Jess Green - I Heard You Sing (2022/2023)
Conducted by Roland Peelman AM
Sound Engineer Bob Scott
Film by Creswick Creative
About this work: I am someone who is attuned to seek awe and wonder, and that often comes from experiences of nature and human relationships. Becoming a mother was a profound experience, particularly in the time of birthing my first child and those first few days afterwards, where it seemed I had stepped through a portal to an alternate universe, or rather that a portal had opened and the universe had come through to me. I had recently heard a very interesting discussion explaining how the unborn child receives oxygen from its mother, her inhalations effectively serve as the unborn baby’s breath. Oxygen molecules pass through the placenta to the baby, involving complex biochemistry. My mother breathed for me, and then breathed me into the world. I then too, “breathed” for my children, and brought them forth, so continuing this connection of breath from generation to generation. [Jess Green]
Dan Walker - Listen, Are You Breathing Just A Little and Calling It A Life?
Conducted by Roland Peelman AM. Sound Engineer Bob Scott
Film by Creswick Creative
With special thanks to the National Museum of Australia
About this work: The physical act of breathing is consciously integral to singing: we are constantly aware of our ability to sing through a phrase with enough air to support it appropriately; striving to maintain the maximum amount of air in our lungs at any given time.
In this new work, I wanted to explore the idea of breathing as a passive afterthought. The title is a single line from a larger poem by Mary Oliver, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches, in which this single line acts as a metaphor for moving through life without fullness or purpose. For us as musicians though, the literal nature of the words work equally as well, as we question whether our breath allows us to make music with similar fullness and purpose.
I have taken the elements of this text and set them in three languages, Nepali, Arabic and Mandarin; each with a sibilance and sonority that seems to echo the sound of our breath. The Nepali words sāsa linu/sāsa phērna(breathe in/breathe out), are repeated mantra-like by a single voice, seemingly struggling for air. Voices enter in canon, layered on top of each other and clouding the vocal texture. The Arabic word, astamae (listen) ushers in a moment of respite, before the shallow phrases of the opening resume. The work builds into a hymn-like refrain, Zhè shì shēnghuó ma? (is this life), with all voices joining in homophonic solidarity, before finally collapsing exhausted, breathless, and ultimately, fulfilled. [Dan Walker]
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Early Music
Brenda Gifford - Yangga (2022)
extracts
Recorded live at Canberra International Music Festival, May 2022.
Brenda Gifford is a proud Yuin woman, whose culture is the basis for her arts practice. Her work ‘Yangga’ includes Yuin language words and phrases:
Yangga - Sing; Minga Bagan - Mother Earth; Wuda Country - Beautiful Country. ’Yangga’ was commissioned by Luminescence Chamber Singers, and developed in collaboration between composer Brenda Gifford, Luminescence Chamber Singers, and conductor Roland Peelman during 2022 in accordance with Australia Council Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts.