In a series of blogs in 2023, Halcyon’s Artist Director, mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong, considers highlights of the last 25 years. Shining a spotlight on performances month-by-month she shares insights and links to music performed across the years.
As I reflect on the past 25 years I continue to muse about how much life has changed for performers and promotions across the decades. Ensembles and venues have come and gone, and media is a whole new animal since the early days of hard copy mailouts and mailing lists! As I delve into our archives and seek out information again about the performances and events, I realise how much easier it is to access some information and how difficult it is to discover other material which is no longer 'active' in this digital age. And I am fascinated by how much more I am discovering along the way, even about works I have performed and researched before. While the internet can be a perennial rabbit hole of diversion or distraction to fall into, there is also a wealth of fascinating material to discover that makes our understanding richer and deeper.
April - 2008, 2009, 2012
In this blog we’ll be taking a look at highlights of April performances from 2008, 2009 and 2012. The month of April saw us at the second Aurora Festival in Western Sydney in Campbelltown and Penrith and in multiple performances of the music of Steve Reich.
12, 18, 20 April 2008 - Aurora Festival
The Aurora Festival in Western Sydney was the brainchild of composer Matthew Hindson who wanted to create a festival for contemporary art music in Sydney, featuring 'new music by living composers'.
In his introductory message to the first festival in 2006 he wrote:
" In 2003 I was the featured composer of the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Wales. Curated by John Metcalf, this festival of new music focuses on contemporary chamber music written by living composers, taking place over a week in predominantly regional centres of Southern Wales.
Upon my return to Sydney I realised that there was no regular festival of contemporary art music in Sydney - a strange situation given a city of our size."
So he set out to create one. Established as a biennial event, the inaugural Festival took place in 2006 (more on that in the May blog). Read the original program here.
The second Aurora Festival (subheaded 'Living Music') in 2008, sought to highlight 'cross-cultural influences' in national and international works and included 19 premieres, discussions, workshops and forums alongside the performances. The featured composers were Chinary Ung (US/Cambodia) and Michael Atherton (Australia). Although much of the online material is no longer available, you can still read the two e-forums that were part of the event on AMC's resonate: Forum 1: Music of the Spirit - Acoustic Music (panel: Diana Blom (moderator), Chinary Ung, Michael Atherton, Anne Boyd and Bruce Crossman) and Forum 2: Music of the Spirit - Electroacoustic Music and Beyond (panel: Houston Dunleavy, Chinary Ung, Michael Atherton, Andrian Pertout, Garth Paine and Roger Dean). The first contains some references to the pieces described below. These online discussions contain some forthright commentary and make for interesting reading fifteen years on. There was also a book produced in collaboration with the festival, Music of the Spirit: Asian-Pacific musical identity, edited by Michael Atherton and Bruce Crossman. View the program list here.
12 April 2008
Aurora Festival Aura/Aurora: Heavenly Music inspired by water and light
Halcyon performed in two programs in the Festival and performed works by both the featured composers. The first concert included Australian premieres by Chinary Ung, and Gavin Bryars alongside Ross Edward's Maninya I and the world premiere of Songs of Stone and Silence by Michael Atherton, commissioned for Halcyon by the Festival . Both featured works resonated with the idea of place - Michael’s with the ancient art of Australia’s First Peoples and Chinary’s Aura with echoes of his Cambodian homeland. Here’s a bit more about the works.
Michael Atherton - Songs of Stone and Silence
With poetry by David Campbell, Michael Atherton’s new piece featured an integrated visual projection behind the performers (which we sadly never got to witness). Comprising of a series of interconnected and named sections, the composer notes, “Each title comprises a series of four-line poems that depict Aboriginal rock engravings, mainly in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, Sydney, and NSW - Ku-ring-gai Rock Carvings; Sydney Sandstone (Rock Carvings); and Devil's Rock and Other Carvings.”
I remember working extensively with Michael in the preparation of this work, as he tailored it to fit. He described it like this in a Festival e-forum that followed the performance:
"my song cycle... is largely a through-composed work. I spent a long time listening to the singers and tried to imagine the embodiment of their voices and the link between the poetry and the rock engravings. The spoken text of David Campbell's poetry was scored on single line staves with instructions that were used as a dialogue for discussion in rehearsal. Specific stage movements are specified in the score but space did not permit us to include this. The bass clarinet and cello have some outlining here and there in the parts, which we workshopped. I wanted to capture the individual bodily responses of the musicians in the soundworld of the piece, also having poetry to be felt as moving between speech and song."
Each short section flashes with a distinctive colour as it depicts the flora and fauna embedded in the Australian landscape. For this performance, Alison Morgan and I were joined by Jason Noble clarinet, Julia Ryder cello and Sally Whitwell piano.
