CYBEC 21ST CENTURY AUSTRALIAN COMPOSERS’ CONCERT SHOWCASE
PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
Saturday 29 January 2022 / 6.30pm Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall Presented by Nicholas Bochner, Assistant Principal Cello
REPERTOIRE
Melissa Douglas Wave Variations John Rotar Shīghratā Angus Davison My Mother Plays the Cello Natalie Nicolas Union
Since its inception, MSO’s Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers’ Program has been made possible each year thanks to the generous support of the Cybec Foundation. This program selects participants to be mentored by leading composers across Australia and each participant is commissioned to write a 10-minute piece. These pieces are performed in tonight’s showcase. Following the showcase, one of the participants will be chosen as the MSO’s Cybec Young Composer in Residence for 2023, plus commissioned to write further pieces. The MSO’s Young Composer in Residence is a position also generously funded by the Cybec Foundation. Since the program was introduced in 2003, more than 70 composers from across Australia have had works commissioned and performed by the MSO. Most have continued onto widely diverse creative practices and the MSO has offered several subsequent commissions to graduates of the program.
MEET THE CONDUCTOR Richard Davis is currently Chief Conductor and Head of Orchestral Studies at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. He has enjoyed a long career as Principal Flute in the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and as freelance principal with such orchestras as the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra, has been widely broadcast and recorded, and has premiered flute concertos by Bernstein and Maxwell-Davies. He has been a regular conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for its commercial recordings and national radio broadcasting in the UK, and has conducted BBC Proms concerts at Royal Festival Hall and appeared with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. His conducting engagements in Australia and New Zealand include repeat performances with the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and regular concerts with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Richard is also the author of Becoming an Orchestral Musician – A Guide for Aspiring Professionals published by Faber.
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MEET THE COMPOSERS ANGUS DAVISON Angus Davison composes music with ‘bright energy’ (Limelight), ‘considerable poignancy’ (The Mercury), and ‘a respect for sound in itself’ (Cut Common). His music often spotlights uncommon stories from the natural world, inviting listeners to deepen their fascination for the world around them. Recent works have explored topics such as the religious life of worms, the bird that loved a statue, and Newton’s laws of motion. Angus holds a Master of Music from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His awards include the Don Kay Scholarship from the Tasmanian Conservatorium, Honours and postgraduate scholarships, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Student Composition Prize, second place in the Willoughby Symphony young composer award, and finalist in the international Tampa Bay Symphony Orchestra Prize. Performers to have played Angus’ music include the Melbourne and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Offspring, Omega Ensemble, and pianist Michael Kieran Harvey. His music has been performed in Australia, Europe, and the US. My Mother Plays the Cello My Mother Plays the Cello was commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for the 2021 Cybec 21st Century Composer Program. I dedicate this piece to my mother, Dale Brown, on the occasion of her 60th birthday. Even before I discovered that I loved music, it surrounded me. My mother plays the cello, and the sound of her playing underscored my childhood. In that underscore, no piece was more prominent than the Prelude to J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major, BWV 1007. Material from the Prelude is the basis of my composition. Excerpts from the Bach are stretched and stacked, reversed and recontextualised, exaggerated and expanded as the music journeys from a dramatic tutti to a central moment of stillness and back.
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MEET THE COMPOSERS MELISSA DOUGLAS Australian composer Melissa Douglas has written for a range of musicians and ensembles, such as the BBC Singers, pianists Clare Hammond and Grace Francis, PLEXUS, the Magnard Ensemble, and the Polaris Duo. Her compositions have been performed in Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. Melissa was the recipient of the RNCM Patricia Cunliffe Composition Prize (2015) and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust Award (2014). Melissa’s works feature on two albums and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Melissa studied Piano and Composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. She continued Composition studies abroad at the Royal Northern College of Music (2014–16) in the UK, graduating with an MMus in Composition with Distinction in 2016. Melissa is an Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre and is based in Melbourne. Wave Variations This piece gravitates around a theme of five notes that melodically reflect the contour of a waveform. The theme is woven throughout the orchestra, at times returning in full or in fragments beneath the surface. From the sparse opening statement by the first clarinet, this motif gathers momentum and propels forward as it develops and grows in intensity. This culminates with the whole orchestra becoming more unified.
