Celebrating 20 years of performing, promoting, recording and curating new music, Halcyon’s last program for 2018, Shining Shores, collects together pieces inspired by the natural elements of water and moonlight. Taking time to reflect on the world around us, we wander beside the flowing Seine in Rosalind Page’s Apollinairesongs, are transfixed by the minute life in rockpools or towering mountains reflected across the bay in Gordon Kerry’s Three Malouf Songs and walk in the wet sand beside the seashore, following the lark’s song or a boat adrift on the tide, in Gillian Whitehead’s Girl with a Guitar. The night sky appears - ‘the sleepy stretch and dazzle of it’ ablaze with stars ‘like bees’ - and the changing moon is ‘like an apricot’, ‘honeyed’ or ‘silvering shores’.
In our 20th anniversary year, this program again features composers of outstanding vocal music with a deep responsivenes for the poetry that inspires them, many of whom have had long associations with Halcyon. Works have been drawn from Australia (Rosalind Page, Gordon Kerry, Sadie Harrison, Ross Edwards), New Zealand (Gillian Whitehead) and the UK and USA (Hilary Tann and Robert Lombardo) and the program sees the return of a two signifcant and quintessentially Halcyon works, Rosalind Page’s Apollinairesongs (2002) and Gordon Kerry’s Three Malouf Songs (2016).
On December 1, come and experience again the magic of Halcyon in performance and the artistry refined over 20 years of musical exploration.
PROGRAM
Rosalind Page Apollinairesongs (2002)
Hilary Tann Winter Sun, Summer Rain (1986) ^
Gilian Whitehead Girl with a Guitar (2000) ^
Gordon Kerry Three Malouf settings (2015)
and shorter works by Ross Edwards, Sadie Harrison ^ and Robert Lombardo ^
^ Australian Premiere
ARTISTS
Elizabeth Scott conductor Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo-soprano Laura Chislett flute Jason Noble clarinet Anna McMichael violin
Nicole Forsyth viola Geoffrey Gartner cello Daniel Herscovitch piano/celeste
Image: Linden Gledhill
DATE: 1 December at 8pm
VENUE: Music Workshop, Sydney Conservatorium of Music