Night Tides

PLEASE NOTE: THERE HAS BEEN A VENUE CHANGE FOR THIS PERFORMANCE

An intimate exploration of time, memory and mythos, Night Tides stirs with nature’s eternal currents. This tender collection of works shimmers with poetic delicacy; water trembles, mythological worlds shimmer in nocturnal hues, and the alluring sonority of the voice weaves its way through the shifting textures of Halcyon’s characteristically chameleonic ensemble. 

From Gordon Kerry’s evocative Three Malouf Songs, which paint a striking vision of Queensland’s Glasshouse Mountains, to Christine McCombe’s plaintive Ebb Tide, Australian composers lie at the heart of this program. Between these luminous, tidal movements flows the world premiere of a new arrangement of songs from Kevin March’s Mythweaver, composed of Sappho’s fragmented and ardent poetry. Lisa Cheney’s No Distant Place: I. The Soul’s Eternity, is a spellbinding instrumental interlude, as clarinet, piano and violin emerge and bloom like pinpricks of light. Elena Kats-Chernin’s Moondust, wordless melodies wax and wane in a nocturnal reverie. Paul Stanhope’s brief song My Love in her Attire features sinuous dovetailing lines for soprano, vibraphone and clarinet, which glimmer with a subtle wittiness.

Three Australian premieres further affirm Halcyon’s unfaltering devotion to new music curation: Moonlight, Summer Moonlight is Estonian Tõnu Korvits’ elegy to a solemn evening, while the frozen moment of a perfect shade of blue is illuminated in Hilary Tann’s …Slate, blue-gray. Quiet Songs is Jeremy Thurlow’s translucent sculpture of Yves Bonnefoy’s murmuring poetry. 

As Halcyon celebrate 26 years of music-making, join artistic director and mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong for a breathtaking evening, as alongside a cast of Halcyon musicians both old and new, spectres of grief and reminiscence mingle with stunning evocations of nature’s radiance.

WORKS
Gordon Kerry - Three Malouf Songs (2015)
Christine McCombe - Ebb Tide (2016)
Kevin March - Two songs from Mythweaver (2009, 2021 chamber version) - world premiere
Lisa Cheney - The Soul’s Eternity from No Distant Place (2015)
Elena Kats-Chernin - Moondust (2019)
Paul Stanhope - My Love in Her Attire (2013)
Hilary Tann - Slate, blue-gray (2012)
Jeremy Thurlow - Quiet Songs (2014)
Tõnu Kõrvits - Moonlight, Summer Moonlight (2013)

ARTISTS
Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo-soprano and artistic director
Amy Moore – soprano
Jane Bishop – flute
Alex McCracken – clarinet
Maria Lindsay – violin
Heather Lloyd - viola
James Larsen – cello
Will Hansen - double bass
Stephanie McCallum - piano
Kaela Phillips – harp
Alison Pratt - percussion

Read the full program here

Night Tides
18 October at 7pm
Choirs Rehearsal Studio, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct
Wharf 4/5, 15 Hickson Rd Dawes Point

The Choirs Rehearsal Studio can be found behind the STC Box Office, in the breezeway, opposite the Sydney Dance Company.
The 324 and 325 bus runs directly to Wharf 4/5 on Hickson Rd from near Town Hall.

Tickets $58 full price/ $48 senior concession/ $33 student concession
Tickets available through Humantix here

All enquiries: info@halcyonartmusic.com.au

1st performance - The Silences Inside Me - Lunar Festival 2024

Jenny will be performing the world premiere of Corrina Bonshek’s The Silences Inside Me for voice, yehu and cello at the Chinese Gardens in Sydney on February 11. The program, curated by composer/performer/researcher Nicholas Ng and presented by NSW Government as part of the 2024 Lunar Festival, will feature Corrina's new piece and other small works for voice, cello and Chinese instruments. 

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The Silences Inside Me was commissioned by Halcyon’s artistic director, Jenny Duck-Chong, and developed by Corrina in collaboration with writer/director Tasnim Hossaim, using Jenny’s own Chinese heritage as the frame for the work.

Corrina says:
“"The Silences Inside Me (2024), was born from a collaboration with Jenny and Tasnim that sits with the complex relationships with ancestry in the context of 1st and 2nd-generation Australians with migrant roots. Each collaborator has heritage / family in different parts of the world, and it was fascinating to chat and reflect on our shared and different experiences with family stories, cultural rituals, and the absence of these. I love the way that silence in the music is multifaceted - evoking the gaps in memory or absence as well as a space of joyful possibility in reimagining/rebuilding and growth."

