Welcome to the 2009 Concert Series
New music is a varied and vibrant art form, characterised by the processes of improvisation, composition, and innovation. The New Music Network Concert Series is Sydney’s most important vehicle for bringing together performers and audiences in the pursuit of new sounds, new musical languages, and new processes of performance. This year both the New Music Network and its Concert Series have expanded, reflecting the passion and commitment of both the Network and the many musicians within it. The series reflects the strength and diversity of new music, presenting Australia’s leading exponents of contemporary art music: dynamic percussion ensembles TaikOz and Karak join Topology; a rare Sydney appearance by Brisbane’s Clocked Out Duo; a Stockhausen Festival at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; improvisation in the Manly National Park; and five exciting Mini Series concerts. We are also excited to welcome Robyn Archer to present the 2009 Peggy Glanville Hicks Address. The New Music Network Concert Series gives audiences the opportunity to connect and engage with the best of Australia’s new music.
We look forward to seeing you in 2009!
James Nightingale
NMN President
Ensemble Offspring
Thirteen Colours
Treize couleurs du soleil couchant by Tristan Murail is a sonic metaphor for the setting sun. The work imperceptibly draws the listener through slowly transforming colours of infinite depth and subtlety. Murail with compatriot Gérard Grisey, whose Talea is featured in the program, are also credited with the birth of ‘spectral music’: rich sounds broken into a kaleidoscope of microscopic frequencies. Continuing the metaphor of light is Fatamorgana (Mirage) by Bozidar Kos and Shimmer for triangle and electronics by John Luther Adams. Completing the program are new works from composers Christopher Tonkin (Perth) and Yannis Kyriakides (The Netherlands).
Performers: Roland Peelman conductor, Lamorna Nightingale flutes, Jason Noble clarinet, Claire Edwardes percussion, Clemens Leske piano, James Cuddeford violin, Geoffrey Gartner cello, Bob Scott sound, Artistic Directors: Damien Ricketson and Claire Edwardes
Date: 8pm Saturday 30 May 2009
Where: MUSIC WORKSHOP, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Tickets: $30 Full, $20 Concession
Read the review from the Sydney Morning Herald or Resonate Magazine.
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN (1928-2007)
LICHT LIGHT
A collaboration between Smart Light Sydney and the Sydney Conservatorium and supported by the New Music Network, ABC Classic FM, Goethe Institut and Stockhausen Stiftung.
A day-long event around the controversial and recently departed German guru Karlheinz Stockhausen including the long-awaited Australian premiere of extracts from his most ambitious seven day-long music-theatre cycle LICHT. Curated by Roland Peelman with pre-concert talks by Richard Toop, the world’s pre-eminent Stockhausen scholar
Performers: Ensemble Offspring, Kim Walker bassoon, Conservatorium New Music Ensemble directed by Daryl Pratt, The Song Company, Tristram Williams flugelhorn, Jessica Aszodi soprano, Michael Fowler synthesizer, Ben Marks trombone.
Date: Saturday 6 June 2009
Where: Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Free Event
Read the review from the Sydney Morning Herald
CLOCKED OUT DUO
FOREIGN OBJECTS
New music with a sense of play and adventure...
Clocked Out Duo use traditional and modified instruments alongside bewildering array of toys, found objects, junk and sound sculptures to create carefully designed sonic and visual experiences. Their unique style embraces a wide variety of influences from experimental, jazz and world music sources. In their playful and adventurous work Clocked Out Duo create links between disparate styles and artistic communities. Equally at home in major concert halls and intimate clubs, the Brisbane-based duo has toured in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the USA, and Europe.
In a rare Sydney performance, the Duo will perform all new works including Foreign Objects – intricate patterns and grooves for prepared piano, bowls, tiles, bottles and recycled materials. Toy Feldman – hypnotic and delicate textures emanating from altered and hybridised miniature music boxes. Lavender Mist – like a Jackson Pollock painting come to life, Vanessa chaotically whips an array of sounding objects strewn across the floor.
