25 years of Halcyon - April Pt 2: House Music and Dreams and Dances

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.

April: 2009 and 2012

Continuing to focus on April performances,  alongside the Aurora Festival and multiple performances of Steve Reich (see April Pt 1) April also saw us featured in the House Concert series at Government House, Sydney and in a collaborative performance with Sydney Philharmonia's VOX at the Sydney Conservatorium. 

19 April 2009 Government House - House Concert

One of several concerts we played at Sydney's Government House in its intimate House Concerts series, this one featured a collection of works for voices, flute, cello, piano - with Laura Chislett flute, Patrick Murphy cello and Sally Whitwell piano. 

The lush program was a best-of collection with works by Claire Jordan, John Corigliano, Libby Larsen, John Tavener, Ross Edwards, Oliver Knussen, Joseph Schwantner and Anne Boyd drawn from previous performances.

Claire Jordan's Memory was our first ever commission, premiered in our first concert series in 2001. Inspired by the poetry of Christina Rossetti, it was a song cycle in five movements, soprano and mezzo alternating solos before a final shared duet. 

Alison had performed the John Corigliano work in an early vocal chamber music program, devised by the two of us years before the start of Halcyon, way back in 1993.  Take a look at the flyer and you can see the kernel of things to come... (and how far computer graphics have changed since then!)

Libby Larsen was another discovery through personal research - perhaps found through perusing publisher catalogues or even books of repertoire lists, like this one from my library.  Knussen, Tavener and Schwantner were well established composers even then, who were known for their larger scale vocal music, but we wanted to showcase more of their intimate chamber music. 

Finding this underperformed repertoire, especially viewing scores, was a challenge in those days but we worked with publisher representatives and music libraries around the world in the pursuit of high-calibre-but-new-to-us work to perform.  There are so many composers who are well known in their own sphere but have less exposure outside their immediate or national reach.  I am very proud of the number of composers we have been able to introduce to our audiences across the years and the number of Australian premieres we have presented through this sort of tenacious pursuit.

You can now listen to many of these pieces from our early recordings on YouTube - the Schwantner and Jordan from our very first Demo recording made back in 2002, the Knussen from Earth Jewels in 2003 and the Larsen from Close Ups in 2004. 

I remember Larsen’s duo, Liebeslied, as one of those moments of equal partnership between voice and instrument, where each are so beautifully intertwined. The program was performed and recorded live at Trackdown Scoring Stage at Moore Park, Sydney.  Our first introduction to the studio where many of our albums have since been recorded, it was the start of a long and productive relationship. 

LISTENING LINKS
Claire Jordan    Echo from Memory
Joseph Schwantner Black Anemones from Two poems of Aguedo Pizzaro
Oliver Knussen When First I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer from Whitman Songs
Libby Larsen Do You Know and Liebeslied from Beloved, Thou Hast Brought Me Many Flowers

A wonderful chance to work with this enthusiastic ensemble of young voices and their conductor Elizabeth Scott.  Presenting works for voice and choir, as well as featuring each ensemble individually, it was a world tour of the rare and the familiar - with works by Arvo Pärt, Katy Abbott, Elliott Gyger, Dan Walker, Kerry Andrew, and Kaija Saariaho.  Percussionist Claire Edwards joined us for works by Jorge Vidales, Ross Edwards and a solo piece, Coil by Gerard Brophy (featured on her album of the same name)

Every program is full of wonderful works and stories but here are a few highlights. 

By this stage we had performed quite a number of Kerry Andrew's solo and trio pieces.  Herself a singer and a member of the female vocal trio, juice, she was already one of Halcyon's ten most performed composers (see the photos on the top of The Music page to discover the rest).  We featured two works from her Dusk Songs - O Nata Lux for choir and Criosda liom a cadal for choir with mezzo soloist.  The latter, an atmospheric and evocative work saw with the choir spread around the gallery in Verbrugghen Hall at the Sydney Conservatorium, surrounding the audience from above and singing back to me on stage. The choir's vocal entries are 'triggered' by my part.  First reponding with my consonant sounds and then gradually with more and more pitches drawn from my melody the sound grows until they are sustaining chords beneath my repeated chant-like melody. 

Mexican composer Jorge Vidales' Four Basho Haiku (2008) was another internet discovery as we looked for works to complete the program.  For solo soprano and vibraphone, Halcyon performed the Australian premiere. 

Kaija Saariaho, feted as "among the most prominent composers of the 21st century" was another of Halcyon's most programmed composers.  She had such an exceptional understanding of the capacity of the human voice and loved to explore its textural possibilities, forming text collages and using sound as much for meaning to convey her intent. 
She is quoted, in an interview with NPR, as saying,
"I think that sound and color are not completely detached from each other.  That's maybe how it is in our brain. And I think that certain sounds, or certain kinds of music, can have even a specific smell. So I feel that all the senses are somehow present when I compose."

Read the full article here.
Sadly she passed away earlier this year and the world lost a unique and influential composer.  In the 25th birthday program which featured her Ariel’s Hail (from The Tempest Songbook), I noted:

”A giant of contemporary vocal music, Saariaho’s distinctive work has featured in numerous Halcyon programs since we first performed Grammaire des Reves in 2002.  Exploring the intricacies and timbres of that score and its vocal writing with my then co-director, Alison Morgan, was revelatory and viscerally exciting and solidified our vocal partnership as we wove words, phrases and even syllables together and merged with, or emerged from, the instrumental textures around us.  Performing that work strongly influenced the repertoire we selected in the ensuing years and the vocal virtuosity that we wanted to challenge ourselves with in the future.”