The resulting work, a little like the elegant simplicity of a calligraphic gesture, has pared back the text to its essence, taking the listener on an evocative and reflective journey of discovery.  Halcyon is delighted to present this work for the first time in this picturesque setting, in a program of Chinese and Chinese-inspired works for Chinese and Western instruments.

See program note below.

ARTISTS
Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo-soprano
Nicholas Ng erhu, yehu, hulusi
James Larsen cello
Chloe Chung dizi, flute

Sunday 11 February at 12.30pm and 1.30pm
Peace Boat Pavillion
Chinese Garden of Friendship
Pier St Cnr of Harbour St
Darling Harbour

COST
$12 garden entry
The free program will be performed at 12.30pm and 1.30pm. 

NOTE: There are no seats for the event, but you can find plenty of places around the space to listen, or make a reservation for a table and banquet lunch in The Gardens tea room (garden entry price $8 for restaurant guests).

PROGRAM NOTE

The Silences Inside Me (2024)
Music by Corrina Bonshek, words by Tasnim Hossain.

The Silences Inside Me is a musical/poetic musing on ancestry that draws upon imagery from conversations with Jenny Duck-Chong about her Chinese roots. Jenny, Tasnim Hossain (writer) and myself as composer, each have heritage / family in different parts of the world. It was fascinating to reflect how we all use family stories, cultural rituals, and even objects to connect, or reconnect, to our ancestors. The silence in the title is multifaceted. It refers to the absence or loss of family connection, but also to a powerful space of reimagining and possibility. Musically the work journeys from a recognition of absence (the halting, gapped musical statements of the opening), to a rebuilding to connection (via imagery of a golden hummingbird and music that consciously references Chinese folk music), and finally to a third part where silence is refigured a space of flowering joy and connection. In this part, the ensemble gets to improvise and develop earlier musical ideas in new ways using their imagination and creative gifts.
- Corrina Bonshek

I've lost something precious
We lost things once precious
In the gaps
In the silence

Language, stories, family.
Holding onto absence.
Stories gone untold.
Ashamed to have lost what has gone.

A hummingbird.

Somewhere in memory
a story untold
A picture
raised leaves and flowers.
Leaves of gold,
shining.

I found something special
in the liminal spaces,
in the piecing together.
Learning, finding, building together.
Imagination,
silent, no more.
- Tasnim Hossain

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The Silences Inside Me was created with support from Halcyon, the Australian Cultural Fund, and Corrina Bonshek & Collaborators (who are supported by the City of Gold Coast).

The event is presented by

The Dance of Life

Featuring artistic director and co-founder, Jenny Duck-Chong, alongside an extended cast of Halcyon friends and familiars, 25 years of craft, collaboration and creation are at the heart of this celebration of art music. The Dance of Life is a celebration of existence in all its varied shades, and a tribute to Halcyon’s longevity, as well as the rich diversity of music and people that have characterised its history.

A collection of intimate chamber music, from Elliott Carter’s spectral atmospheres to Ross Edwards’ lush depictions of nature, the duet is the starring form of the program. Halcyon’s ensemble, a chameleon in its configuration, evolves and blooms across the program, the narrator of life from its smallest corners to its largest, most symbolic networks. As it blossoms, life is reflected in the smallest flutter of insect wings in Rachel Clement’s fracture, to the spellbinding glow of the moon in Rósa Lind Page’s ‘Claire de Lune.’

The culmination of the program, Elliott Gyger’s This Kind of Life, is a nod to both these moments of simplicity and to the significance of connection and friendship. This culinary narrative, a series of letters between chef Julia Child and her pen-pal, Avis DeVoto, is part of a long history of collaborations between Elliott Gyger and Jenny Duck-Chong, friends since university. Commissioned by one of Halcyon’s most significant supporters, Ian Dickson, for his partner Reg Holloway as a birthday gift, the piece was premiered in Halcyon’s 20th year and Elliott’s 50th.

Each of the works in The Dance of Life are as much a celebration of the growth and perseverance of the ensemble as they are a testament to the cultivated circle of musicians, artists and people who have become part of Halcyon’s community. Join Halcyon for a jam-packed concert of reminiscence and celebration.

The program features works by Kaija Saariaho, Rósa Lind Page, Rachel Clement, Alisha Redmond, Elliott Carter, Nigel Butterley, David Lumsdaine, Ross Edwards and Elliott Gyger.

