Guest Post: Celeste Oram and Alex Taylor

The University of Auckland Clocktower

The Committee: Equinox

https://www.facebook.com/thecommitteecomposers

Music by Yvette Audain, Sarah Ballard, Leonie Holmes, Kevin Kim, Rohan King, Louise Webster and Peter Willis

Performers: Yvette Audain, saxophones; Sharon Baylis, viola; Felicity Hanlon, oboe and cor anglais; Ben Hoadley, bassoon; Kevin Kim, recorders; Tom Pierard, cello; Claire Scholes, mezzo-soprano

Guest post: Celeste Oram and Alex Taylor


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It would have been much easier not to write this article. Then we would still have all the skin on our noses; no toes would have been stepped on; no feathers ruffled. But we sense a lack of in-depth and provocative music critique in our city, and hence a lack of incisive discourse surrounding the work of young(ish) composers. This makes us itchy and impatient. New Zealanders can be notoriously acquiescent; but this is not particularly conducive to a robust composerly environment. This article is hence written the spirit of wanting to start the conversations that desperately need to be had, but we don't hear anyone else starting.

This is not an attempt to divide and conquer. It is not an attempt to snatch ourselves more pieces of pie. It is absolutely not fueled by any petty sense of resentment. It is a genuinely determined effort to start a discussion about how Auckland composers (and more widely, musicians and artists) can work together to forge an artistic scene that demands more of us, that makes us better composers and makes our performers better musicians, that enthuses our audiences, and that we can take a great deal of pride in. Our only "agenda" is to write seriously good music, to advocate for a scene in which we can do so proudly, to seek out the terra nova: and encourage our fellow composers to do the same, so we can all write the best music we can.

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As young composers, we are told that entrepreneurship is the golden ticket to what we do. Gauche is the undergraduate who embarks on their path thinking that putting the right dots on the page is enough to establish them and their music. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the phrase "composers have to make their own opportunities", I would probably have enough in the kitty to negate the need for this comment in the first place.

It is, of course, a catchy mantra. It is a convenient paraphrase of the mentality drilled into each Gen Y-er, in any field: cementing our generation's individualism and cutting some slack for the larger establishment organizations that are likely to fail us. This aphorism's valuable merit is that it encourages young composers to reject complacency with the scene they find themselves in: to imagine what a music scene could and should be, and to empower them to make happen what they see lacking.

This aphorism's problems, however, lie in its potential for sanctioning mediocrity and deincentivising a composer's striving for excellence. At its worst, this mentality spawns patchy, self-indulgent vanity projects. By essentially bypassing the quality control of third-party peer reviewers, anything goes: if you write it, it can get performed. At this point, you might think, but it's just simple market economics: if the audiences come, they must be doing something right. Or perhaps, that the tastemakers in their ivory towers are all wrong - that we need grass-roots vanguards who will democratize the process and give each creative voice an airing. These are very valid points. But they don't leave room for imagining how this DIY attitude can be put to best use. For, at its best, this mentality can fire up a community that works together to insistently lift their game, make possible valuable opportunities, and shake the cobwebs off the establishment mausoleums.

An interesting case study to use in exploring these questions is a recent concert by The Committee, an Auckland-based composers' collective, whose stated mission is to promote the work of Auckland composers. The idea of a composers' collective promoting their own work is not without merit; new music needs advocates wherever it can find them. But it is also essential for a community of composers to discuss how such a collective can best serve the composers in its city, and best cultivate its creative community.

Last weekend's concert gave us a good deal of hope by proving two encouraging points. The first is that The Committee had secured Auckland Council's Arts Alive funding to support the concert. One little pohutukawa blossom of hope printed on the programme's back page shows that central funding bodies--specifically, and rightfully, Auckland-based ones--are amenable to funding our efforts. But receiving funding is a two-way transaction: both backs must be scratched. In other words, a venture that spends taxpayer money must genuinely believe that they are embarking on something that best serves and enriches their artistic community. Composers must put their best feet forward to their city, and offer to their audiences only that which shows the boldest of what we do, so they keep coming back.

