up some bullshit about terrorism or WMD or democracy! My god, what would we expect them to say? Everyone understands that you can't say you're going in for oil or money or real estate anymore. Especially when you are in fact going in for oil or money or real estate.
[more]
see, also, Justin Raimondo's article Mikheil Saakashvili: War Criminal - A politician's hubris causes untold human suffering
*
Thursday August 7 2008:
Peter Wesley-Smith's and my music theatre piece doublethink, for six singers and bucket [2005], is currently being rehearsed by The Song Company as part of a program they're calling Singing in Tongues. Also on the program: catches from 17th century England, silly songs by Mozart, African and black American songs, Kurt Schwitters' Ur-Sonate and Damien Ricketson's In God's Esperanto. Their tour dates (bookings: 02 8272 9500) are as follows:
to read the text of doublethink, click here
*
I pay tribute to Australian country music veteran Reg Lindsay, who died recently, aged 79, after a battle with pneumonia. I hadn't seen him since the days of his weekly television show - Reg Lindsay's Country and Western Hour - on which the vocal and instrumental trio of which I was a member frequently performed during the 60s, but I remember him as a cheerful, decent and generous bloke with an uncomplicated view of the world and a love of music that communicated directly. He was the first Australian to be officially recognised with a plaque on Nashville's Walkway of Stars.
*
Sunday August 3 2008:
If you're in Darwin at 6.30pm on Sunday August 24, check out a choral concert called Cantar Timor being presented as part of the Darwin Festival by the Darwin Chorale and two choirs from East Timor. Held at the StarShell in the Botanical Gardens, it will feature a new piece - Ola Timor! - by Darwin Chorale conductor Nora Lewis.
Before that, if you're in Dili, East Timor, at 4pm next Saturday August 9, check out a choral concert at the Complecxo GMT, Rua Jacinto Candido. This time the Darwin Chorale will be the guest artists, and Ola Timor! will receive its first performance. As Rob Wesley-Smith points out, "These reciprocal concerts are part of the dream for closer cultural exchange between Darwin and Dili. Darwin Festival has been visited by Cinco do Oriente and Galaxie bands with great success. This year Ego Lemos is again visiting doing a special collaboration with an indigenous star (newly discovered by the rest of the world) in Gurrumul Yunupingu, and Galaxie is back by popular demand."
*
My favourite musical activist is violinist/composer/improviser Jon Rose, who recently played the Mexico/USA border fence in the Sonoran Desert (he bows, scrapes and hits fences, in Australia, Israel and elsewhere, to which he has attached contact microphones, recording the results). Read his account of this adventure here.
*
In the bad old days of my youth, I sang and played in a vocal and instrumental trio called The Wesley Three that during the 60s put out several LPs on the Australian CBS label: two folk song collections called The Wesley Three and City Folk, an LP of children's songs and stories called 'Mr Thwump' and 'Banjo the Singing Rabbit', and a collection of vaudeville songs called Leaning on a Lamp-post. Occasionally, just occasionally, someone remembers:
I have just had the delightful task of digitising our very old LP of Mr Thwump and Banjo the Singing Rabbit. It is as lovely as I remembered, and the song who stopped the rain is particularly poignant.
In 1988 the Sony Corporation of Japan purchased CBS Records internationally. Three years later CBS Records Australia changed its corporate identity to become Sony Music Australia Limited - now Sony Music Entertainment (Australia) Limited. It's unlikely, but possible, that the original master tapes still exist in a basement somewhere. If they haven't crumbled away it might be possible to resurrect the music and re-release some of it on CD or DVD. I'm not myself a great fan of what we did way back then, but in the interests of preserving part of the history of Australia's popular culture I might follow this up ...
*
Saturday August 2 2008:
The Sydney group Charisma is preparing a concert that will include my piece db, for fl, cl, pno & cello. Called House of York, it will consist of pieces by composers associated with the Music Department of The University of York, where I did post-graduate study many years ago: Kirsty Beilharz (Air-Earth-Water-Stars), Steve Ingham (Triple Concerto), Roger Marsh (Ferry Music), the late Wilfred Mellers (Trio) and me. Who? Ros Dunlop, clarinets; James Kortum, flute; David Miller, piano; and Julia Ryder, cello. When? 3pm Sunday Aug 31. Where? Recital Hall West, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. How much? $30, $20 (concession). Bookings & enquiries: 02 9810 2253 (email).
db was recorded several years ago by The Australia Ensemble for a CD of my chamber music that Tall Poppies is allegedly going to bring out real soon now (if you would like to be notified when this CD has been released, please email me).
*
Friday August 1 2008:
Next Monday night on Australian television: Andrew Denton on Enough Rope (ABC 1, 9.35pm) interviews José Ramos-Horta, President of Timor-Leste. Horta has been busy of late, pardoning hardened criminals yet persecuting Angelita Pires, the lover of Reinado and the woman whom Horta accuses of inciting Reinado and his men to murder. No evidence has been presented, and no charges have been laid, but Ms Pires has had to surrender her passport to East Timorese authorities, has had no financial support other than that provided by friends and family, and has received death threats. I hope that Denton asks Horta about what appears to be a gross miscarriage of justice.
There is good news, however: the Australian Government, through its Attorney-General's Department, has agreed to fund up to USD64K of Miss Pires' legal costs (she is an Australian citizen). She wrote to her supporters:
Angelita is the sister of the late Francisco Baptista Pires (nicknamed Quito), who was the subject of Peter Wesley-Smith's and my multimedia piece for six singers, piano and computer sounds and images called Quito. For information about this work, click here.