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MEET THE COMPOSERS NATALIE NICOLAS Sydney composer, PhD candidate, and music educator Natalie Nicolas has her Masters degree from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Nicolas is a tutor/lecturer at said university, and the 2021 Composer in Residence at Loreto Normanhurst. She has written for the Goldner SQ, the TSO, the CSO, the ASQ, the ACO, and others. In 2020, the SSO commissioned Nicolas, and she won the Harris Endowment for Medical Humanities Harris Award for her PhD work with music and healthcare. Nicolas also won the Flinders SQ Composition Competition in 2017 and 2019, and their ‘All That We Are’ residency. In February 2021, the Southern Cross Soloists and Slava Grigoryan commissioned/premiered a new work of Nicolas’ at QPAC to their largest audience in 26 years. Other projects for 2020/21 include collabs with the Australian Ballet and Orchestra Victoria, Matt Withers via ABC’s Fresh Start Fund, ZOFO via Connecticut Summerfest, and the 2022 Hush Foundation Album. Union for my unwavering tribe — union noun /ˈ juː.nj.ən/ the act or the state of being joined together. “In a cosmos potentially absent of meaning, and an existence devoid of objective value, I have an opportunity to invent my own meaning. We all do. We can ascribe meaning and value to our own lives and in a way, attribute great esteem and value to each other as a result.” —Dave Le’Aupepe
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MEET THE COMPOSERS JOHN ROTAR John (b. 1995), described by Limelight magazine as a ‘young, talented and innovative composer’, is an up and coming composer and conductor based in Brisbane, Australia. Growing up in a musical family, John’s passion for music started at an early age, after starting piano at age six John turned his hand to composition at eight and at twelve had his first orchestral work performed by the Bundaberg Youth Orchestra. Since then John has had over 115 works commissioned, recorded or performed, including by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Youth Orchestra, The Australian Voices, Southern Cross Soloists, Queensland Ballet Academy, Expressions Dance Company, Flinders String Quartet, Queensland Youth Orchestras, UQ Symphony Orchestra among many others. John is also an active performer, he is the current Artistic Director and Conductor of The Australian Voices as well as the organist at the historic All Saints Church in the CBD of Brisbane. While not actively producing large numbers of decibels or scribbling on manuscript paper John can be found painting almost inappropriately vibrant abstract art on as large a canvas as he can find or zealously sipping on a glass of red wine. Shīghratā When I began thinking about this commission for the MSO I pretty quickly decided what kind of piece I would want it to be. I knew I wanted to write a vivacious, colourful, extraverted piece, brimming with life and energy. I also knew I wanted it to be fast! With these loose parameters and a swag of musical ideas I set to work, as I usually do, without a title, or even a concrete ‘concept’ in mind. One thing I often find myself thinking about is the perception of time in the mind of a listener when experiencing a piece of music. Ten minutes, for instance, can be an extremely variable unit of time depending on what you’re doing. I find listening to music that is very fast or very slow can quite dramatically alter my temporal perception, for, as much as it is the art of sculpting sound, music also moulds the time it exists in around itself. Shīghratā, the Sanskrit word for ‘speed’ or ‘quickness’, reflects this idea in an interesting way, being related dualistically to the concept of Shanti (‘stillness’ or ‘peace, a concept used in yoga and tai-chi) Shīghratā has within it an inherent necessity of being, for we all can only ever experience the world as it moves by us at a speed we can’t choose or change, except within our own minds. That all being said, this is not a piece of careful contrivance; it is about exuberant spontaneity, brightly coloured patterns with intricate detail, it is music of light on the ocean and brightly coloured parrots reeling in the skies, it is the feeling of dance, movement and physicality, a music of motion and colour and vitality.
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