By 2012 we had already presented six of her works in concert: Grammaire des Rêves (2002 & 2005) Du gick, flög and Nej och inte (2004), The (complete) Tempest Songbook (2007), Miranda's Lament from the Songbook (2008) Quatres messages (2010) and Nuits, Adieux (2010) with electronics. The instrumental work Cendres also featured in an early collaborative program with Ensemble Offspring.

Nuits, adieux originally featured in our atmospheres program, a collaborative program of electro-acoustic music with austraLYSIS as part of the New Music Network* concert series in 2010.  When we were planning this program, we remembered that the piece, which we had so enjoyed performing, also existed in a version for solo voices and choir.  As the program note states: "The mixed choir replaces and imitates the electronics of the original.  The various echoes, delays and other effects have been transferred to the choir part."

Joined by the two male soloists from the first performance - tenor Andrei Laptev and bass Clive Birch - it was fascinating for us all to return to a piece that was the same… but different.  Instead of microphones and electronics, we had the choristers, magnifying and extending sonorities from the solo parts. For them, it was really an exercise in both reading and listening intently, responding to their corresponding solo voice. 

You can read Saariaho's full program note and texts  here

LISTENING LINKS
Jorge Vidales Four Basho Haiku
Kaija Saariaho Nuits Adieux (with Sydney Philharmonia's VOX)
Kerry Andrew Criosda liom a cadal performed by the Ebor Singers

* For those of you who don't know about the New Music Network, you can read a bit more about what it was in this article, written in 2014 by James Nightingale for The Music Trust's Music in Australia Knowledge Base when he was President of the Network.  The concert series was an important connection point for members and we were often encouraged to collaborate in our programs for the series which led to the 2013 project with austraLYSIS and one of our few forays beyond the realm of purely acoustic performance. 

25 years of Halcyon - April Pt 1: Aurora Festival and Reich

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.

25 years of Halcyon: The first concert - 14 February 1998

On this day, twenty-five years ago, Halcyon staged its first performance - Valentine's Day, 1998.  Co-founders, soprano Alison Morgan and mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong had previously presented their first vocal chamber music together back in 1993. They had been working and performing together for some years at this point and an early review had already pronounced them as "two of Sydney's most enterprising and mellifluous singers" (Fred Blanks, Sydney Morning Herald), but this was their debut as a named ensemble. 

With their inventive ensemble name, Music For Voices and Instruments (MVI for short) and a newly crafted logo, the budding singer/directors employed the services of new music heavyweights Sydney Alpha Ensemble for this inaugural concert, under the baton of Jenny’s University colleague, conductor Antony Walker.  The last piece also featured the very young voice of Jane Sheldon, who they found for this program while she was still in high school. 

Jenny notes:
The history of Sydney Alpha Ensemble is not easily found on the internet so I wanted to give some background for those who do not remember their influence.  When Halcyon was forming, they were regarded as one of the stellar new music groups of the time - virtuosic solo and chamber music performers who presented and championed new repertoire of the highest calibre.  Basically what we wanted to be when we grew up!  You can read their bio in the program link below and learn more about the scope of the work they had been presenting as Halcyon was emerging. They were an ensemble at the height of their powers.

It is a shame that ensembles of this period - groups such as Roger Woodward’s Alpha Centauri Ensemble (which was the precursor to SAE), Seymour Group, Flederman, Symeron and many others - are not well-documented on the internet. While material on composers of this period is generally available, there is little material on the ensembles that were such forces for commissioning and performing contemporary repertoire of their era. I hope more work will be done to make their history and influence more widely known.

Halcyon started as they planned to go on - working with great musicians (both established and emerging) to present high calibre and rarely heard works.  A courageous and challenging program, they presented four masterworks - Maurice Delage's Quatre Poèmes hindous (1913), Luciano Berio's Folksongs, Maurice Ravel's Trois Poèmes de Stephane Mallarmé and George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children (1970).

In this first program they wrote:

"MVI is dedicated to the performance of vocal chamber music spanning the twentieth century.  The music for voice and instruments is rich and varied in its combinations and the written word when set to music can be powerfully compelling.   
MVI envisages this as the first of a series of concerts which will provide the opportunity to perform a broad spectrum of works rarely heard in Australia, ranging from earlier in the century to recent works and new commissions."

Though the time span has narrowed (the 'earliest' works now presented are generally only a handful of decades in the past and the composers are primarily living) this still rings true across 25 years as the model for their practice.  What has evolved is the inclusion of a far greater component of newly-created and commissioned work as relationships with composers have developed and deepened over the years.  However, large ensembles works like these have been rare, with only a handful of programs equalling the number of players on the stage at this first performance.

Recorded by ABC Classic FM and attended by an audience of around 250 people (on the same night that The Song Company was performing Stockhausen’s Stimmung nearby) it was a memorable beginning for the ensemble that celebrates a quarter of a century today!

The performers were:
Conductor: Antony Walker
Soprano/Co-Artistic Director of Halcyon: Alison Morgan
Mezzo-soprano/ Co-Artistic Director of Halcyon: Jenny Duck-Chong
and soprano Jane Sheldon (Crumb)

with Sydney Alpha Ensemble:
Flutes: Geoff Collins, Emma Sholl; Oboe: Linda Walsh; Clarinets: Peter Jenkin, Philip Arkinstall; Violins Tony Gault, Alexandra D'Elia; Viola: Esther van Strahlen; Cello: Zoltan Szabo; Percussion: Daryl Pratt, Phil South, Greg Sully; Harp: Jane Rosenson; Piano Stephanie McCallum; Mandolin: Paul Hooper