September Gig Guide

This month kicks off with a much anticipated season from Operabox. Their production of Massenet's Manon will run September 1-7th directed by Opera Australia's Gaetano Bonfante, conducted by Christopher Dragon with Jenna Robertson in the title role.

On the 2nd master piano technician Paul Tunzi will celebrate 30 years in the industry with Keys in the City. The ingenuous interactive installation at the city of Perth library will allow tour groups to watch demonstrations on 30 of Australia's rarest pianos including the 'First Fleet piano'. Also on the 2nd Rob Buckland and Matt Styles will perform a rare double saxophone concerto with WAAPA's Symphonic Wind Ensemble.

Cat Hope is back in Perth and on the 3rd her ensemble Decibel will perform a series of works 'composed' by visual artists as part of an art exhibition called Sounding Art at PS Art Space.

The WA Symphony Orchestra will begin their Wagner series on the 6th with a concert  making connections between Liszt, Schumann and Wagner including extracts from the epic four-opera Ring Cycle. On the 9th the series continues with excerpts from Tristan und Isolde, bass baritone Shane Lowrencev singing arias from Die Walküre and Die Meistersinger and music by those who followed after including Bruckner and Strauss. On the 24th the WASO Chorus will be in the spotlight singing  Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, Bach and the world premiere of a work by Lachlan Skipworth.

Choral music is prominent this month with the Giovanni Consort's Donne on the 8th featuring music for female voices, the Music on the Terrace Series featuring the Churchlands SHS choir in Rising Stars on the 10th and Voyces' teaming up with Rachelle Durkin for Tundra on the 16th.

Adam Pinto will feature with the University of WA orchestra on the 13th performing Smalley's Piano Concerto, and that week WAAPA's Defying Gravity percussion ensemble will celebrate its 30th birthday with concerts on the 14-16th.

On the 17th Dominic Perissinotti will give a recital on the organ at St Patrick's Basilica and on the 23rd St George's Cathedral will host the Perth Symphony Orchestra for the popular Baroque by Candlelight. Also on the 23rd the Perth Symphonic Chorus will perform Brahms' German Requiem at the Perth Concert Hall with soprano Sara Macliver.

A strange phenomenon known as The Legend of Zelda starts a national tour Perth on the 24th with Jessica Gethin and the Perth Symphony Orchestra providing the music. The concert involves a performance of the symphonic soundtrack from the Nintendo game, accompanied by a digital collage of scenes from the game.

On the 30th Musica Viva will return to town with cellist Nicolas Alstaedt, pianist Aleksandar Madzar and preconcert talk by yours truly!

And for those of us with kids, a few ideas for the school holidays:

Spare Parts puppet theatre will give the world premiere of Rules of Summer, a show based on Shuan Tan's book. The season opens on the 23rd and runs for the school holidays and is recommended for ages 5+.  WASO will run the interactive kids concerts Jump Jam and Jiggle! from 28th-30th featuring music from The Planets.

Celebrity Soft Spot Alex Turley

Alex Turley has been a compulsive composer since high school and this year he is really hitting his stride. The WA Academy of Performing Arts graduate has had music performed by the Melbourne, WA and Perth Symphony Orchestras, Soundstream Collective, Greywing ensemble and this month Blue Heat is being premiered by Intercurrent Ensemble. Later in the year Alex heads to Hobart for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra's composer's school but first he stopped by for a chat on Celebrity Soft Spot.

What music gets your heart racing?

I’ve recently become a bit obsessed with horror movie soundtracks. They’re all about using known semiotics and codes, but sometimes they’re just put together really intelligently. Michael Abels’ score for the recent movie Get Out was pretty masterful.

What calms you down? 

Carrie and Lowell by Sufjan Stevens or anything by Takemitsu (his music is not necessarily ‘calm’ but it’s very reflective).

What do you sing along to?

Anything from Travelogue by Joni Mitchell or Fleetwood Mac.

Your work Blue Heat is being premiered this month by Intercurrant Ensemble, commissioned by co-co-director Lachlan Skipworth who has also been your composition teacher for the past five years. Intercurrent has a fairly unique instrumentation of percussion, piano and clarinet; how did you go about creating this piece? 

Skipworth conducting Intercurrent

What I always look for in an ensemble – and is sometimes tricky to find – is some sense of homogeneity, that everything is working together as part of one machine. The instrumentation of Intercurrent is unique, yes, but at the same time feels very natural to write for. Marimba and clarinet blend well, especially in their lower ranges, and a piano can complement anything. Ashley, Louise and Emily are three of Perth’s most talented musicians, so when I was writing Blue Heat I was conscious of not letting them go to waste. So what I’ve written is really fast and difficult!

