Date: 7 September 2013
Venue: The Atrium, NIDA Parade Theatres
Presented by the New Music Network
Halcyon performs two hauntingly beautiful works on the theme of journeying; actual, mythical, legendary, allegorical, solitary.
A project some years in the making, Raffaelle Marcellino's A Strange Kind of Paradise is a response to Monteverdi's famous aria 'Lasciatemi morire', the one remaining remnant of the opera Arianna. Based on the myth of Ariadne, Marcellino's new work explores the melancholy of abandonment and uncanny respite achieved from no longer having the torment of others present – a strange kind of paradise.
Last performed by Halcyon in 2006, Gillian Whitehead's epic Nga Haerenga makes a welcome comeback to the stage. Translated from the Maori as 'journeys', Nga Haerenga tells stories about Kuniya, the Woma python tirelessly travelling through the arid centre of Australia, Kupe canoeing to discover Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Shackleton’s epic voyage across the Antarctic culminating in the destruction of his ship, the Endeavour, crushed in the ice. Voices and percussion evoke the soundscape of each journey; birds, seals, penguins, the cracking of the ice as the ship succumbs to its end. This exceptional work comes to a profound close with the 9th century Latin poem ‘Clangam Filii’, an allegorical journey of the soul.
PROGRAM
Raffaelle Marcellino - A Strange Kind of Paradise (2013)
Gillian Whitehead - Nga Haerenga (2000)
ARTISTS
Alison Morgan soprano Belinda Montgomery soprano Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo soprano Jo Burton mezzo soprano Genevieve Lang harp Claire Edwardes percussion Tony Llewellyn Jones narrator Michael Bates visual media Liz Duck-Chong visual media
Image © Michael Bates