Author Clinton Fernandes believes that eventually an international tribunal will deal with the crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the Indonesian military in East Timor. He writes in an email dated July 31 2008 and titled SBY's Timorese Triumph:
One wonders how the world can take itself seriously when it puts Karadzic in the dock and not those who orchestrated and/or carried out one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century: East Timor, 1975-1999. And how about Bush, Blair, Howard et al, whose decision to invade - illegally - Iraq is responsible for over one million deaths? Kissinger, anyone? Rumsfeld? Cheney? The list is long ...
*
Tuesday July 22 2008:
I've been reading this year's Manning Clark Lecture, given at Manning Clark House, Canberra, on March 10 2008 by barrister and human rights campaigner Julian Burnside. An excerpt:
An article by Burnside formed the basis of and inspiration for my audio-visual piece Weapons of Mass Distortion, for clarinet & Macintosh computer. This piece - about propaganda, doublespeak, lies etc, especially those that led to the invasion of Iraq - is often played on soprano sax, and, on marimba, by American percussionist Mike Crain, amongst others. If you are a potential performer of this piece and wish to enquire about getting the performance materials, email me here.
*
Thursday July 17 2008:
Excerpts from an article - Little War Criminals Get Punished, Big Ones Don't - by Paul Craig Roberts in yesterday's Information Clearing House:
Australia was only a bit-player in the invasion of Iraq, but we can offer at least two defendants: ex-Prime Minister John Howard and ex-Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. Gentlemen: the time of reckoning is nigh - prepare your defence!
*
Wednesday July 16 2008:
Went to Sydney today for a Song Company rehearsal of my 2005 piece doublethink, for six singers and bucket, which the group has scheduled for several performances later this year. A highly satirical piece about propaganda, some of its political barbs have been blunted a little by the passage of time, requiring some judicious re-writing ...
Marvellous group, The Song Company! They've recently been performing several songs of mine in their WALTZING MATILDA program, which they're currently touring: She Wore a Black Ribbon (from Black Ribbon), Tommy Tanna (A White Woman to her Kanaka Swain), The Don (from Black Ribbon), The Hunt (from Boojum!), Jubjubby (from Boojum!), We Must Be Off (from Boojum!) and Lines of a Lovelorn Cowhand (from Several Australian Barbershop Quartets). The program has so far this year been performed in Neil St Uniting Church, Ballarat (Jan 13), Orange Civic Theatre (June 27), Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre (June 28), Soldiers Memorial Hall, Trangie (June 29), Sydney Conservatorium (July 2), Newcastle Conservatorium (July 3), Arc Theatre, National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra (July 11) and Arts Centre, Campbelltown (July 12). Still to come: Sydney Conservatorium, again (Sun July 20), Frensham School, Mittagong (Sat July 26), Coffs Harbour Conservatorium (Fri Aug 1), Armidale Conservatorium (Sun Aug 3), Inverell (Wed Aug 6) and St Mary's, Ballina (Fri Aug 8). For details - or to purchase a CD of a live recording of the WALTZING MATILDA program (made last year in the Sydney Opera House) - call The Song Company on 02 8272 9500 or email them here.
*
I'm currently organising the Sixth Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival, with pianist Robert Constable, for August 20. A proposed new episode in the continuing saga of Dirty Dan the Pump-Out Man (a series of locally-made silent movies which I've shot and edited) has foundered due to the resignation of one of the key actors, so this year's event will be an all-Keaton affair (My Wife's Relations, The Paleface and The Seven Chances). For details, see here.
*
Monday July 14 2008:
in today's edition of Crikey,
Alan Kennedy writes:
The transcript includes the revelation that Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas boasted to Downer that it was legitimate to arm the "auxiliaries" (Timorese militia bribed and threatened into supporting Indonesia in the 1999 referendum, mainly through murdering pro-Independence supporters) and that they were doing so. This was before Downer made his "rogue elements" comments. Two things: [1] Downer's lies paved the way for thousands of innocent Timorese lives to be lost; [2] The Order of Australia awarded to Ali Alatas, no doubt at ex-Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans' behest, should be stripped from him forthwith. What a scandal!
*
Sunday July 13 2008:
Tom Hyland writes in last Friday's The Sydney Morning Herald (July 11 2008):
It says the Indonesian state bears "institutional responsibility" for atrocities including murder, rape, torture, illegal detention, and forced mass deportations.
Well, well, well, who would've thought it, eh? It has taken nine years, during which time not a single Indonesian citizen has been convicted of any crime to do with Indonesia's illegal occupation of East Timor, to discover that it wasn't just a few "rogue elements", as Alexander Downer repeatedly claimed at the time, but the Indonesian army, police and civilian authorities who "consistently and systematically co-operated with and supported the (pro-Indonesia) militias in ways that contributed to the perpetration of crimes" and that "Indonesia bears state responsibility" for gross violations of human rights.
The world's a funny old place, isn't it? David Hicks, "the worst of the worst", can spend years of his life in Guantanamo Bay in solitary confinement for "supporting terrorism", yet Downer, John Howard et al can support terrorism far more effectively, and blatantly, yet not only remain free men but be richly rewarded. Go figure.
Read the full article here.