Chinary Ung - Aura
This massive work of around 45 minutes was by one of the festival's featured composers, the Cambodian-born American-based Chinary Ung who was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2020. Takemitsu is quoted as saying,
“[Ung’s] music is a combination of Eastern Philosophy and Western innovation. It is not a product of pure technical solution but it is a creation of deep spiritual aspiration.”
The largest work Halcyon has ever undertaken on their own, it is scored for 2 soprano voices, flute, oboe/cor anglais, clarinet/bass clarinet, percussion, 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and double bass. What that information does NOT tell you is that many of the players also bow water-filled wine glasses and/or play crotales and other hand percussion as well as vocalising!
"Aura utilizes two sopranos, singing high-flying passages in Pali and Khmer, floating over a chamber orchestra in which nearly everyone is required to play additional percussion instruments, including bowed crotales, little cymbals common to the ancient world. Current events figure into Ung's texts and music as well; a portion of Aura is a commemoration of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina."
You can read Allmusic’s full album review here and listen to another recording of Aura here performed by Southwest Chamber Music (Cambria Master Recordings, 2008)
I still remember the piece vividly and recall the co-ordination challenges of singing while playing hand-percussion. Doing something that you are highly-trained in while simulataneously performing on another instrument as a non-professional takes different fortitude as a performer. Many of the instrumentalists initially also felt out-of-their-depth when asked to engage in singing and chanting, hand-percussion and whistling, all of which were a feature of the work, above and beyond their instrumental involvement - though I’ve had many chances across the years to rise to the challenge!
If you look closely at the photos you can see the players have head mics in place for the ABC broadcast recording. It was definitely a feat for the whole ensemble. But it was a visceral one and created such a rich array of colour and human responsiveness as speech and percussion meshed with melodic contour and emotional arc.
Ung scholar Adam Greene describes this well -
"musicians are asked to perform vocal behaviours and their instrumental parts simultaneously—no small feat considering that the combination of acrobatic gestures and subtle timbral shadings that populate Ung’s scores is enough to engage the abilities of most performers. To ask them to do something for which they have not studied and practiced to perfection—singing, humming, whistling, chanting—requires a leap of faith on the part of the composer and the performer. In some ways this alludes to folk music, in which it is common to play and sing simultaneously. In Ung’s music, the demands are heightened, and there is enough independence in both tasks that one does not hear the situation as one of melody and accompaniment."
The work had such a distinctive sound-world that so clearly straddled the influence of different traditions and cultures embracing all whole-heartedly. The festival gave us a wonderful opportunity to experience and engage with the composer and his music.
For the Ung, Halcyon was Roland Peelman conductor Alison Morgan soprano Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo soprano Steven Meyer flute/piccolo/alto flute David Papp oboe/cor anglais Jason Noble clarinet/bass clarinet Claire Edwardes percussion Sophie Cole violin Thomas Talmacs violin Nicole Forsyth viola Julia Ryder cello Mardi Chillingworth double bass. His wife, violist Susan Ung, who has premiered and recorded many of his works, also played in the ensemble and brought us further insights through the process too.
The program was the sort of thing you take on when you are younger and crazier. Aura is a 45 minute epic in six movements which we performed after a full first half of about the same length with the Bryars, Edwards and the Atherton premiere.
18 and 20 April 2008
Aurora Festival: Daniel Variations with Sydney Conservatorium Modern Music Ensemble
In the second program, Halcyon and the Sydney Conservatorium Modern Music Ensemble, directed by Daryl Pratt, gave the Australian premiere of Steve Reich's Daniel Variations for 2 sopranos, 2 tenors, 2 clarinets, 4 pianos and 6 percussion. An intense piece, drawing together the Biblical writing of the prophet Daniel and the writing of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, you can read more on the work here. Alison and I were joined in this performance by tenors Andrei Laptev and Dan Walker.
At this point it was Halcyon’s third piece of Reich so, his was a musical 'language' we felt very familiar with. As well as Tehillim performances, Halcyon had performed the Australian premiere of his small work Know What is Above You (for four female voices and percussion) at the first Aurora Festival in 2006. Despite being au fait with his work, it is still music that requires absolute rhythmic accuracy so the ensemble can lock together seamlessly and yet you need to 'relax' into so it is not just a piece of frenetic counting; it needs to be ‘felt’ together. Very much a piece for being absolutely grounded in the present moment and not thinking about the past or future!
You can listen to the Nonesuch studio recording featuring the choral version here and read more about it here and here
OTHER REICH PERFORMANCES
9 April 2009 also saw another performance of Tehillim - Halcyon’s third in two years - with Ensemble Offspring and a standout line up of percussionists and projections for Melbourne Recital Centre.
On 29 April 2012 we also performed Music for 18 Musicians in Synergy Percussion’s program Steve Reich: A Celebration at the Opera House in the presence of the composer. Extracts of the concert were featured in Sydney Opera House’s 50/50: Celebrating 50 iconic years streaming playlist.