What do you hope the audience will experience when they hear it?

The piece is all about exploring energy and motion. I called it Blue Heat for a few reasons, firstly to capture a sense of fire-like energy in the sound, but also because it’s about contradictions. Can something be moving fast but at the same time not really moving at all? Can something be almost inaudible but at the same time intense and exhilarating? It’s quite a visual piece, too – the players throw different melodies to each other, and interact in lots of different ways. At some points everyone comes together and it’s difficult to distinguish which sounds are coming from whom, and at some points the ensemble breaks apart into three separate fields of individual activity. I’m hoping that the audience’s focus will be constantly moving around the ensemble, as that sort of thing makes a piece of music really exhilarating to experience.

Have you established a standard method of composing or is each piece unique? 

I certainly have a ‘groove’ that I get into when I’m composing, but I’m still very conscious of not making all of my pieces sound the same. One of the tricky things about learning how to be a composer is finding a balance between having a voice and language that you can claim as uniquely yours, but not churning out the same piece over and over, and I’ve watched many composers fall too far on either side of that spectrum. For me I try and focus each work on a different visual or extra-musical idea (an image, poem or place, for example) that can take the audience into a unique world, but across every work I still have a very ‘Turley’ way of doing things.

Pencil and manuscript or computer?

Honestly, both are equally frustrating. I wish I could just Bluetooth my brain into a computer and write scores telepathically.

With Greywing Ensemble. Photo Bohdan Warchomij.

You’ve been composing since high school. You made a brave choice in pursuing it for a career; Australia is not renowned for appreciating its own composers! Why did you choose composition?

I caught the bug, unfortunately. In my teenage years I was immersed in a very musical environment, and I became obsessed with deconstructing the language of music, learning as much as I could about how and why everything works the way it does. It’s so mystifying to me how something as mundane as a vibration in the air can produce such intense physical and emotional responses in us. I spent as much time as I could exploring this process, eventually making my own music just as a means of understanding. When I finished school it was a little tempting for me to go and do Law or something nice like that but by that point I had such a deep fascination with music that anything else would have made me quite unhappy. Yes, Australian composers have a very difficult time getting people interested in their music, but I am really determined to make everything work and I’m not going to give up without a fight. There are lots of things that can go alongside composing really nicely – arranging, engraving, conducting, teaching, researching, producing, administrating – so it’s not as if I’m lost for things to do.

You are having a remarkably successful year including wining the Penrith Symphony Orchestras Young Composer Award and being selected for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Composer School, plus upcoming performances of your works in Texas, Mexico City, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth. Where to from here?

I’m still at that point in my life where everything is really new, and I’m just trying to pull things together into some semblance of a freelance career. 2017 for me has been the year that everything has really begun to pick up speed. I’ve got myself to a place where I’m really confident with my craft and my ability to produce good music for people. It’s still a huge rush for me when someone that I barely know from across the country (or in Texas!) is actually interested in what I’m doing and wants to work with me. From here I’m just trying to make as much good music as I can, and I’m trying to diversify as well into areas such as art installation and theatre. There’s lots of stuff in the pipeline!

Listen here to City of Ghosts performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2016.

Mark Applebaum says music should above all else be interesting. What do you think is the most important role of music?

It’s hard to argue with that statement. For me I think music just needs to produce a response – emotional, physical, memory, whatever – and the more intense the response the more powerful the music.

You have a soft spot for saxophone. You’ve composed a Sax Quartet, a Sax Concerto, a work for Sax and piano and another for Sax and cello. What is the appeal of this instrument?

I never set out to write so much for saxophone! It all happened because one of my close friends from uni (David Gioia) is a saxophonist, and he is incredible. I’m completely in awe of how he’s able to paint melody with an astonishing amount of precision and nuance. Together we found that his style of playing was really well suited to my style of writing, so we collaborated on all of those pieces that you just mentioned. We even recorded an album together which will be released in the near future. That kind of ongoing collaboration ended up being very significant in my development as a composer.

'Ink' with Alex Turley piano and David Gioia saxophone

Who are your music heroes?