*
Monday July 7 2008:
My librettist/lyricist/brother etc Peter Wesley-Smith once wrote an epic nonsense poem, called The Hunting of the Snark: Second Expedition - a sort of sequel to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. It was published by the now-defunct Cherry Books. It has now been published on the web, in both English and Russian, with illustrations by Paul Stanish. See here. Carroll's poem was the inspiration for and basis of Peter's and my full-length choral music theatre piece Boojum!, a half-hour of which was broadcast the other day on ABC-FM.
*
At 1.10pm this coming Wednesday (July 9) at St James Church in Sydney: cellist Rachel Scott gives a recital that includes my piece Uluru Song, for singing cellist.
*
At 3pm on the following Wednesday (July 16) in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, the band Resonaxis will give a concert. Brooke Shelley, an ex-student of mine at the Sydney Conservatorium, who sings in the band, asks: "Who'll play louder: the Gibson Explorer or the SOH Concert Hall Pipe Organ?" Guitarist Michael Sheridan, another ex-student of mine, also plays in the band.
*
Saturday July 5 2008:
Went to a concert last night put on by blind musicians at a Braille Music Camp at Frensham School, Mittagong. The musical standard varied enormously, but not the level of commitment and enthusiasm: words like "heart-warming" and "inspiring" were heard escaping the lips of the capacity audience ... The choir premiered - to what I thought was a rather underwhelming audience response [!] - Peter's and my song Had We But Eyes To See, which we wrote for the occasion. A version of this, for solo vocalist & piano, is available as a free download here. The first verse:
*
There was a review by Graeme Skinner of The Song Company's Waltzing Matilda program in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald. The penultimate paragraph reads:
As it happens, Ian Cooper was one of the main organisers of last night's concert.
*
Sunday June 29 2008:
Last Friday's concert in Kangaroo Valley by brilliant a cappella vocal jazz quartet The Idea of North was stunning! Great voices, great arrangements, precision ensemble-singing at its best, yet superbly presented, with charm and good humour. From an email to my brother Peter, who was Chief Organizer (actually Chief Delegator), from a friend:
Not a bad wrap! I heard other people say it was the best concert they'd ever attended. One wrote: "I cant tell you how much I enjoyed hearing/seeing/experiencing The Idea of North ... they were absolutely fantastic ... what more can I say!".
This is them: Nick Begbie (tenor), Andrew Piper (bass), Sally Cameron (soprano) and Naomi Crellin (alto).
later: Carl Leddy, reviewing the concert in the July edition of Kangaroo Valley Voice, collected a few more audience reactions:
*
Wednesday June 25 2008:
Timothy, Bree and Michael
Synergy Percussion's Michael Askill, Timothy Constable and Bree van Reyk continue their explorations with some of the world's most ancient instruments including gongs from China and singing bowls from the Himalayas. For centuries, these instruments have been used in spiritual and shamanic practices throughout Asia.
Bob Scott, one of Australia's leading sound designers, will use the latest in music software technology to create live transformations of these sounds into liquid landscapes evoking space and time.
There were twelve people, all in all, for dinner, including two Chinese WWOOFers from Hong Kong, who arrived yesterday to stay for a few days (and to help with Friday's The Idea of North concert). Various people cooked, a highlight being my (soon-to-be?) famous ox-tail stew!
I've known Michael Askill since we were students in Adelaide together. It's Timothy Constable's Dad, Robert Constable, who comes to Kangaroo Valley every year to accompany silent movies to raise money for projects in East Timor (see here). Bob Scott is the recording engineer who has been working with The Song Company recording various songs of ours for an eventual CD release.
*
Saturday June 21 2008:
I didn't know Michel Waisvisz personally, but I had high regard for him as an experimental musician and director - for twenty seven years - of the Dutch music research institute STEIM. He died last Wednesday, just 58 years old. According to an email from STEIM,
*
I'm currently helping organize a concert in Kangaroo Valley Hall this coming Friday (June 27) of brilliant a cappella vocal jazz quartet The Idea of North. For information about the group, click here. To make a mail order booking, download this form. The concert is being put on by the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership, which helps initiate and support projects in East Timor.
*
Wednesday June 18 2008:
One of the highlights of my week is reading the occasional essay written and/or published by Tom Engelhart for his TomDispatch email list. In an article in yesterday's truthout called Love, Tom, Leslie Thatcher quotes Tom:
"It's simply better to act". I believe that all the demos and protests in the 1980s against the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor kept a tiny candle of hope alive. No-one knew what impact any of them might have had. Protestors were told, many times, that East Timor's fate was signed and sealed and that protests were a waste of time, effort and resources. But now, years later, we can see that they kept alive a protest infrastructure that was reinvigorated by the Santa Cruz massacre of 1991 and that exerted relentless and effective pressure from then until 1999 when Timor was liberated.
*
Monday June 16 2008:
Went yesterday to an Open Studio - a one-day exhibit of art works by Catherine Schieve and performance by Warren Burt at the Barracks Arts Studios in Bomaderry, which is not far from Kangaroo Valley. Catherine showed Dirt Paintings, Dirt Poundings, and Miniature "Geo-Haikus" as well as some earthy jewellery and artifacts. Warren played four pieces, including Board Instruments, Transpositions and Delays (2008), which used homemade electro-acoustic percussion board instruments processed by computer. Cool stuff, very enjoyable.