Secondly, the afternoon's performances were notably excellent; the Committee have succeeded in getting high-caliber performers onside to do justice to the works presented. Auckland is lucky to have mezzo Claire Scholes, whose sensitive versatility and indefatigable adventurousness makes her an ideal advocate for new vocal music. I greatly look forward to seeing her, and other singers, showcased in The Committee's next concert in November, devoted to vocal music. It is always a delight to hear performances from long-time champions of new Auckland music, such as Ben Hoadley and Tom Pierard. And we are also lucky to have the chops of Yvette Audain and Kevin Kim--great players on unusual instruments--who, as composers themselves, have the potential of bringing extra insights to the pieces they approach. It is clear that our city is home to superb performers who are committed to the work of composers, and with whom very fruitful relationships can be forged.

But again, there is a flipside to this: as advocates for composers and their new works, surely a composers' collective could (and should) be more proactive in engaging performers more comprehensively in the development of new works. Composers are never best served by an attitude of "make sure we can get it together in a couple of rehearsals". Really really good music can be really really hard. Music that is really worth playing sometimes takes more than a couple of calls to make magic happen. Composers advocating for composers must never settle for the easy way out when it comes to negotiating with performers. Yes, I know, we're all busy, our pockets are all a bit thin, all the good musos are overstretched. But this is precisely why a composers' collective has a responsibility to foster good relationships with fantastic performers, to get them as fired up about our music as we are. Despite the professionalism and undoubted ability of all the performers on Sunday, there was no sense that they were invested in the music, that they were really risking something.

With these two essential batters--financial and human resources--run home, an independent composers' organization such as The Committee are in a unique and privileged position. Free from the sometimes turgid immobility of larger arts organizations, their scope for adventure and innovation is unbridled. The best service such a composers' collective can therefore offer is to champion the boldest work of the highest available quality that would not necessarily get airings by other performance groups. We are not convinced that, on the whole, last weekend's concert measured up to those three parameters.

Although one might expect a bewildering plethora of styles and tones in a line-up of eight new works, there was a disappointing flatness to the programme. Notable exceptions were the tightly-wound lines of Webster's Quicken and the compressed vitality of Sarah Ballard's Axis. To commission a fresh face, such as highly talented emerging composer Ballard, to add to the Committee's regular lineup resulted in a beautiful, sophisticated work that was the unequivocal highlight of the concert.  Holmes's Fourth Station, too, was gripping and poignant, if rather earnest. 

The flatness of the programme came from a lack of energy, and a lack of concision. The remaining pieces tended to suffer from a debilitating verbosity and a reliance on meandering modal lines without much rhythmic or gestural impetus. There must be a note here too about programming – we were presented with seven long pieces; I experienced this as a sort of extended malaise, broken most convincingly by Ballard's bold ensemble work. The curator's role is surely to provide balance, tension and relief in a concert programme, to allow the listener space and to present each work in its best light. In another context, perhaps flanked by propulsive miniatures, Rohan King's Temporal could have been strikingly meditative, but here, at the end of a long programme, it felt tired and overworked.

It's all very well to criticise the make-up of the programme, you might say, but these were new works – surely the commissioners couldn't have predicted what the composers would do? Two of the works were not in fact new: Holmes's Fourth Station, fit for purpose as part of an Easter exhibition celebrating the stations of the cross, is an impressive piece, and a suitable if safe choice. Audain's Hazine has had many outings, and for me epitomised the meandering sameness of the concert as a whole. These two slots were an opportunity to create greater rhythm and direction in the evening's line-up, an opportunity perhaps not best used. The programming reflected an aversion to risk that is perhaps inevitable from such a collective; what is chosen is what is least offensive to the greatest number of Committee members. And this is at the heart of why for me the concert failed: risk and flair were sacrificed in favour of familiarity and mediocrity, even and especially in many of the newly commissioned works. Conservatism for its own sake is surely the death of new music.

