Program note

rest #7 celebrates new music, with two exclusively Australian concert programs featuring world premieres from Deborah Cheetham AO and Rhyan Clapham a.k.a. DOBBY. This issue also includes an interview with returning guest pianist Kristian Chong.

“The debt to Beethoven is evident in the dramatic opening of the first movement, alongside a lightness of foot that is all Schubert.”

“Boulanger was making the most of student life when she wrote this piece…that exuberance infuses every note.”

Composed over just eight days in 1960, Malcolm Williamson described the piece as ‘an overtly Australian work aiming at spontaneity and vigour rather than profundity.’

“With the Eroica the symphony as a genre ceased to be a diversion, it demanded serious attention…capable of expressing ideals, of speaking for as well as to humanity.”

“Each of these players is given individual responsibility…The texture is almost self-defeatingly complex, and every line is significant.”

I am no longer the same person, composer, soprano as the one who entered into 2020 in good faith. Am I more? Am I less? Time will tell. For now I am content to emerge and see what path can be forged.

Solace considers the accelerated regenerative processes that follow extreme levels of fire and natural disaster. The material functions in orbits, presenting the multi-dimensional process of regeneration that is one of both life and death, beginning and end.

Eric Avery is a creative polymath: a Ngiyampaa, Gumbangirr, Bandjalang and Yuin artist, trained in classical violin, composition and dance. Avery’s work traverses the natural and the man-made, bringing together ancient tradition and language with contemporary technology and production techniques.

The piece was commissioned as a work that could celebrate the natural beauty of the Byron Bay area, alongside a celebration of the voices of women. This suite reflects upon three female figures and interprets their voices musically in a series of ‘songs for the hours,’ musical pieces intended for the passage of the day.