My heroes are the people around me – young composers and young artists in general – that are taking risks, producing great work, making things happen and being lovely people in the process. Lachlan Skipworth, Dan Thorpe, Josten Myburgh, Lisa Cheney, Peggy Polias, Connor D’Netto, Bec Smith, Kezia Yap, Samuel Smith, Sally Greenaway, Tim Newhouse, Cassie To, Sam Wolf, to name just a few!

What is your favourite place in Perth? 

The beach near my old house, lovely place to take my dogs at sunset!

Do you have a soft spot for anything else in life or is it all about the music?

I love taking photos, I’m also a huge fan of visual art and theatre, I’ve recently become quite obsessed with architecture, I travel as much as I can afford to, I try and keep up to date with feminism, I’m obsessed with interior design… the list goes on! I also work in a fancy-ish restaurant and I actually really enjoy it (weird, I know).


Thank you Alex Turley for participating in the Celebrity Soft Spot series. You can read an interview with Alex here at CutCommon mag and listen to a Making Waves podcast here. For more details about Alex and his work go to alexturley.com. Future performances:

29th August: World premiere of Blue Heat by Intercurrent, State Theatre Centre. Program also includes works by Julian Day, Chris Tonkin, Hannah Lash and Philip Glass.2 Sep: Between the Ocean and the Sky performed by Jonathan Thompson, a PhD oboist from Texas who has commissioned composers from all over the world via the internet. 10 Sep: New Commission (piano duet) performed by Liam Viney and Anna Grinberg, Queensland Art Gallery. This is a part of a concert series called ARGO that seeks to take classical music out of the concert hall and into interactive spaces. They are playing the piece from either sides of an indoor lake.28 Oct: New Commission (orchestra) performed by the Penrith Symphony Orchestra in Sydney as part of the Young Composer Award.

Ever wanted to be a percussionist?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a percussionist?

I've always secretly wanted to play percussion. Rhythm is one of the most primal and powerful forms of communication. Percussionists get to dance around (often barefoot) on stage and always seem to be having so much fun! 

Now is our chance! Speak Percussion are putting a call out for 100 percussionists - NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED - to participate in their performance at the Totally Huge New Music Festival in October.

Speak Percussion and guests will unite in the 13th THNMF to perform the WA premiere of A wave and waves by American composer Michael Pisaro, a massive 74-minute work for 100 performers on 100 instruments.

 

They are offering a rare opportunity to join with one of Australia’s most dynamic and risk taking arts organisations in an extraordinary new music project. A wave and waves is a project that redefines the way contemporary chamber music is presented.

 The Midland Railway Workshops will be transformed into a sonic and visual ocean of instruments and performers, creating an intimate experience of monumental proportions.

 No percussion experience is required – this call is open to all interested people. Participants will work with Eugene Ughetti (Artistic Director, Speak Percussion), Louise Devenish (Head of Percussion, University of Western Australia) and Tura’s production team.

There are 3 rehearsals before performances on 29th October.

Sign up here before September 1st.  More details here. Go on, be brave, be a percussionist!

August Gig Guide

Let's start this month's gig guide with Tura New Music, who are having a busy winter! In August Tura will support the workshop of Cat Hope's experimental opera Speechless in Adelaide plus tour to Warmun for a 3 week regional residency where Jon Rose will, in collaboration with the local community, turn a car wreck into a musical instrument. Tura is also producing the next Scale Variable concert featuring Intercurrent on August 29th. The 4-piece Intercurrent have an impressive program planned including a recent work by Hannah Lash and THREE premieres by Chris Tonkin, Julian Day and Alex Turley. Finally the organisation have been involved with a sound art, video and sculpture installation called Scarasson which will be presenting nightly performances at the State Buildings from August 1-6th.

Keep an eye out for string quartets this month: the Australian String Quartet kick off their national tour in Perth on August 2nd with a program including Dvorak Britten and Australian composer Paul Stanhope. I haven't yet heard the new lineup of players, so if you have let me know what you think. The popular Takacs Quartet is also in town on the 10th performing Haydn. Mozart and the world premiere of Carl Vine's 6th String Quartet Child's Play. This will be the launch of their national Musica Viva tour.

The West Australian Symphony Orchestra will celebrate a 20 year association with conductor Simone Young on the 4/5th with a wide-ranging program from Haydn to Brahms and the world premiere of a work by Australian Andrew Schultz. Asher Fisch is in town on the 17-19th to conduct Schubert's great Symphony No 9 with Jayson Gillham joining him for Schumann's Piano Concerto. The following week Fisch will conduct Mahler's 6th Symphony and Karen Gomlo will perform Mozart's Violin Concerto No 3.