To begin to imagine what a highly successful and valuable composer-run performance platform might look like, let's offer the example of Sydney's Chronology Arts, founded in 2007 by then-emerging (now established) composers Andrew Batt-Rawden and Alex Pozniak. Chronology Arts have an audaciously ambitious vision for their support of emerging composers. Whilst commissioning and performing works from emerging composers is the bulk of what they do, they also facilitate professional and commercially released recordings of young composers' works, commission brokerage, and mentoring and professional development. Since its inception, Chronology Arts has premiered 130 new works by 80 composers - some internationally, such as kiwi Alexandra Hay. They are funded by the federal Australia Council for the Arts, the local Arts NSW and City of Sydney, and private donors. They collaborate with other local artists--dancers, video artists, photographers--and have jumped on the bandwagon of major festivals, including the ICSM World Music Days, when it was in Sydney in 2010. All this, dreamt up over a few beers (so I have been told) by two young and hungry composers who desperately wanted to lift Sydney's game.

To whinge that there is more arts money in Australia is to completely chicken out of facing up to why there is not a similar drive and vision among composers in New Zealand. Chronology Arts work bloody hard, but they have radically changed the new music scene in Sydney, and powerfully bolstered the careers of many young composers. Around the world there are countless instances of similar organizations.

And something else I'd like to put forward: a group that aims to serve NZ composers does not necessarily have to play New Zealand music all the time. If we want performers to get better at playing new music, if we want audiences to better understand and appreciate the crazy places we're coming from, it certainly won't hurt to engage them in the stuff that we know and love: to build a frame and a platform from which our music takes off. And there's a lot of karma at play in this business: to showcase the work of superb international emerging composers here in NZ is to open up avenues for NZ music to heard overseas. A parochial attitude only limits our horizons.

On a smaller matter, I personally was not convinced by the venue of the Clocktower. Yes, it's beautiful, yes, the in-the-round setup is highly effective, and yes, the mezzanine space was used well. But its hyper-sensitive acoustics brought out all the worst awkwardness of classical music concerts: the audience feeling paralyzed, like bugs in amber, lest the slightest shuffle or throat-clearing wrench the limelight away from the performance at hand. Why we continue to insist that internment in such an uncomfortable coffin is the most effective way to listen to and be engaged in music is completely beyond me. When interval comes as a relief, you know there's problems.

The Committee have a long and solid history behind them of supporting Auckland composers, and it is a legacy which ought to continue. They have the potential to offer a great service to new music in Auckland and beyond. But a concert such as this does not best represent the city's talent and creativity, nor does it do the greatest service to composers and the composition tradition in Auckland and beyond. If we as composers are committed to being fiercely innovative, to striving for excellence, determined to avoid stagnation and mediocrity, we need to have some more astute and discerning conversations about the kinds of channels we forge for our music.

Review: Nostalgia presented by ARCO string orchestra

Kerr St Artspace (Museum of the Vernacular)

ARCO string orchestra
Alex Taylor - Conductor

Carolyn Drake

ARCO is now a well established feature of the Devonport musical scene, with many memorable performances over the last three years taking place at the Kerr St Artspace on the slopes of Mt Victoria. The brainchild of Silver Scrolls winner and local Alex Taylor, these concerts and other Intrepid Music Projects always promise audiences innovative interpretations of old and new music.

The ensemble began confidently with Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite. The first violins balanced playfulness with grace in the Praeludium, supported by robust rhythmic drive in the accompaniment. The Sarabande was lovingly shaped but was inflicted by moments of indigestible intonation. The Gavotte was too delicate, lacking the crispness demanded by the score; the task was made difficult by the soggy acoustic. This burden turned into great assistance in the Air where the first violins and lower strings traded beautifully dark and yearning phrases, softly cradled by the inner voices’ solemn pulses. The Rigaudon provided an energetic finish to the suite, with displays of outstanding virtuosity by Concertmaster Olivia Francis and Principal Viola Emma Fetherston.