Performers: Erik Griswold piano, Vanessa Tomlinson percussion
Date: 5pm Sunday 21 June 2009
Where: RECITAL HALL EAST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Tickets: $30 Full, $20 Concession
Read a comment from an audience member...
Kammer Ensemble
KAMMER Ensemble begins their 2009 New Music Network concert with a world premiere written by composer, violinist and member of the ensemble, James Cuddeford. This is followed by Wolfgang Rihm’s Fremde Szenen. A fiercely powerful and expressive work from one of Germany’s most important, living composers. His works fully absorb the intensity (and implications) of Schoenberg’s expressionistic masterpieces. Composer and conductor Paul Stanhope ends the first half of the program with excerpts for his song cycle Four Cabaret Songs from Love Lines Using the text from poetry by Michael Leunig. Renowned cabaret artist Nadia Piave, Paul Stanhope and KAMMER Ensemble perform one of the most influential and important works of the 20th Century, Pierrot Lunaire, an artist’s journey through the inner psyche.
Performers: Nadia Piave soprano, Lisa Osmialowski flute, John Lewis clarinet, Stephanie McCallum piano, James Cuddeford violin/viola, Daniel Yeadon cello, Paul Stanhope conductor
Date: 8pm Saturday 25 July 2009
Where: RECITAL HALL EAST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Tickets: $30 Full, $20 Concession
Read the review by Andrew Ford for Resonate Magazine.
Robyn Archer presents 11th
Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address
Each year we invite an outstanding advocate of Australian music to deliver an address which, in the spirit of the great Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, challenges the status quo and raises issues of importance in the world of today’s music.
Universally Adored, Unequivocally Abused: the paradox of music and its composers
Robyn Archer began singing in public at 4 years old, earning pocket money from it at 12, supporting herself from it at 16, and in all her roles as singer, songwriter, playwright, international festival director and arts advocate, her heart and practice have rarely strayed far from music, especially new music. In her widely acclaimed 2009 Manning Clark Lecture (Canberra, March 13), she lamented the customary overlooking of the role of the composer in the cultural roll call, and in particular the widespread ignorance amongst those who should know better, of the breadth and depth of the Australian musical canon. In the 2009 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address she will continue these themes: and the audiences for her addresses worldwide now know always to expect something fresh and pertinent each time.
Date: 6pm Tuesday 1 September 2009
Sydney: THE MINT, 10 Macquarie St, Sydney
Date: 7:30pm Friday 4 September 2009
Melbourne: BMW Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne
Free Event bookings essential 0411 606 077
Halcyon
willow songs
The sublime poetic style of Japanese haiku has inspired composers around the world to give musical expression to a perfectly formed verse. Halcyon performs a selection of these evocative contemporary haiku settings for voice and ensemble.
The performance culminates in the world premiere of a new song cycle by composer, writer and broadcaster Andrew Ford, on poems by Anglo-American poet Anne Stevenson. Willow Songs is a picture of a woman’s life in reverse, from defiant, outrageous maturity to vulnerable girlhood.
Date: 7.30pm Saturday 26 September 2009
Where: TRACKDOWN SCORING STAGE, Building #125, The Entertainment Quarter, Lang Road, Moore Park
Tickets: $30 Full, $20 Concession
Read the review from the Sydney Morning Herald by Harriet Cunningham.
machine for making sense
west head project IV
At Middle Head, Manly
We hear the alien quality of the non-human in our music and the humanity of music in nature. David Dunn
Over the past three years the West Head Project has been presented at Ku-ring-gai National Park. In 2009 the project will continue the tradition although at a different location, Middle Head, the Southern Head of the inner Heads close to Manly and Balmoral. With the beautiful natural setting, the point also offers an amazing group of abandoned military bunkers and gun positions that function as amphitheatres. This is ideal for a performance where 3 or 4 spaces can be used at once and have musicians and audiences travelling between the spaces.