*
Friday June 13 2008:
Am going today to the funeral of the son of some friends of mine. Apparently Eli Westlake was the victim of a road rage incident in Sydney the other day. A woman allegedly used her car as a weapon in an act of drug-and-alcohol-fuelled stupidity, and has been charged with murder. What a senseless tragedy ... Later: It was a most moving ceremony, provoking a wide range of emotions, a mix of tears, laughter, incredible sadness, and great beauty attended by hundreds of people. The Goldner String Quartet played the Albinoni Adagio and the third movement of String Quartet No.II by Eli's dad Nigel. Current and ex-members of Synergy - Michael Askill, Peter Jacob, Rebecca Lagos and Graeme Leak - played drum music as we walked behind the coffin from St Albans Hall to the cemetery. David Hudson performed a Didgeridoo Dedication, and Eli's brother Joel introduced a song - Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? - that he and mates Jessie, Stew, Thai & Toby had written and recorded only weeks before. Lisa Westlake read a poem she'd written called If I Die, Michael Askill played a Himalayan Singing Bowl Dedication, and Mathew Priestley performed a Traditional Smoking Ceremony at the cemetery. Various family members spoke in farewell to a much-loved young man.
*
Have received a commission for an audio-visual piece ...
*
Tuesday June 10 2008:
Today is my twin brother Peter's birthday. Other prominent June Tenthers include friends of mine pianist/composer Ian Munro and arts administrator/music therapist Peta Williams as well as writer Saul Bellow, model & actor Linda Evangelista, Frances Ethel Gumm (otherwise known as actor/singer Judy Garland), harmonica-player Howlin' Wolf, actor Elizabeth Hurley, Prince Philip and writer Maurice Sendak. Composers include Giovanni Battista Polledro (born 1781), W A Remy (1831), Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843), Pavel Borkovec (1894), Robert Still (1910) & Nicolas Roussakis (1934). Geminis do not, of course, believe in astrology (ha!), but one chart I read says "This is a year in which to break new ground and to accomplish great things." Yo! Watch this space ...
*
Sunday June 8 2008:
Have been working on publicity for the forthcoming Idea of North concert in Kangaroo Valley (Friday June 27). For information about the group, click here. To make a mail order booking, download this form.
The group's CDs and DVD can be bought at the gig as well as at The ABC Shop, Koorong Books, Sanity, Chaos Music and elsewhere.
*
Yesterday was the birthday of my late brother Jerry, who died a couple of years ago in Adelaide. The choir I sing in is currently learning my arrangement of his beautiful song Special Days ...
*
I went this morning to a wonderful little puppet show put on at a local festival with puppets by Terry Hennessy. The cast included Chris Nobel (Flapper, Willie Wombat) and Patsy Radic (Miss Poppy). The festival raised money for the Kangaroo Valley Pre-School.
*
Thursday June 5 2008:
Went to Sydney last night to listen to a cappella jazz vocal quartet The Idea of North at The Basement. It was an official farewell to soprano Trish Delaney-Brown, who decided not to re-join the group after maternity leave, and an official welcome to new soprano Sally Cameron. It was, as expected, superb. Great group!
They will be performing in Kangaroo Valley Hall at 7.30pm on Friday June 27 2008. Tickets: $30, $25 (concession) available from Kangaroo Valley Supermarket or by calling 02 4465 1299. Concert presented by The Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership (raising funds for projects in East Timor).
*
Sunday June 1 2008:
Reviews of the Victorian Opera/Malthouse production of the new Upton/John opera Through the Looking Glass have appeared. Here's an excerpt from one by Michael Magnusson:
Through the Looking Glass is the first collaboration between Malthouse Theatre and Victorian Opera ... astonishing new opera (which) explores perceptions of childhood and growing up ... an intriguing work ... Peter Corrigan's incredible set, costume and puppet design ... as fascinating and confusing as Alice's (and Carroll's) thoughts ... With the likes of David Hobson and Suzanne Johnston, the cast are all wonderful ... However, Dimity Shepherd is outstanding as Alice ... Conductor Richard Gill says, "Shiny new operas are held very close to our hearts." It is indeed rare to see an Australian opera produced ...
The review is thoughtful, well-written and generally complimentary. I particularly like Melbourne writer Alison Croggon's review in her Theatre Notes, May 22 2008. An excerpt:
It resulted in some extraordinary literature, of which Lewis Carroll's children's books, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, are probably the most famous. In these stories, first invented by Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson to entertain the young Alice Liddell during a boatride down a river, enchantment is suffused by a surreal cruelty and callousness. This often discomforting ambiguity is a major part of the books' continuing fascination, and the driving force behind this operatic adaptation by composer Alan John and librettist Andrew Upton.
At the heart of this opera is a photograph Dodgson took of Alice as a child. She appears to have been artfully posed: her head is tilted slightly so she looks over her naked, exposed shoulder, her expression knowing, suggestive of an adult sexuality at odds with her thin, childish body. Whether these and other photos Dodgson took of young girls show him to be a paedophile is a hotly debated question, although there is no evidence that he was. What is beyond doubt, however, is the disturbing power of the image, poised between childish unknowing and adult knowingness and caught in the gaze of the photographer, like those Victorian collections of butterflies pinned under glass.
The opera adapts Through the Looking Glass as a double narrative, exploring the writing of the story, and Alice Pleasance Liddell's subsequent lifelong identification as Carroll's creation, through the strange landscape of Carroll's fantasy. Upton's libretto reaches no conclusions and no judgments about Dodgson himself: rather, he follows Alice through the writer's projections, a confusing mirror-world in which she loses her identity, even her own name; a world in which she exists only as a figment of someone else's imagination. As Tweedle Dum says of the Red King, "why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!".
