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Message from the James Nightingale, Artistic Director
New music is where creative musicians strive to express their ideas and feelings through media that encourage innovation and pose new challenges at every step. The pursuit of an aural ideal, the embrace of new technologies, the thrill of exploring a new combination of sounds or personalities, and the need to express a personal ethos are all motivating factors that encourage the creation of something new in music. This concert series reflects the wealth and diversity of new music, presenting Australia’s leading exponents of contemporary art music performance. Improvisation with the bush, the possibilities of intermedia and acousmatic computer works, recent European music for saxophones, modern settings of Shakespeare, and chance encounters with John Cage’s music are among the experiences presented. The New Music Network Concert series gives adventurous and inquisitive audiences the opportunity to connect and engage with the best of new music.
We look forward to seeing you there in 2007.
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CONTINUUM SAX
Lost in Translation?
interpretation or explanation
Translation: ‘interpretation or explanation’ or ‘removal or conveyance from one condition to another’.
An adaptation of a musical piece for performance on another combination of instruments is referred to as a transcription. Is such a transcription a work of art? Sciarrino describes his ‘elaboration’, Pagine, as a translation for the saxophone quartet.
The piece contains a number of excerpts from the Western tradition of notated music that have been adapted for saxophone quartet. Krzysztof Penderecki’s Quartett for clarinet and string trio and Henri Pousseur’s Vue Sur Les Jardins Interdits, are also works that have had a previous existence before their present incarnations for the saxophone quartet. Is this Plagiarism or translation? You be the judge.
Continuum Sax is Margery Smith, James Nightingale, Martin Kay and Jarrod Whitbourn.
Date: 8pm Saturday 16 June 2007
Where: RECITAL HALL WEST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Price: $30 Full / $20 Concession & Under 30
Bookings: (02) 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door
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THE SONG COMPANY AND ENSEMBLE OFFSPRING
Cage Uncaged
A paradox or a conundrum?
Perhaps an elusive response to the music, words and ideas of John Cage (1912-1992). As elusive as Cage was and is, always on the move, busy and not busy at all, always on the outlook but rather watching sideways, always listening and hearing new things.
Here is unique collaboration between the singers of The Song Company and the musicians of Ensemble Offspring: three interconnected programs in one day with no less than ten works by Cage and several new creations inspired by a particular aspect of Cage’s output.
3pm: TO THE SEA…
JOHN CAGE Litany for the Whale (1980); MATTHEW SHLOMOWITZ Slow Flipping Harmony (2006) and COLIN BRIGHT The Last Whale (2007).
5pm: TO THE EARTH…
JOHN CAGE Three2, solos for voice (1970/71); Living Room Music (1940); Four6 (1992); DAVID YOUNG Funghi (2007) and FREDERIK RZEWSKI To the Earth (1985)
7.30pm: TO THE AIR…
JOHN CAGE Chorals for violin solo (1978); 4’33” (1952); Forever and sunsmell (1944); Five (1988); ear for EAR (Antiphonies) (1983); MICHAEL SMETANIN Due Pezzi Per Niente (2006); STEPHEN ADAMS A Short Service (2007) and MAYKE NAS Anyone can do it (2006)
Cage Uncaged is directed by Roland Peelman, performed by The Song Company & Ensemble Offspring.
Sonic Art Ensemble, Marshall McGuire artistic director,
Paul Stanhope conductor
Date: 3 Concerts – 3pm, 5pm & 7.30pm Saturday 15 September 2007
Where: CARRIAGEWORKS, Wilson Street, Eveleigh
Price: Full day of 3 concerts: $40 Full / $30 Conc. & Under 30, Single Tickets: $25 / $15
Bookings: (02) 9272 1600 or tickets available at the door |
MACHINE FOR MAKING SENSE PRESENTS
West Head Project 2
The large flat tessellated rock on top of West Head in the Ku-ring-gai National Park NSW is such a natural site for performance that people have probably been singing and playing there for thousands of years. The West Head Project will continue that tradition. Jim Denley last year spent 15 days walking and playing with his saxophone in the Budawang Mountains south west of Nowra. The West Head Project continues his interest in searching for and enjoying performance spaces and acoustics outside of buildings.
Music has been described as ‘Liquid Architecture’. In a search for new music, the context and time/spaces where the music is created are obviously crucial. The West Head Project aims to create a music appropriate to this specific time/space and hence Jim has bought together some of Sydney’s finest improvisers for a spontaneous and site-specific event.