By sitting down, listening to, and sounding out into this land we simply aim to add sounds that don’t feel out of place. Because these are unique and often wonderful acoustics our solutions are potentially unique. In these places the music can intertwine with all the other elements present. This feeling of being woven into the world, is what I live for. And making stuff that isn’t out of place, at this point in time, is surely what we all have to aim for. Jim Denley
Performers: Jim Denley wind instruments, Kraig Grady percussion, Peter Farrar alto saxophone, Adam Sussman guitar, Jo Derrick trumpet, Monika Brooks accordion.
Date: 4pm Sunday 25 October 2009
Where: MIDDLE HEAD, Manly National Park, SEE MAP
Tickets: Suggested donation: $30 Full / $20 Concession
Bookings Essential: Places are limited! Phone Philippa @ NMN on 0411 606 077
Continuum Sax
Winterscenario
The live audio-visual collaboration between VJ/filmmaker Rachel Brown and Continuum saxophone quartet is inspired by Jacob TV’s Postnuclear Winterscenario No.10 – a bleakly beautiful sonic portrait of a hypothetical reality. Continuum splays the atmosphere with chords while Brown uses Ms Pinky software to create a parallel universe of images reflecting suspended life and the cold beauty that winter delivers: seasonal or not. Music by Mark Anthony Turnage, Christian Lauba, Elena Firsova and Tony Gorman continue the theme of Winterscenario, reflecting landscape, memory, distance and light.
For the balance of the concert Continuum presents the world premiere of Damien Ricketson’s first saxophone quartet; and the Australian premiere of the spectralist composer Hugues Dufourt’s Quatuor pour saxophones.
Performers: Margery Smith, James Nightingale, Martin Kay, Jarrod Whitbourn saxophones and video jockey Rachael Brown
Date: 7pm Saturday 31 October 2009
Where: RECITAL HALL EAST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Tickets: $30 Full, $20 Concession
Read the review by Phil Vendy for Resonate Magazine...
Aphids
Systemy building by Rosemary Joy
An international percussion work of miniature proportions.
System Building invites audiences of only twelve people at a time to experience a fusion of percussion and architecture on an intimate scale.
Artist Rosemary Joy has been commissioned to create five adaptable miniature percussion instruments, each modelled on a venue in which the work will be performed. Drawing inspiration from the architecture of Sydney’s Carriageworks, RadialSystem V (Berlin), the Groningen Water Tower (Noorderzon Festival, Netherlands) and the Melbourne Recital Centre, System Building challenges the very idea of a musical instrument.
Astonishing Mexican percussionist Diego Espinosa with Melbourne’s wunderkind Eugene Ughetti will perform the work, fresh from presentations in Europe and Melbourne.
Artists: Rosemary Joy artist, Diego Espinosa (Mexico) and Eugene Ughetti percussion, Adam Stewart curved wood construction.
Date: Monday 23 November
Performance times: 6.00pm, 6.30pm, 7.00pm, 7.30pm, 8.00pm
Where: Carriageworks, Wilson St, Eveleigh
Price: $15 Full / $10 Concession & Under 30
Reviewed in Resonate Magazine by Geoff Gartner
Taikoz, topology
and karak percussion
Presented by TaikOz, Places & Spaces and the New Music Network
TaikOz, Australia’s premiere taiko drumming group will join forces with Brisbane’s eclectic new music ensemble Topology, and the virtuosic percussion duo Karak. The program includes new works by David Pye, Robert Davidson and John Babbage and Ian Cleworth.
Despite their surface differences, the groups share a common desire to push boundaries within their chosen art forms: they write and perform their own music as well as that of other composers, and are adept at improvisation and working in a variety of locations and mixed media. TaikOz and Topology are keen to experience and feed off each other’s energy and to this end new works will be composed by members of each ensemble. In addition, a new piece by renowned West Australian composer David Pye will be a much anticipated premiere. TaikOz featuring Riley Lee and Topology, lead by composer and performer Robert Davidson, comprises piano, bass, saxophones, violin and viola - all amplified.