On the 11th St George's Cathedral Consort will perform Bach, Bernstein and Britten's A Ceremony of Carols. The Perth Symphony Orchestra are performing their annual Baroque by Candlelight concert on the 23rd at St George's Cathedral. Jessica Gethin will conduct and Paul Wright is concert master: book now as this immersive concert always sells out!

Rochelle Durkin's fiery colloratura soprano will be on display in Baroque Beauties at the Government House Ballroom on the 20th, accompanied by the UWA string orchestra and vocal consort.

On the 12th the WA Academy of Performing Arts will host Geoffrey Lancaster and Stewart Smith playing keyboard works by Bach. Also at WAAPA Karin Schaupp and Claire Edwardes will give a concert on the 18th of all-Australian music for the mellow and sensuous medium of guitar and marimba. On the 24th winner of the 2016 Sydney international Piano Competition Audrey Gugnin will present a recital and on the 26th August WAAPA 3rd year music theatre students will  begin their season of Chicago under the direction of Crispin taylor.

Finally the Darlington Piano Quartet will perform Dohnanyi, Brahms and James Ledger's Three Escher Portraits on the 27th at the Darlington Hall. Enjoy!

Voyces concert a window into fabulous Aussie music

Voyces is a group of 30-or-so young things directed by Dr Robert Braham and dedicated to high quality choral music. Five years in and Voyces has the hallmarks of a well-established group with a loyal following – their Saturday night concert at Government House Ballroom sold out! What really sets them apart is their emphasis on music by Australian composers and their concert was a window into the fabulous music currently being written for choral groups.

Vocyes. photo Nik Babic

The concert opened with a lively version of Waltzing Matilda by Ruth McCall, of Song Company fame. A chant in Aboriginal dialect set up a rhythmic dance feel which contrasted with spooky harmonies for “And his ghost can be heard...”. The choir sang with energy and proved themselves adept at harmonic overtone singing, a vocal technique requiring the singer to manipulate their vocal cavity to produce multiple sounds from the harmonic series. It gave an otherworldly feel and was part of the melting pot of ideas McCall drew on in this quirky piece.

The concert covered a wide variety of poetry including Henry Lawson’s On the Night Train, set by Joseph Twist who also wrote an haunting Lament using Latin text from Giacomo Carissimi’s oratorio Jephte and underpinned by a rhapsodic cello solo performed by Anna Sarcich.

Poetry by Perth’s Kevin Gillam was the inspiration for Iain Grandage’s Wheatbelt, a depiction of the troubled beauty of a rural landscape. The use of percussion and onomatopoeia to depict insects, wind and birds created an evocative sound world offset by the denseness of close harmonies. Printing Gillam’s lyrics in the program notes would’ve deepened the experience even further. Hush had similarly clever use of vocal percussion with Grandage’s characteristic fast rhythmic text settings bursting into soaring lyrical melodies.

As the program continued it became clear that the choir have a penchant for strong, enveloping soundscapes. Dan Walker’s Vast Sea. Sleeping Mother had a rocking string quartet accompaniment amplified by percussion, piano and long unsion vocal lines to create the vast rolling of the sea. Walker’s Hooves of Fate was the group’s first commission in 2015 and Walker’s bold nine-part choral writing and the pounding of hooves conveyed by the percussion packed a hefty dramatic punch. Until now the choir had been singing with a clean, contained quality but after interval the repertoire demanded more and Braham drew a broader, more symphonic choral sound from the group.

Ben Van Tienen’s accessible harmonic language in Across the Dark matched the direct whimsy of Leunig’s poetry. A tongue in cheek tango about the dangerous animal known as Australian politics (excellent piano accompaniment by Ann Clarke) had the audience chuckling while the thick homophonic sound of Lonely Mother Earth made a powerful lament. Van Tienen’s I Carry Your Heart With Me and Matthew Orlovich’s effervescent Butterflies Dance (which suffered occasional pitch issues) were gentle interludes. The concert concluded with the choir at full throttle for Orlovich’s dense setting of Judith Wright’s poem Night. A didgeridoo solo by Steve Richter established a weighty pulse and the piece unfolded with the ponderous density of Wright’s ‘great tree’ as four percussionists added their layers to the choir, creating a stunning orchestral density.

Voyces debut album Hush 

It’s clear Voyces like their concerts to be a vivid aural experience and the good news is now you can take it home with you; the concert marked the launch of their debut album Hush, featuring the all-Australian repertoire we heard at the concert in a crisp, warm recording.