PROGRAM

Nigel Butterley Nature Changes at the Speed of Life... (2014)
Ross Edwards The Forest from Five Senses (2012)
Elliott Carter Alba (1952) from Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2008)
David Lumsdaine Fire in Leaf and Grass (1990)
Alicia Redmond a dance with a jelly-fish (2022)
Rachel Clement fracture (2000)
Kaija Saariaho Ariel's Hail from The Tempest Songbook (2000)
Rósa Lind Page Claire de lune from Apollinairesongs (2007)
Elliott Gyger This Kind of Life: a culinary correspondance (2018)

Artists
Jane Sheldon soprano, Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo soprano, Jane Bishop flute, John Lewis clarinet, James Larsen cello, Rowan Phemister harp, Jo Allan piano, Jack Symonds conductor

The Dance of Life
Friday 20 October at 7pm
Choirs Rehearsal Studio, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct
Wharf 4/5, 15 Hickson Rd Dawes Point

The Choirs Rehearsal Studio can be found behind the STC Box Office, in the breezeway, opposite the Sydney Dance Company.
The 324 and 325 bus runs directly to Wharf 4/5 on Hickson Rd from near Town Hall.

Tickets $50/$35 senior concession/$30 student concession
Click here to buy. Online ticket sales close at 3pm on the day of the concert. Tickets will then only be via the door.

All enquiries: info@halcyonartmusic.com.au

Image: ‘Fireworks’ © Kathryn Cooper.
’Fireworks’ depicts a flock of starlings reacting to a bird of prey. Click on the link to learn more about it. Or read more about her fascinating work with starling murmurations here.

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New Music Studio: The Space Between Us

The New Music Studio and Halcyon collaborate to present two vocal chamber works by Conservatorium composition staff spanning almost 15 years. No Ordinary Traveller (2006), composed by Katy Abbott to a libretto by Jacki Holland, was inspired by shipboard letters and diary entries, written by 19th-century European settlers on their way to Australia. It captures their vulnerability and uncertainty as they navigate the transition between their old and new lives. Elliott Gyger’s Autobiochemistry (2019), for voice and cello, sets words from the collection of the same name by Sydney poet Tricia Dearborn. Each poem is titled after a chemical element, exploring its resonances with human experience via biology, personal anecdote and vivid metaphor. It was the winning work in the 2022 Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize. Both works will be sung by mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong, for whom they were written.

The program celebrates long working relationships and demonstrates Halcyon’s continuing commitment to showcasing Australian composition of the highest calibre.

ARTISTS
Jenny Duck-Chong, mezzo-soprano
Rosanne Hunt, cello
Patrick Vaughan, clarinet
Leah Columbine, percussion
Tina Tao, piano

Wednesday 5 April at 7.30pm
Hanson-Dyer Hall
Level 3, The Ian Potter Southbank Centre
43 Sturt St, Southbank

Image: © Linden Gledhill

Autobiochemistry

Artistic Director, mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong, is joined in Halcyon’s final 2023 performance by two stellar performers, soprano Jane Sheldon and cellist Rosanne Hunt.  Both artists work across a range of media and styles.  Highly active as both a performer and composer, this year alone Jane Sheldon has won Work of the Year (Dramatic) at the 2022 Art Music Awards, performed with Sydney Chamber Opera in productions in Holland, Canberra and Sydney and released a new solo album, I am a tree, I am a mouth. Renowned Melbourne cellist Rosanne Hunt used one of the recent lockdowns to record Elliott Gyger’s virtuosic solo cello work, Shifting, for Forest Collective. She is sought after by leading state and national ensembles and orchestras on modern and period cello and was a founding member of both ELISION and the Melbourne Baroque Orchestra. 

The third and final installment of Halcyon’s trilogy of voice and cello programs, Autobiochemistry features the music of Elliott Gyger, Nicola Lefanu and Madeleine Isaksson.

The centrepiece of the program is Elliott Gyger’s new work Autobiochemistry (2019). The work has just been announced as the 2022 winner of the prestigious Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize. Completed late in 2019, the new 13-movement work is scored for voice and cello, each one named for a different chemical element. It is his seventh piece for the ensemble. Due to lockdown delays, this will be the world premiere performance.  