John's score exploits the full resources of a small band - harp, piano, harmonium and percussion - and, like the production itself, makes little concession to the tropes of Victorian England. It's inventive theatrical music, which plunges straight into the action: it's always unexpected, diving from dissonant sound into lyric melody, evoking moods from comedy to sorrow to absurdity. In fact, at the end, when only four musicians stood up to bow, I was taken completely by surprise - how had so few made so much and so various music? I should also note Richard Gill's presence, not only as conductor, but for his speaking part ("Hang onto the goat's beard!") which broke an imaginary wall between band and stage, and stirred a ripple of laughter. As Gill is playing a train conductor, it's also a terrible pun ... [more]
Talking of Struwwelpeter, brother Peter and I, when we were teenagers, wrote a song called Little Tommy Suck-a-Thumb that was inspired by one of the stories in that book. It was recorded on a CBS LP (large flat round black disc thing with a hole in the middle) by The Wesley Three way back when ...
*
Wednesday May 28 2008:
Two pieces of mine - Weapons of Mass Distortion and White Knight & Beaver - are being performed tonight at a Sydney Eclectic Composers Society concert called CAPTURED! at Recital Hall East, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Concert starts at 7.30pm. Unfortunately I'm ailing at the moment with a 'flu-type thing so I can't be there (I'm also missing Song Company recording sessions in Sydney of songs of mine). Other pieces on the program include Slippery Crossings by Liz Daley, Fragmemories and Sonar Pulse by Henrique Dib, and Interweave by Cameron Lam. For more information, click here.
I told my mother I was going to a SECS concert and was grounded for a week!
*
Like millions of others, I subscribe to many of the campaigns mounted by AVAAZ, "an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making." Their latest campaign is to ban cluster munitions:
Cluster munitions don't just kill during war. They scatter small, shiny, unexploded "bomblets" on the ground that hold their deadly charge for years. When children pick them up, they are often maimed or killed. Most governments agree that these weapons should be outlawed, but back-room pressure is rising to undercut a strong ban. We're hearing the Australian delegation is one of the problems -- so we need to send an avalanche of messages from Australian Avaaz members to Kevin Rudd (we will forward all your messages to his team!)
I agree, so I went to their web-site and wrote to Mr Rudd:
Dear Kevin Rudd,
The world tilted on its axis last November when you and your team ended twelve years of darkness. You were a ray of light that raised the hopes of millions of Australians that at last we would have good government that would make common-sense decisions about the big issues e.g. climate change, alternative energy ... and cluster bombs. I can't believe that Australia is dragging its feet in backing a strong international treaty to ban cluster bombs! Do you, as a Christian, think it a good thing to use bombs whose primary target, even if an unintended one, is kids? Let kids be kids, you say - surely you can't refuse to try to stop what is a disaster for kids wherever these horrific weapons are used?
I urge you, sir, to do everything in your power to push for a ban on cluster munitions. Establish Australia as, once again, a country setting the highest moral standards in international relations. Or will your name, like that of your predecessor, elicit expressions of disgust whenever decent men and women of Australia congregate?
Yours sincerely,
Martin Wesley-Smith
A bit over-the-top? I don't think so, especially given that Rudd's government hasn't expressed any reason why cluster bombs should not be banned outright.
*
Monday May 26 2008:
There's a new opera being performed in Melbourne. It's Through the Looking Glass, it's based on Lewis Carroll's classic children's book, and it's by Andrew Upton (libretto) and Alan John (music). For more information, click here. I'm interested in all Australian opera, music theatre etc, of course, but particularly in this one, partly 'cos I've always enjoyed Alan John's music and partly 'cos there was a previous Australian "opera" sort-of-thing based on Lewis Carroll's work: Peter Wesley-Smith's and my Boojum!, which was premiered at the 1986 Adelaide Festival of Arts. Read Upton's Through the Looking Glass libretto here. For comparison, here's Wesley-Smith's libretto: act one; act two. Buy the Boojum! CD here.
Conducted by Richard Gill, who initiated the project, and directed by Michael Kantor (artistic director of the Malthouse), Through the Looking Glass is on till May 31 in the Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse, Melbourne. It stars Kanen Breen, Margaret Haggart, David Hobson, Suzanne Johnston, Gary Rowley and Dimity Shepherd. See Here's looking at you, kid by Robin Usher, The Age, May 16 2008 ("DIMITY Shepherd enjoys a challenge, but she admits the complexity of playing Alice in an operatic adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic Through the Looking Glass is 'doing my head in'. 'I mean that in a creative way,' she says. 'The character keeps looking for answers, and I have to work out how I feel as an actor dealing with so many questions.'")
My piece Mrs Hargreaves Remembers, for soprano & piano (1997), is also based on Through the Looking Glass. As it happens, it's being recorded this week by Ruth Kilpatrick (soprano) and Roland Peelman (piano) from The Song Company. It will be included on a CD - possibly a double CD - of songs of mine (lyrics by Peter Wesley-Smith) that Song Co is planning to release. Other songs include Our Don (a tribute to Don Bradman), Sticky Wicket (about the British in Hong Kong facing, in 1997, the hand-back of the colony to the Chinese communists), Tommy Tanna (about the love of a white woman, in Queensland in the late nineteenth century, for her black "Kanaka swain"), In the Good Old, Good Old Days (expressing a yearning for how it was before the worst excesses of the Howard Government: "We had youth, hope and pluck/And we didn't give a fig/Back in the good old, good old ways/Of the good old, good old days"), We Thought We'd Lost You, Johnny (about parents discovering their son is gay), Recruiting Song (about the perils of masturbation), It Ain't Natural (about artificial insemination) and Baghdad Baby Boy (a lullaby). Two of the rare songs that don't have a lyric by Peter are Recollections of a Foreign Minister (a setting of excerpts from Lord Downer of Baghdad's testimony to the Cole Inquiry into the Australian Wheat Board scandal) and Hold Hard, Ned (a setting of part of Adam Lindsay Gordon's poem The Sick Stockrider).