The Hush album is available from www.voyces.com.au, iTunes, Spotify and Google Play.
Voyces next concert is Tundra on September 16th. 

June Gig Guide

June is a rich month of music for all the ages; dive in and enjoy! 

It is particularly action-packed  for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra who will present four mainstage orchestral concerts plus the explosive energy of Education Week with its multiple concerts for children and their families. 

On June 2/3rd WASO have a colourful program planned with Stravinsky's Firebird Suite and Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun plus winner of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition Ayako Uehara  making her WASO debut performing Bartók’s Piano Concerto No.3. On the 9/10th the guest artist is Stefan Dohr, principal horn from the Berlin Philharmonic, performing Strauss' Horn Concerto - WOW! Then the world of jazz takes over with concerts on the 16/17th with leading Australian stage and screen stars in a modern and audacious take on all-time swing classics from Sinatra to Bublé. On the 30/1st Chopin expert Louis Lortie Plays Chopin’s Concerto no 1 in a program which also includes Dvorak's Seventh Symphony 

This year for Education Week (19-25th) WASO has invited award winning British composer and music educationist Paul Rissmann us for a week-long musical adventure exploring gorgeous children's books across a variety of  interactive programs. The concerts include school shows Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants, The Beat of Your Feet and The Lion Who Loved  plus a Conductor Masterclass with Ben Northey. The Rusty Orchestra is also back with a concert on the 24th June featuring community musicians playing alongside WASO players in a concert with the biggest amount of heart you're likely to hear.

If you have children come with us on Sunday 25th - we will be checking out the family concert The Beat of Your Feet, about a music-loving dog and cat and their musical adventure to find the Greatest Orchestra in the World. The concert is a mix of music, illustrated projections and audience participation, based on the book Stan and Mabel by Jason Chapman with vocals by Libby Hammer. 

Meanwhile the rest of the music community has some lovely offerings this month, including two particularly stunning vocal concerts: the Giovanni Consort singing French Chansons on the 4th, and   Voyces on the 10th celebrating their fifth anniversary with a concert of all-Australian music and the launch of their debut album Hush.

On the 11th there is a a triple whammy with the Darlington Trio offering Brahms, Musica Viva launching their national tour of the Pacifica Trio (including a world premiere by Nigel Westlake) and the experimental trio The Necks presented by Tura New Music.

Perth Chamber Orchestra (the little sister of Perth Symphony) is performing an intriguing concert in Midland on the 14th called Steampunk Mozart, which promises industrial-inspired music, food, wine, a sound installation and the magic of Mozart conducted by Jessica Gethin. Then in larger form the Perth Symphony Orchestra will also perform on the 27th with the WA Academy of Performing Arts Gospel Choir in a concert dedicated to the music of George Michael.

Also on at WAAPA this month is the second and third year students performance of 42nd Street opening on the 17th. 

April Gig Guide

The WA Academy of Performing Arts is in full swing this month. Concerts include Clocked Out Duo percussion stars Vanessa Tomlinson and Erik Griswold performing on the 4th and renowned English conductor Nicholas Cleobury leading vocal students in a performance featuring Tippett's Negro Spirituals on the 6th.

The school of music at UWA is also hitting full steam with a Mainstage Concert on the 9th featuring Shaun Lee-Chen and the student orchestra performing a world premiere by jazz composer Joe Chindamo. On the 28th the Schoenberg Project will feature student arrangements of Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces plus an arrangement by Brett Dean from when he was a student - it could be very revealing!

Thank you Louise Devenish for this update: On April 10-11th an unusual gig at PICA called Never Tilt Your Chair Back on Two Legs brings together three of Australia's leading female percussionists for Maurice Kagel's music theatre piece Dressur.  Set at a formal dinner table, the theme of dinner time etiquette will also be explored in a new work by Kate Neal.

The Australian String Quartet take over Margaret River from the 21-23rd for a Chamber Music weekend - what's not to love?!

The WA Symphony Orchestra go retro with The Best of British on the 7th before a Sibelius fest on 20/21/22 with Asher Fisch conducting the second symphony and concert master Laurence Jackson in Stravinsky's Violin Concerto. On the 28/29th the Zuckerman Trio join the orchestra for Beethoven's Triple Concerto with Pinchas Zukerman also featuring in Berg's Violin Concerto.

Let me know if I've missed anything. See you at a concert soon!