Date: 8pm Friday 27 November 2009
Where: ENMORE THEATRE, Enmore Road, Enmore
Tickets: $55 Full / $30 Concession
Read the review in the Southern Courier
australysis
logic - event - chance - structure
austraLYSIS will present new real-time and out-of-time work which uses recent computational developments in object-spotting (identifying incoming sound or visual objects in a stream and their counterparts in a previous stream so as to forge new relationships), and live-coding (creating structure at any level from micro- to macro- while performing). These opportunities permit novel approaches to the generation of musical expression in composition and improvisation. New works by members of austraLYSIS.
Performers: Roger Dean piano keyboards, computers, Sandy Evans saxophones, Phil Slater trumpets, Hazel Smith speaker, Greg White computers, and others.
Date: 8pm Saturday 5 December 2009
Where: RECITAL HALL EAST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Tickets: $30 Full, $20 Concession
Reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald by Peter McCallum.
new music mini series
1. The three omegas
Formed in 2007, The Three Omegas brings together David de Vries (guitar), Mike Majkowski (double bass) and James ‘Pug’ Waples (drums) as improvisers, peers, composers and friends. The group strives to present a unique approach to the guitar trio format through exploring music with an uninhibited openness that embraces uneasiness with a shared intuitive trust. The Three Omegas’s will be presenting a one off performance with two of Sydney most respected improvisers, Carl Dewhurst (guitar) and Peter Farrar (alto saxophone).
Date: 6.30pm Wednesday 1 July 2009
Where: CONSERVATORIUM CAFE, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Tickets: $20 Full, $12 Concession
Bookings: (02) 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door.
2. William Lane, Janet McKay,
Adam Simmons
Based in Hong Kong, violist WILLIAM LANE is Artistic Director of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and the Grenzenlos Foundation. A committed advocate of new music, he has commissioned dozens of new works and curated concerts of new music in New York City, Austria, Australia, Germany and the U.K. William has been Solo Viola of the Resonanz Chamber Orchestra (Hamburg), SMASH Ensemble (Salamanca) and on a freelance basis with Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt). He will present an exciting program featuring Australian and overseas composers.
JANET McKAY is a Brisbane-based flautist dedicated to the performance and development of new music. In addition to her solo work, Janet performs with new music ensembles Chronology Arts and Clocked Out. She has recently established her own performance presentation organisation, Random Overtones, to serve as an umbrella for the various aspects of her musical life. Fresh from a 5-city solo tour of the USA, Janet will present a program of new works for solo flute by Australian and American composers.
Melbourne based artist, ADAM SIMMONS will present a solo performance of new and original compositions and improvisations, performing across a range of woodwinds, both familiar and unusual, such as sopranino saxophone, contrabass clarinet, piccolo, shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and fujara (Slovakian bass flute). Adam’s control over extended techniques on his instruments, as well as his use of toys as unusual sound sources, seeks to engage the listener into the sound-making process - not just the music resulting from the combination or sequence of sounds but the actual production of the sound itself.
Date: 5pm Sunday 9 August 2009
Where: RECITAL HALL EAST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Read the review from Resonate Magazine by Geoff Gartner.
3. brigid burke, mark caurvin
and michael fowler
BRIGID BURKE is a clarinetist, composer, visual artist and video-maker. Acoustic extended clarinet sounds excite her with their extraordinarily rich possibilities. She is particularly interested in integrating her musical ideas with a combination of different visual media. The series of works presented are inspired by natural elements such as architecture, natural environments, water, glass, paper, organic textures, visual art works, movement (dance), air, improvisation, notation and text.
Solo double bass player MARK CAUVIN is a performer with a penchant for the avant-garde. In this concert Mark will present two contrasting works beginning with WKP 258 for double bass and prepared microphone. This piece is a form of improvisation/meditation with no formal structure because the principal sound is the sharp jangling sound of the microphone reacting to the oscillating string. The nature of this sound determines the direction. The second work is Mark’s version of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s graphic score Plus Minus for solo double bass. It is made up of 53 distinct events played consecutively. The technical demands of Plus Minus require extreme sensitivity of touch and virtuoso skill.