*
Wednesday May 21 2008:
Haven't been able to blog for a while: got back last night from a couple of weeks in Hong Kong, where I went in order to write music, create audio-visual sequences, and do the playback for a Hong Kong Fringe Club production of Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong - His Persecution and the Triumph of the Glorious Rule of Law, a play by Peter Wesley-Smith. Directed by Peter Jordan, it starred Lee Chun Chow as Ho Chi Minh. Every one of the five scheduled performances was sold out, so a Sunday matinee was put on. That, too, sold out. Audience responses that I heard were enthusiastic. Discussions are being held re possible productions in Singapore and other countries. All in all, a success!
"Hong Kong, 1931. Ho Chi Minh vs. The Hong Kong Government. A true tale of confrontation, an unlikely friendship, near-death and escape that change the course of history."
*
After the recent deaths of two musician friends of mine - composer Tristram Cary and clarinettist Gabor Reeves - I was wondering who the third one would be (in my experience, these things often come in threes). While I was away I heard that academic, author, composer, educator, composer and friend Wilfred Mellers had moved on. Born in 1914, he was a good age, but his irrepressible energy, and the perpetual twinkle in his eye, meant that his death still came as a shock. He was the foundation Professor of Music at the University of York, England, where I had the pleasure and privilege to study in the early 1970s.
From an obituary by Peter Dickinson in The Independent, Monday, 19 May 2008:
Mellers raised eyebrows when, as a university professor, he wrote Twilight of the Gods: the Beatles in retrospect (1973). Undeterred, he followed it with A Darker Shade of Pale: a backdrop to Bob Dylan (1984) and Angels of the Night: popular female singers of our time (1986). His mainstream interests were represented by books on music and society as well as monographs such as Bach and the Dance of God (1980), Beethoven and the Voice of God (1983), Vaughan Williams and the Vision of Albion (1989), Percy Grainger (1992) and Francis Poulenc (1993) as well as studies of less familiar figures such as Frederic Mompou (1989).
[more]
I salute the man, his music and his good works.
*
Monday May 5 2008:
Last Saturday afternoon I attended a workshop conducted by Australia's gospel maestro - singer, composer, vocal arranger, musical director, workshop leader and author - Tony Backhouse. What a buzz! Along with 120 or so other people, I became part of an instant choir that ten minutes after the session started sounded like the congregation of a black Baptist church in the Deep South of the USA. Well, not quite. But we sounded pretty hot, especially to those in it. The next day I attended a concert by The Café of the Gate of Salvation, Australia's leading gospel choir that Tony Backhouse formed in 1986. Brilliant! I loved hearing again some of the old songs - many by Tony - that I enjoyed during the 90s in Sydney. There was some excellent new material, too, and some stunning young singers. It was exuberant, joyous and, dare I say it, inspirational. I think that what we need now is Secular Gospel. OK, maybe that's oxymoronic ... but it should be possible to have exuberant and joyous community choral music that doesn't need to invoke images of a Christian heaven - music that requires and celebrates people from all walks of life, backgrounds and beliefs coming together to pursue, for no material gain, artistic co-operation. That, for me, would be truly inspirational.
Both events were held in Kangaroo Valley Hall. All power to the Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival for organising them.
Back in the early 90s, Tony recorded some songs for the CD of Peter's and my full-length choral piece Boojum!, including I'm a Caterpillar of Society (Not a Social Butterfly) and The "How Can a Barrister Lose?" Blues.
*
Last Saturday morning our local East Timor support group, the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership, received a visit from Jim and Moira Collins from sister group Bega Valley Advocates for Timor Leste (PO Box 480, Bega, NSW 2550 Australia). Both now in their 80s but still incredibly active, they are a real inspiration to all of us. The Bega mob supports the Natarbora community in East Timor. On one of his visits there, Jim issued the following statement:
Jim and Moira have poured an enormous amount of their personal funds into assisting the people of Natarbora.
*
One thing I enjoy a lot each year is going to an annual concert put on by the Braille Music Camp at Frensham School in Mittagong, New South Wales. Peter and I recently wrote a song called Had We But Eyes to See, which I sent to blind composer/arranger Ian Cooper, who helps organise the camp. I received an email from him yesterday saying that they will be performing the song at this year's concert, which will be on Friday 4th July. Watch this space for details ...
*
Have just heard that the funeral of composer Tristram Cary will be held at 11.30am this Friday, May 9, at Heyson Chapel, Centennial Park, Adelaide, followed by a wake.
*
More sad news: clarinettist Gabor Reeves died in Adelaide yesterday after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease. He was a lecturer at the University of Adelaide when I was an undergraduate student there back in the 60s. As a member of the University of Adelaide Wind Quintet (along with David Cubbin, flute, Jiri Tancibudek, oboe, Stan Fry, horn, and Tom Wightman, bassoon), he played one of the first pieces I ever wrote: Gum Tears of an Arabian Tree, for tenor & wind quintet (a setting of poems by Australian poet Ern Malley). Later we were colleagues at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He was an excellent player and teacher who will be sorely missed by many.