Ronald Tremain's Five Epigrams for Twelve Solo Strings had the orchestra briefly explore different compositional methods. The concise programme notes were helpful for the listener to observe these Webern-esque process miniatures. The overall sound effect achieved by the orchestra in each movement was convincing, even if strict adherence to detail was hard to appreciate. The players managed the angular musical deconstructions with clarity and aplomb, undoubtedly helped in this instance with the direction of Taylor centre-stage.

The Dances of Brittany by Larry Pruden provided a lyrical contrast to the Tremain. The tolling undercurrent established by the violins energised the resonant viola section in their opening folk-like melody. Emma Fetherston crafted evocative viola solos in the second movement and reinvigorated the ensemble into the sparkling and fleetingly impressionistic final movement. This was certainly the highlight of the evening – excellent music performed with great joy.

After the interval came Tchaikovsky’s demanding Souvenir de Florence. The frolicsome first movement limped at a cumbersome pace, causing its usually flamboyant gestures and lilting phrases to become uncomfortably transparent and sometimes rather mechanical. The movement ended aggressively, saved from an abyss of cacophony with seconds to spare.

The central movements – Adagio cantabile e con moto and Allegretto moderato – were captivating in their simple beauty. The ensemble played the slow movement with a charming naïveté, however a more relaxed sound would have allowed subtler expressivo passages. The addition of double basses to the traditional sextet caused a few balance and intonation problems, however the additional power was particularly welcome in the third movement.

The Allegro vivace requires the players to create a tone of silky lightness but with the strength of steel. The violas and lower strings provided the secure rhythmic platform allowing glorious themes to flourish in the violins and upper celli. Animated by the liveliness of the music, the bright young musicians brought the concert to a rapturous conclusion.

Review: After Lilburn - the music of New Zealand's gay composers.

Auckland University Music Theatre, Auckland

Performers: Mark Menzies, violin/viola; Claire Scholes, voice; Luca Manghi, flutes; Flavio Villani, piano; Justine Cormack, violin; Ashley Brown, cello; Sarah Watkins, piano; Finn Schofield, clarinet; Alex Taylor, spoken voice.

Carolyn Drake

It is good to hear a non-choral piece of David Hamilton's. After years of putting the composer in a box, one can finally take him out. Yet is it such fresh air? Slides 3 (1982) and 8 (1987) for solo flute, were the eldest pieces of the evening. The music presented two pronounced ideas: a spectral 'jet whistle' against ornamental melodic phrases, never to become homogenous although seemingly moving in that direction. The second of the two 'slides' had interesting but vague analogous relationships to the previous, yet it was a strange partner, the piece attempting to summarise a host of six other pieces we hadn't heard. Flutist Luca Manghi made an admirable performance of the pieces, and succeeded in focussing the ears of the audience, a necessary manoeuvre at the outset of any concert.

Claire Cowan's piano trio: wood : strings : hammers : flesh (2008) presented much entertainment for the evening. Aesthetically consistent and resourceful, Cowan's writing was fascinating, however compromised between stylistic regions (as alluded to in the programme notes). Pianist Sarah Watkins danced around her piano, slapping the various faces of the instrument and plucking its inner guts whilst the two string players pulsed in pizzicato beats of five. However engaging at the surface, I felt the piece floated above a less satisfying underlying structure and so failed to take me in any further.

constellations (2012), a composition for solo piano by young composer Alex Taylor contained a rather wonderful sound world of pitch geometry. Flavio Villani's fingers remained for the most part in the clear register of the piano, before finally summoning a spread of beating harmonics derived from the low keys. The result was a slow, directional piece, with complex patterns but towards the middle became stagnant, and ended far too late.