Performers: Jim Denley wind instruments Mike Majkowski double bass
Peter Farrah altosax Dale Gorfinkel vibraphone Robbie Avenaim percussion
Monika Brooks accordion
Date: 4pm Sunday 30 September 2007
Where: WEST HEAD, Ku-ring-gai National Park
Price: $30 Full / $20 Concession & Under 30
Bookings: Places are limited! Please book with Anna @ NMN on (02) 9362 5711
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HALCYON
Lily on a Black Wave
Modern composers interpret Shakespeare
“On the calm, black wave where the stars sleep
White Ophelia floats like a great lily,
Floats slowly, slowly, slumbering in her long winding veils...”
The character of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s ominous play Hamlet has floated her way into the modern world, inspiring creative artists as diverse as Rimbaud, T.S. Eliot, Berlioz, Nick Cave and The Grateful Dead. Award-winning ensemble Halcyon premieres a new work, Ophelie, by Melbourne composer Kevin March, and introduces the waterphone to Australian audiences, an instrument described by musician Tom Waits as ‘a cascading crystal waterfall of light amidst the songs of a whale’. With modern musical settings from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets by Stravinsky, Saariaho and Adès, Halcyon delivers all the drama and passion inherent in the words of this famous bard, distilled into their musical essence.
Artists: Mark Shiell conductor Alison Morgan soprano Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo soprano Mark Donnelly baritone Steve Meyer flute Diana Springford clarinet Saul Lewis horn Sophie Cole violin Veronique Serret violin Nicole Forsyth viola Andrew Meisel double bass Owen Torr harp Sally Whitwell piano Claire Edwardes percussion
Date: 7.30pm Saturday 6 October 2007
Where: MUSIC WORKSHOP, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Price: $30 Full / $20 Concession & Under 30
Bookings: (02) 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door |
SONIC ART ENSEMBLE
Portrait of Roger Smalley
classics within a radical musical perspective
Commissioned and performed around the world, Roger Smalley’s compositions have earned him an international reputation. In a career that spans from the 1960s to the present, Roger Smalley made a mark on the European new music scene with international prizes for his contemporary piano performances. He was a member of the live electronic ensemble Intermodulation that performed throughout England and Europe until 1976. Smalley continues to perform a wide variety of solo and chamber music and has recorded CDs of Australian piano music and Schumann song-cycles (with Gerald English) for the Tall Poppies label. Finding the ‘new within the old’ and conjuring up his love of the classics within a radical musical perspective has been a perceptive and provocative underlying force in Roger Smalley’s output.
Trio (2002) violin, horn and piano
Echo IV (1983) horn with stereo tape-delay system
Poles Apart (1992) flute, clarinet, violin, viola and cello
Ceremony II (1989) flute, clarinet, violin, piano and percussion
Date: 7.30pm Saturday 20 October 2007
Where: MUSIC WORKSHOP, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Price: $30 Full / $20 Concession & Under 30
(02) 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door |
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SYNERGY PERCUSSION & TAIKOZ
The Five Elements
Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Spirit
In a rare collaboration, Synergy and TaikOz explore the themes of the Five Elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Spirit.
TaikOz are well known for their masterful and innovative taiko drumming. Fusing elements of contemporary art music with the ancient practice of Wadaiko, TaikOz’s music reflects a deep connection with Earth, while the ethereal tones of Riley Lee’s bamboo shakuhachi represents the nature of Air.
Synergy will explore the ancient resonances of gongs and singing bowls. These instruments have a long history in the cultures of China and the Himalayan countries of Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan, where their use, though shrouded in mystery, has clearly been connected to magic, spiritual practice and even (some say) astral travel.
THE ELEMENTS promises to be a spellbinding evening of sounds that thunder and hover between heaven and earth.
In association with City Recital Hall.
Date: 8pm Friday 23 November 2007
Where: CITY RECITAL HALL, Angel Place
Bookings: (02) 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door
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austraLYSIS SoundVision 2007
Perusing the Rhizome austraLYSIS presents new works it has created in sound, image and text, in many of their streams and at many of their nodes. Besides acousmatic work, and acoustic performance, the ensemble will perform new intermedia pieces in which the interface between the sensory media is responsive and manipulated. austraLYSIS is an ensemble creating music and sonic intermedia. It uses computer-interactive generative and performance technology, often networked. The works are focused on sound, and include acousmatic pieces (for presentation from CD with spatialisation). They also include interactive real-time work, ranging from the elaborately composed, to the extensively improvised.
Performers: Roger Dean leader Hazel Smith writer and performer Sandy Evans saxophones Phil Slater trumpets Greg White computer
Date: 8pm Saturday 1 December 2007
Where: RECITAL HALL WEST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Price: $30 Full / $20 Concession & Under 30
Bookings: (02) 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door |
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| NEW MUSIC @ The Sound Lounge
Welcome to the Mini Series – three exciting concerts from the ‘the next generation’ of new music. This year’s programs highlight music making in miniature – dynamic programming for intimate instrumentations. Featuring world and Australian premiere performances, this series will introduce you to the best new music by musicians at the cutting edge of their careers.