*
And yet more: I've just heard that singer and arranger Gene Puerling (The Hilos, Singers Unlimited) died a few weeks ago. From mdb11, Google Groups/alt.obituaries, March 29 2008:
In addition to his work as arranger for the Singers Unlimited and
the Hi-Los, Puerling also arranged for the Manhattan Transfer on a
few occasions, winning a Grammy award in 1982 for that group's a
capella rendition of the song A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square,
and a Grammy nomination for their first Christmas Album. He also
arranged backings on a few tracks for Gloria Estefan's Christmas album
and the Carpenters' Passage album.
If his d.o.b. as 3/31/1929 is correct, he would have [been] 79 on Monday.
There were many fine vocal-group arrangers in the 1950s-'60s, among them Anita Kerr, Harry Simeone and Ray Conniff. But Puerling really stretched his intricate harmonies to maximum levels not heard before. He formed Singers Unlimited in 1967, and thanks to a jazz pianist who discovered them in 1971, they were signed to the MPS jazz label and their popularity grew, as did Puerling's always brilliant creativity. That pianist, btw, was Oscar Peterson, who passed just 3 months ago ...
The little choir I sing with is currently learning Puerling's Manhattan Transfer arrangement of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (beautiful arrangement, but hard to sing). I've been a fan of The Hilos since I was 15 or so.
*
Sunday April 27 2008:
Have just come back from a couple of days in Ungarie and West Wyalong in the Riverina district of New South Wales, and in Canberra. The reason I went there? Along with other members of my extended family I was visiting the site of a 1942 aircraft accident near Ungarie that took the lives of my father's young brother Robbie Wesley-Smith and four navigators training to participate in the Second World War. A cousin, Terry Wesley-Smith, did the sleuthing work that revealed the exact location of the plane's impact. He designed and had made a plaque for the crash site and another one for the Ungarie RSL, and he gave a speech about the accident during last Friday's 11am ANZAC Day service. We were shown wonderful and generous hospitality by the current owner of the crash site - Laurin West - and his family, neighbours and friends, despite the area being in the eighth year of a vicious drought.
I should say here that I'm not a great fan of the nationalism surrounding ANZAC Day ("the one day of the year"), nor of the way it has been hijacked by Christianity. If atheists wish to commemorate those who died defending - so it is claimed - this country, they should be able to do so without having Christian dogma shoved down their throats and without being forced, effectively, to sing such racist rubbish as verse 4 of "The Recessional - Lest We Forget":
I'm not entirely sure what this actually means, but it's clear that we're not meant to be impressed by Gentiles (which most of us are), and even less so by "lesser breeds without the law" (God's law, I assume) ... On the way home I stopped off in Canberra, where Alice Giles' SHE (Seven Harp Ensemble) was recording a CD for Tall Poppies Records. They did two pieces of mine: Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers and Seven Widows at the Gates of Sugamo.
*
When I got home I received some sad news from John Cary, son of electronic music pioneer Tristram Cary:
I hadn't seen much of Tristram recently (he lived in Adelaide), but we'd been good friends for many years. He built his own electronic music studio after the Second World War and used it for, amongst other things, early episodes of the BBC's Dr Who. Later, he helped develop the Putney VCSIII synthesizer. He was a pioneer of computer music, too, yet his music included film music (e.g. The Ladykillers, Ealing Films, 1955), orchestral music (e.g. Scenes from a Life, 2000) and chamber music (e.g. Narcissus, for flute and two tape recorders). This versatile composer was also a music critic, author and academic. His adventurousness - both musical and technical - was an inspiration to many, including me ... A good short biography can be seen here.
*
from Bill Kempster, Director of Choral Activities at the University of New Hampshire, today:
*
Have come across a YouTube video of a performance by percussionist Justin R. Stolarik (or is it the appropriately named D A Timpster?) of my piece White Knight & Beaver. Miles Anderson, trombonist extraordinaire who commissioned the piece with fiddle-player Erica Sharp, thought the performer did a nice job, although he wondered if the pitch changes had been authorised by the composer ...
The YouTube site contains a blurb by Mr Stolarik which includes the following program note by me:
The score of this 1984 piece, for one or two soloists and tape, is available, along with a rehearsal CD, from The Australian Music Centre. It was written as a study for my subsequent large-scale choral music theatre work Boojum!, which was premiered at the 1986 Adelaide Festival of Arts before the Queen of England.
*
Saturday April 19 2008:
One of my favourite commentators on Indonesian matters, novelist, journalist, filmmaker and playwright Andre Vltchek, writes in the Asia Times, April 16 2008:
Here it goes again. Elderly men with husky, over-smoked voices from Indonesia's House of Representatives - a group synonymous with corruption and laziness - droning on about morality and about "how to protect the nation" from the ills of pornography.
This time, they have succeeded. While the nation was off guard, distracted by soaring food prices, a collapsing road system and general hopelessness, the House of Representatives on March 25 passed a bill banning all pornographic websites, threatening to jail users and providers who will now face up to three years in prison or a substantial fine. To be sure, Indonesia is still "softer" than Saudi Arabia, but the new bill is as tough or even tougher than anti-pornography laws in many other Muslim countries. What are the nation's priorities?