Then came the central piece of the programme. Jack Body's Meditations on Michelangelo (2008/9) was by far the most pronounced in 'gay sensibility'. Each meditation, in the form of monologues, was introduced with fragments of poetry by Michelangelo di Lodovico, then meditated by a solo piece for 'shaded' violin, shaded and coloured by the piano. The first movements were slow and dark modal monophonic lines, ornamented in various fashions of Body's Asian interests. On the fourth meditation, with the words of Michelangelo's verse to his lord: 'and he who loves you faithfully rises to God above and holds death sweet', the music became a compelling sequence of chromatic rises in major tonality. The piece continued, though for far too long, perhaps in the way that such music is easy to generate - to excess. I feel that the last movement proved, to the words 'Sleep is sweet, but better to be made of stone', the lack of subtlety in both players, and thus rather tested the patience (or fed the boredom) of audience members.

After a second entrance of applause for violinst Menzies and pianist Watkins, concert curator Samuel Holloway took the stage to announce an eight minute interval, presumably due to the concert starting at least two minutes late. And, to the disappointment of many, that there would be no wine.

Annea Lockwood's I give you back (1993), a thrilling solo piece for soprano Claire Scholes bewildered the audience in the beginning moments of the second half. At times unbearable and horrible, the poetry and the singing were constrained to a select few pitches and to repetitive phrases: 'I release you'. At a couple of points Scholes shook the rafters with extraordinary strength in her high register shrieks, as the poetry and music attempted to intimate the weird sensation of fear becoming freedom. The last word formant 'ng' of 'dying' was particularly exquisite, slowly imploding into the soprano as the sound moved to the back of her throat, and below.

Waipoua (1994), a duo for clarinet and piano by Gareth Farr, was a lower-light in the programme. Farr's pleasant use of suspended triads lent its allegiance to Pop music, but as a short piece with no direction contained nothing more than its premise - 'an exploration of the lyrical and emotional capabilities of my favorite instrument, the clarinet' - without being at all an exploration of any kind. Finn Schofield played with remarkable sensitivity, yet a few unpolished moments prevailed where the young clarinetist struggled to control the overtones over the soft ending tones.

Ben Hoadley's excessively light Winter I was (2009), a duet for flute and recited poetry, had a similar appeal to the previous piece. Short, modal/tonal, repeating, and light, there was nothing taxing about it. The musical material seemed oddly paired with poetry taken from Gregory O'Brien's Winter I Was (1992), itself a remembrance of (the gay) Cage and (the not gay) Feldman. And yet the piece, written seventeen years afterwards, with no other reason than to accompany a piece not already heard in this concert, was at the least a peculiar choice.

After these two 'interludes' was Samuel Holloway's Stapes. The title correlating to a bone of the inner ear, impressions of various sound transformations, spectra alterations, amplifications and so on, occur within the simplicity of the acoustic piano trio. The piece is evocative of a magnified and contorted tour of the inner ear. Cellist Ashley Brown and violinist Justine Cormack retained utter command in the fast passages of natural harmonics; Brown's ending solo was controlled with sensitivity, and slanted with all the implications a fade out has. One thing that strikes me about this piece is that it is often programmed without its counterparts (two other trios, both named for other parts of the inner ear), and thus floats above its context (a recurring theme this evening…).

The final piece of the evening, John Elmsly's Four Echoes for viola, contained the last articulate ties to the premise of the concert. Holloway's commentary at the top of the programme notes, suggesting that 'gay sensibilities' might be discovered in this bundle of works, specifically mentioned the relationship between composer Jack Body and Douglas Lilburn. Now in this final piece we encountered a second reference to Lilburn, a remembrance of him written in this soliloquy of four movements. Elmsly wrote for the programme 'musical shadows appeared in the work, particularly in the Lament, which is specifically in his memory'. Shadows certainly did appear: Prelude, silhouettes of Grisey's Prologue for solo viola, and throughout the work various melodic fragments much like that from Ligeti's Musica Ricercata. Not clearly Lilburn though, but the lyrical writing may have been enough of a salute to his spirit.

With many moments of great and varied music this evening one feels amazed with the sheer contribution of the queer community to New Zealand music. On reflection, I feel some voices of this community were in fact left out (apart from the titular, Lilburn himself wasn't included, along with many other strong composers such as Chris Gendall). The concert, having been advertised to both the gay community and also more generally to the public, seemed to attract a mixed audience to the university theatre; a concert of gay composers, but an experience for anyone interested in music.