The composer says:
“When Jenny Duck-Chong asked me to write for mezzo-soprano and cello, I had a fairly immediate idea of the kind of text I needed:  something personal, intimate and conversational, and probably fairly contemporary in idiom and viewpoint.  In the absence of anything to hand that quite fit the description, I visited a bookshop in Carlton and browsed the shelves of new poetry, where a slim volume entitled Autobiochemistry caught my eye.  The author, Sydney poet Tricia Dearborn, was new to me, but I was immediately intrigued by the concept – a cycle of poems on the chemical elements and their intersection with human experience, both universal and particular – as well as by the clarity, freshness and honesty of Dearborn’s writing.”

Also on the program is the Australian premiere of  Nicola LeFanu ‘s The Tongue and the Heart (2008), to poetry by John Fuller, and Madeleine Isaksson’s Blad över blad/Feuille sur feuille (2000/2019), which Halcyon premiered in 2019. 

Program

Elliott Gyger Autobiochemistry (2019) - World Premiere
Nicola LeFanu The Tongue and the Heart (2008) - Australian Premiere
Madeleine Isaksson Blad över blad/Feuille sur feuille (2000/2019)

DATE & TIME: Thursday 8 December at 7pm
VENUE: Summer Hill Church, 2 Henson St Summer Hill

Tickets: $45/$35 Available here
Socially distanced options are available when you select your ticket type

Halcyon aims to keep ticket prices accessible.  However, as we approach our 25th anniversary in 2023, you may like to 'top up' that amount and add a donation at the time of purchase to help us as we prepare for this significant milestone or just click here to donate.

Enquiries: info@halcyonartmusic.com.au

THE ARTISTS
Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo soprano
Jane Sheldon soprano
Rosanne Hunt

Image ‘Liquid Crystal DNA’ © Linden Gledhill

After Dark

Halcyon returns to the stage with After Dark - new Australian music for voice and cello.  The program features works that have been a long time in limbo.  Four works commissioned by Halcyon early in 2020 will receive their long-delayed premieres - Luke Styles’ Starfish, Anthony Moles’ Mantoux, Cameron Lam's Persephone as a Whistling Moth and Ghosts, a new song cycle by Nicole Murphy.  The performance also includes premieres by Aristea Mellos, Alisha Redmond, Brad Taylor-Newling and Andrew Ford and recent works by Alan Holley, Gordon Kerry and Gillian Whitehead.

The four commissions were part of a large voice and cello project, conceived in 2019. Due to Covid and the nature of the pieces themselves, this has morphed into a three stage project with three cellists - the digital concert Holding Light in mid 2020 with Geoffrey Gartner, After Dark with James Larsen and a final program in early December with Rosanne Hunt.

Contemporary Australian writers feature abundantly in the program with words by Richard James Allen, Laurence Barratt-Manning, Margaret Bradstock, Sarah Holland-Batt, John Kinsella, David Malouf and Mark Treddinick. 

There has been so much 'pivotting' in recent years as artists have tried to make viable plans in an uncertain world and weathered the dark times of isolation.  Live performance, where an audience experiences that moment of musical creation in real time in a shared moment with the performers, is unlike anything we can conjure on a screen.  Showcasing a wealth of contemporary Australian composers across several generations, join Halcyon's artistic director, mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong and cellist James Larsen for this intimate performance.

PROGRAM

Brad Taylor-Newling After Dark  (2019-20) ^
Anthony Moles   Mantoux (2020) ^
Aristea Mellos         Morning from Songs for a Day (2014 rev.2015)
Sadie Harrison         Ethne’s Lullaby (2010 rev 2020) ^
Gillian Whitehead     Because of the Child (2013)
Cameron Lam          Persephone as a Whistling Moth (2020 rev.2022) ^
Aristea Mellos         Stimmung (2021, cello version) ^
Nicole Murphy     Ghosts (2020) ^
Luke Styles          Starfish (2020) ^
Alisha Redmond     a dance with a jelly-fish (2022) ^
Gordon Kerry          My Sorrow’s Flower (2020)
Andrew Ford          Hymn of the Garden (2020) ^
Alan Holley         First Light (2020)

^ World Premiere

ARTISTS
Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo-soprano
James Larsen cello

DATE: Saturday Sept 10 at 7pm
VENUE: Summer Hill Church
2 Henson St Summer Hill

Attendees are encouraged to wear masks during the performance.  The space is generous and there will be a section allocated for those who would also prefer to maintain social distance.  Please indicate your preference when booking.

Tickets: $45/$35
Book here

Halcyon aims to keep ticket prices accessible.  However, as we approach our 25th anniversary in 2023, you may like to 'top up' that amount and add a donation at the time of purchase to help us as we prepare for this significant milestone or click here to donate.