Once again, the state's enormous apparatus of surveillance can be put to good use. Those in the security apparatus who feared losing their jobs after the fascist dictator Suharto stepped down almost a decade ago, can breath a sigh of relief. Millions of men, women and children who were spying on their neighbors, denouncing them for being "Chinese" or "communists" or "atheists", or whatever, will now be able to return to their old routine. There is a new challenge, a new enemy that Indonesia has to fight and defeat - pornography ... [more]
*
Friday April 18 2008:
I've recently arranged the traditional spiritual Ev'ry Time I Feel da Spirit for a cappella choir [SATB]. It's available here as a free download (five pages, 124KB).
*
The Observer, Thurs 17 April, reports that Timorese murderer - now Indonesian citizen - Eurico Guterres, who was responsible for much of the carnage by pro-Indonesian militias in pre-independence East Timor, especially in 1999, has recently set up pro-Indonesian militias all over West Papua from his base in Timika near the location of the giant Freeport gold & copper mine. "Sentenced to a term of 10 years by the Indonesian Supreme Court on 13th March 2006, he was released last week after serving just two years imprisonment. It was always believed that he operated with funding and direction from Kopassus (Komando Pasukan Khusus), the Indonesian special forces. We now know this to be true ... (His) long Taliban-like beard may signify his readiness to wage war for jihad, despite his plans to enter politics to become a regent or even a governor of a province."
Trial Watch reports:
Great, huh? One of the most blatant acts of mass murder and wanton destruction in recent years is, in effect, given official approval by Indonesia. What is particularly worrying about this is that Guterres and others have a green light to do the same in West Papua ...
*
I'm currently writing music, and preparing audio-visual sequences, for a Hong Kong Fringe Club production of Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong - His Persecution and the Triumph of the Glorious Rule of Law, a play by Peter Wesley-Smith. See here. Directed by Peter Jordan, it will star Lee Chun Chow as Ho Chi Minh.
*
Wednesday April 9 2008:
Have been writing program notes for a CD of some of my chamber music that will be released shortly by Tall Poppies Records. Called Merry-Go-Round, and performed by members of The Australia Ensemble, it consists of:
My CD notes begin: "Apart from a few little piano pieces composed when I was 8 or so (Donkey Gallop was one, I remember), my first composition was a song called Old Mrs Polkinghorne (she was a woman who kept cows at Port Willunga near Adelaide, where I grew up). After that there was a juvenile piano piece that I gave to my school music teacher, David Swale, before attending school chapel one morning. As I trooped in with the other kids I heard, as part of a free-flowing organ improvisation, my new piece! I decided then and there to become a composer. What you are holding in your hands is a consequence of that fateful decision ..." Another CD of my music is in the works, this one containing many of my songs. Watch this space!
*
Friday April 4 2008:
Have updated the website of the USA multimedia concert tour that clarinettist Ros Dunlop and I are planning for September & October this year. See here.
*
Wednesday April 2 2008:
Here are free downloads of the sheet music of some of my songs for kids (of all ages):
*
Tuesday April 1 2008:
Music & politics: excerpts from Musical response to manmade and natural disasters ..., Appalachian State University News, March 31 2008:
The recital begins with Les Oiseaux by Japanese composer and saxophonist Ryo Noda. Written in 1977, the composition is intended to address the dangers posed by pollution.
The duo also will perform Lamentations (pour la fin du monde) by Claude Baker which was written in response to the many tragic events of recent years, including tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, famines and wars.
The composition The Fall of the Empire: Angel Shoot was written for Sampen and Shrude by Frederick Rzewski. It explores humankind's confusion of good and evil.
Shrude's composition Lacrimosa ... was written in memory of music students from Bowling Green State University and Indiana University who were killed in a plane crash in 2006.
Sampen and Shrude also will perform Voices of Dissent, which represents "protest" portraits by the composition faculty of Bowling Green State University; Weapons of Mass Distortion, which is Australian composer Martin Wesley-Smith's collage of events and statements leading up to the Iraq invasion; and Vache Sharafyan's Sonata, which evokes an image of Armenia which has been haunted by centuries of invasion, war and holocaust ... [more]
See, also, The Pulse ("Chattanooga's Weekly Alternative"), Wed April 9 2008.
I met John Sampen after a concert that clarinettist Ros Dunlop and I did at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in 2003, where Weapons of Mass Distortion had just received its premiere performance. He was keen to arrange it for soprano saxophone. He did so, and has subsequently performed it many times. As a result of his having played it at a saxophone congress, many other saxophonists are now playing it ...
Yesterday Ros and I submitted an application for an Australia Council "Pathways" grant to enable us to do more concerts in the USA in September and October of this year. So far we have gigs in art galleries, community halls, university concert halls etc in, amongst others, Wisconsin (Maddison), Illinois (University of West Illinois, University of North Illinois, University of Southern Illinois), Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh), East Lansing (Michigan), Kentucky (Louisville), Kansas, North Carolina, Toronto and Vancouver. If anyone else in the USA (and elsewhere) is interested in a concert of audio-visual works on political themes (Afghanistan, East Timor, Iraq etc), feel free to email me.
*
Sunday March 30 2008:
Next Tuesday night at 9.30pm on ABC-TV: an episode of Foreign Correspondent called Papua in Peril, about HIV/AIDS in West Papua. Reporter: Helen Vatsikopoulos. Excerpts from the ABC's blurb about the program:
My audio-visual piece Papua Merdeka, for bass clarinet & Macintosh computer, is about the literal and metaphorical rape of the West Papuan people by the Indonesian military.
*
Tuesday March 25 2008:
Have just finished a song, Had I But Eyes to See; lyric by Peter Wesley-Smith.
Message for Mrs Bud, who occasionally reads this page: "What happened in the past remains there, sol |