Review: Mark Menzies with 175 East

Musgrove Theatre, Auckland

Performers: Mark Menzies, violin; Samuel Holloway, electronics and percussion; Katherine Hebley, cello; Andrew Uren, clarinets; Luca Manghi, flutes; Glenda Keam and James Gardner, percussion

Carolyn Drake

“Thank you for coming out.” Samuel Holloway’s opening greeting provided an interesting angle from which to hear the evening's offerings: with James Gardner's Queer Studies on the programme along with a number of other suggestively-titled works, one might infer an agenda of openness, of coming to grips with difficult material, and perhaps even of the sensuality of music. Whether the phrasing was intentional is moot but even so, from the outset this was a concert of bristling ideas and sensations.

The enigmatic hyperkinesis of Holloway's Management Decision-Making in Chinese Enterprises set the tone for what was a bewildering and sometimes quite strange concert event. Flicking between crisply shaped, angular episodes and highly exaggerated, almost syrupy expressiveness, Mark Menzies' violin paired with Holloway's performance – consisting of both physical gestures such as jumping, and live electronics – to present a thoroughly indecipherable language. The sensation was of watching and listening to the fascinating trajectories and inflections of a mathematically apportioned language that was nevertheless completely foreign. Menzies seemed to be having fun here: perhaps almost to the point of danger, in that the indulgent expressiveness of the improvised material often threatened to overwhelm the structure containing it.

No less enigmatic, but certainly more subtly expressed, were Holloway's aphoristic pair of Dualities. The first of the pair was a particularly concise, delicately constructed musical object; the stippled undulating of the upper and lower voices of Menzies's solo violin was skillfully woven in and out of audibility, joining together in a final elusive wispy sigh. The second piece combined rhythmically independent left and right hands to produce a taut, jittery effect. In both pieces it was not a simplistic dualism but a thoroughly dynamic interplay between elements that created tension and movement.

Between Decision-Making and Dualities, Rachael Morgan's attractively crafted Whisperings felt almost catatonically calm, with its limited harmonic and dynamic palette focusing the ear on the fine timbral gradations of flute and cello. Sadly balance was an issue here, with the dominance of the flute preventing a really satisfying blended texture.

Completing the first half was Laurence Crane's Estonia, warmly meditative and transparent, though marred by some uneven intonation in such unforgivably simple material. It was surprising that these musicians – technically excellent in many ways – at times struggled to play in tune with each other. Perhaps most contemporary aesthetic approaches provide avenues for hiding issues of intonation, but this was not such an aesthetic.

After the interval, Bryn Harrison's Five miniatures in three parts was sandwiched between two much larger, much more materially diverse works. Harrison's focus on intricate heterophonic textures through counterpoint rather than timbre provided an interesting counterbalance to the colourific world of Morgan's Whisperings in the first half. His technique of zooming in on very limited material – with each movement slower than the preceding one – revealed a fascinating jungle of seesawing lines and gradients.

Although Mark Menzies's technique and charisma as a violinist was clear throughout the evening, his compositional contribution was less successful. Ending the concert was Menzies’ like Georgie (auckland's) gardens: / uncaged music / with piwakawaka / and swongering butterfly, a protracted work that at times felt like a catalogue of violin maneuvers. The violin performance was indeed impressive, but most of the work seemed purely an exercise in virtuosity, with seven performers on stage and all but one of them woefully under-utilised.

For me the undoubted highlight of this unique, frustrating event was James Gardner's Queer Studies. These pieces swooped and hovered, sang and cackled, and generally reveled in an accomplished sense of drama and narrative. A fine attention to embellishment and the striking use of hard accents complimented the compelling structure and drew the ear to multiple layers of discourse. This was a feathery, ephemeral, sensual masterpiece, showcasing Menzies at his sensitive and satanic best.