MICHAEL FOWLER is an exponent of electro-acoustic music, and performs on a variety of keyboard instruments including, synthesizers, the toy piano, live electronics, circuit-bending devices and the prepared piano. He has always been attracted to the percussive qualities of the piano, and, at the same time conscious of how as pianists, we tend to be extremely liberal in the interpretation of rhythm. The combination of piano and tape music brings a new dimension to how one plays and interprets a musical score. In his performace of Milton Babbitt’s Reflections and Ben Boretz’s Downtime, the preciseness becomes a term that sits outside of traditional approaches to interpretation.
Date: 5pm Sunday 16 August 2009
Where: RECITAL HALL EAST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Read the review from Australian Stage Online by Vanessa Lahey and from Resonate Magazine by Geoff Gartner and RealTime Magazine by Gail Priest.
4. Golden Fur
Golden Fur is a new Melbourne-based music project comprising James Rushford (piano, viola), Judith Hamann (cello, prepared cello), and Sam Dunscombe (clarinets, laptop), who are re-imagining chamber music in the realms of experimental music and the avant-garde. Seeking to create a further dialogue with the language of exploratory music as well as that of improvisation, theatre and visual art, Golden Fur will be presenting challenging new works written specifically for the ensemble by Australian composer Kate Neal and visual artist, composer Marco Fusinato, alongside works by Australians Liza Lim and Robert Rooney. The concert will also feature a world premiere by Dutch experimental icon Jaap Blonk. Golden Fur engages with contemporary classical music in youthfully iconoclastic style, adding volume, volatility and theatricality by means of built instruments, electronics, amplification and computers. Thanks to Golden Fur, the seemingly discrete worlds of classical, experimental, improvisation an d indie/DIY music are about to collide.
Date: 5pm Sunday 6 September 2009
Where: RECITAL HALL EAST, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Read the review from Australian Stage Online by Rachel Orzech and in RealTime Magazine by Gail Priest.
5. The Origin Cycle
Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is not only one of the most important scientific works of all time, but one of the most beautifully written. In The Origin Cycle, for soprano and chamber ensemble, fragments of Darwin’s great book are set to music by Australian composers Elliott Gyger, Elena Kats-Chernin, Kate Neal, Rosalind Page, Paul Stanhope, Nicholas Vines, and Dan Walker. In celebration of the 2009 bicentennial of Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the first publication of the Origin, this performance by Ensemble Offspring and soprano Jane Sheldon will take place among the exhibits of the Australian Museum. The passages chosen encompass the entire work, capturing the many facets of a Darwinian view of nature and summarising what Darwin called the ‘one long argument’ contained in the Origin. They include the passages introducing his most famous and enduring images – the ‘tree of life’ connecting all species, the vision of nature as a surface into which wedges are unceasingly struck, and the book’s final invocation of ‘grandeur in this view of life’.
Reviewed by Peter McCallum in the Sydney Morning Herald - read the review...
Venues
AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM
Cnr William & College St, Sydney
Bookings: 0411 606 077
Email: nmn@newmusicnetwork.com.au
CARRIAGEWORKS
Wilson St, Eveleigh
Bookings: 1300 723 038
ENMORE THEATRE
Enmore Road, Enmore
Bookings: (02) 9550 3666
MIDDLE HEAD, Manly National Park
Bookings: 0411 606 077
Email: nmn@newmusicnetwork.com.au
SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC
Macquarie St, Sydney
Bookings: (02) 8256 2222
Email: tickets@cityrecitalhall.com
Internet: www.music.usyd.edu.au
TRACKDOWN SCORING STAGE
Building #125, The Entertainment Quarter, Lang Road, Moore Park
View the 2008 Concert Series Archive
View the 2007 Concert Series Archive
View the 2006 Concert Series Archive
View the 2005 Concert Series Archive
View the 2004 Concert Series Archive
Please contact the New Music Network for more information on the 2009 Concert Series and Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address.
Tel: 0411 606 077 Email: nmn@newmusicnetwork.com.au
PO Box A661 Sydney South NSW 1235 Australia
ABN: 69 568 255 635
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