Come and hear what’s young, new and amazing!
James Nightingale and Jenny Duck-Chong
Artistic Directors
If you are interested in taking part, proposals for the 2008 New Music Mini-Series are welcome from any interested individuals or groups within contemporary new music practice: electronic, improvisatorial or composed.
For more information please contact NMN on ph: (02) 9362 5711
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1. 1. ZUBIN KANGA (piano)
Night Fantasies
One of Australia’s most exciting young pianists, Zubin Kanga is a member of Ensemble Offspring and works with many of Australia’s leading new music performers. His playing is described as full of “flair and virtuosic fluency” (Sydney Morning Herald) and “inspirational…magic” (Roger Woodward). In this recital, Zubin presents a bold, eclectic program of contemporary piano music, centred around Elliott Carter’s hallucinatory but strangely beautiful masterpiece Night Fantasies. The recital includes the world premiere of Ian Shanahan’s Vaces Divinitatis Supplici, Australian premieres of Ricketson’s Porfyrius’ Shuffle and selections from Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks,
as well as works by Rojas, Lachenmann and Smetanin.
Date: 8.00pm Wednesday 25 July 2007
Where: RECITAL HALL WEST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Price: $20 Full / $12 Concession & Under 30
Bookings: (02) 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door |
2. CLAIRE EDWARDES (percussion) and GEOFFREY MORRIS (guitar)
Bad Dog Yoda
The Edwardes/ Morris duo is an exciting collaboration by two of this country’s leading interpreters of contemporary music, exploring a shared belief in diversity of programming and innovation and energy in performance style.
Claire has recently returned to Australia from being based in the Netherlands. She won the Australian Young Performer of the Year in 1999 and MCA/ Freedman Fellowship in 2005. Geoffrey has created an unusual path as a classical guitarist making new music his central performing activity. He was the winner of the 2004 MCA/ Freedman Fellowship and has to date premiered over 150 new works for solo guitar.
For their premiere Sydney show Edwardes and Morris will delve into the miniature and then the extravagant. George Crumb’s Mundis Canis, a charming musical homage to his dogs Yoda, Fritzi, Heidel and Emma-Jean is pitted against the iconic Keith Humble classic, Arcade IV. Other featured composers include Mary Finsterer, Peter Sculthorpe, Mark Pollard, Maurizio Pisati, Urus Rojko and Lou Harrison.
Date: 3:30 pm Sunday 9 September 2007
Where: EASTSIDE ARTS, Paddington Uniting Church
Price: $20 Full / $12 Concession & Under 30
Bookings: 9331 2646, bookings@eastsidearts.org.au or tickets available at the door |
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3. JASON NOBLE and DIANA SPRINGFORD (clarinets)
For Clarinets and ...
Jason Noble and Diana Springford survey the recent transformation of the humble clarinet duet considering the new music technologies available in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This is an all Australian program, beginning with Martin Wesley Smith’s work from the early 80’s, White Knight and Beaver which made an ensemble of clarinet and bass clarinet with, on tape, the sounds of a computer used as a musical instrument; the Fairlight CMI Series IIX. Rosalind Page, Terumi Narushima, John Drummond and Martin Kay are writing new works especially for this program. Each is exploring, in their own stylistically peculiar ways, how computer manipulated pre-recorded acoustic sounds, electronics and live computer processing can offer new and curious possibilities of sound and relationship for the much older technologies of two traditional clarinets.
Date: 8.15pm Tuesday 27 November 2007
Where: THE SOUND LOUNGE, Seymour Centre
Price: $20 Full / $12 Concession & Under 30
Bookings: (02) 9351 7940 or tickets available at door |
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9th Annual Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address
coming soon ...
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For
more information on the 2007 Series and Address:
New Music Network
President:
James Nightingale
Vice
President:
David Young
Vice
Secretary:
Jenny Duck-Chong
Manager:
Anna Cerneaz
Tel: 02 9362 5711 Fax:
02 9362 5834 email: nmn@newmusicnetwork.com.au
PO Box A661 Sydney South NSW 1235 Australia
ABN: 69 568 255 635
For further information about
the New Music Network or to join the mailing list please contact Anna
Cerneaz.
Archive:
2006 Series
Archive:
2005 Series
Archive:
2004 Series
ABN: 69 568 255 635
The New Music Network
is assisted by the NSW Ministry for the Arts. 
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