A new piece - on youtube!

This has just been uploaded by pianist extraordinaire Helen Lin. It is a recording she made with exciting American trumpeter John Irish of my "Skeletal Dance" for trumpet and piano , written especially for them in December 2009 and premiered by them in July 2010 in Taipei. She has put a nice little slide show together to accompany the sound file - I especially love the skeletons that appear at the 1 minute mark.

Enjoy! I did!!

Skeletal Dance, premiered by John Irish, trumpet, and Helen Lin, piano.

It's a pity every week isn't like this one!

It began with a lovely few days at World Con in Melbourne, being Laura's boy toy/trophy husband/arm candy etc. as she swam the corridors of Science Fiction Writers Inc. Laura had a book launch for the anthology Baggage which can be purchased from here  and is summarised and reviewed, among other places here. Apart form the launch, Laura was a panel moderator, where she kept the pace going, asked interesting questions and kept the loonies in the audience on a short leash. She also had a reading of her own work, but I had to miss that as I had to come back to the Gong to WORK! ARGH!

Actually, that work was pretty cool. I spent all of last Monday, and a fair chunk of the rest of the week, in the Bruce Gordon Theatre at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre. There, along with two other composers, three dancers and a lighting designer, I was involved in the development of a new project for dancers, sound and motion capture software called "Feedback".  This involves computerised music and sound that is controlled by the movements of the dancers and, in the case of my work, the shadows of the dancer, which could be recorded and manipulated, thus triggering more sound cues. This is really nifty stuff to be involved in, with loads of potential for installations and public art, theatre and festival performances, as well as for film and internet projects. On Wednesday and Thursday evenings, we presented what we had been working on to the public for the first time, and the result was overwhelmingly positive.

All of this was made possible by development funding and in-kind support given by the Merrigong Theatre Company who are doing so much to facilitate good theatre and music theatre in our region, as well as providing local talent with the chance to develop their work to a more national standard.

Apart from this, and as if that weren't enough, I began preparing the The Sydney Male Choir for their 11th City of Sydney Concert the the Sydney Town Hall. I was only supposed to do last Tuesday night's dress rehearsal.  The retiring music director, Alan Thrift, should have conducted the concert today with me playing African drums on a couple of pieces. However, Alan, who has been in very poor health lately, took a turn for the worse and was hospitalized during the week. He was unable to be at the concert today, so I had the duty and honour of conducting the concert with 1200 or so in the audience.

The choir was, simply, stupendous. Their musicianship, a great tribute to the work of Alan Thrift, was on special display, and the fun and exuberance the men showed during the up tempo numbers (including the delirious moment when they front row formed a kick line in perfect unison!) caught the huge audience's imagination and joy rang out its song - all because of the legacy of Alan Thrift.

A great afternoon of music and laughter, with fabulous guest artists like the Bathurst Panorama Choir, Renae Lopez and Peter Kneeshaw. I mentioned drums before too. I couldn't play them on the concert, of course, so Laura bashed away on our African drum instead in primal, African style and made the day!

A special mention of pianist Eleanor Gair - a true and marvellous player, who is going to be a fantastic collaborator in the years ahead!

I'm looking forward to a great year in 2011 with this choir. Stay tuned for further concerts and events and I look forward to seeing you there!

It's good to have great friends!

A great concert by Charisma celebrating the composers of the Illawarra and mourning the demise of the composition program. There was music by Stephen Ingham, Michael Barkl, Wendy Suiter, Matin Wesley-Smith, Michael Dixon and yours truly. All beautifully, passionately played, with a deep understanding of the requirements of each of the styles required by each piece.


The Sound, Composition and Music Production program is, and I'm not the only one to say this, one of the most innovative and egalitarian programs around, and the three full time academic staff members who have guided this program for nearly 10 years, and who have about 75 teaching and research experience between them, will be probably made redundant at the end of the year. This not only throws their lives into some form of chaos, but particularly the lives of their postgraduate and, to a lesser extent, undergraduates students.  


The reaction to this, form all over the world, has been one of shock and dismay. This department was world-renowned and the centre of, among other things, studies in alternative tuning and innovative compositional pedagogy.


How did this all happen?


I'll be as brief as possible here, partly because it grieves me greatly to go over this stuff.

Simply, the Sound, Composition and Music Production program was recommended to be closed and to take no more students after this year as part of a routine review into the Faculty. It would be taught out by the end of 2012, with a new program, goodness knows what, coming online either at the beginning of 2012 or, more likely it seems now, at the beginning of 2013. All the composition staff are to be offered voluntary separation, leaving one to wonder how the program will be taught out and how the large number of postgraduates will be looked after to completion. The University will not re-hire any of us back after voluntary separation due to taxation issues.

It's worth noting that he review suggested a number of inaccuracies about the nature of the program, and said that they would prefer 40 students per year level, when only 25 can fit in a classroom, there was no more teaching load room for current staff and extra casuals would not be hired. So, the easiest thing to do, which would also save the Faculty the amount of money it had as a shortfall in its budget, was to cut the program and get rid of three senior academics, myself included.

So marks the of the serious study of music in any form in any defined way at the University of Wollongong. None of the existing senior staff has been asked to contribute to a future program, and, in fact, the University has made it clear by offering Voluntary Separation at this stage (which, if it is refused, will only result in forced redundancy at the end of 2011 for all concerned - before the new program comes online) that it doesn't want the existing composers to be involved in anything new.

Time to look for work!

Post script

For those who might be interested, here is the website of the The Sydney Male Choir

Little by little...

Last night I started a new chapter in the adventure of being a musician. I went to my first rehearsal of the Sydney Male Choir, as its new Musical Director. I take over after the 12th September, when the choir performs its final official concert under the direction of Alan Thrift (who has been the Musical Director for 20 years!) at the Sydney Town Hall as part of the 11th Annual City of Sydney concert.

This appointment, along with a couple of other affirmations, makes up a lot for the sting of being made redundant from my University position. I am very excited about the choir and its possibilities. The members have been tremendously welcoming and its very exciting to have an accompanist of the calibre of Eleanor Gair to work with. The choir is looking to expand its repertoire into Australian music as well as build on its already impressive sound and audience base. I'm am looking forward to this very much!

In other news, Laura's and my opera based on her story "The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders" now has a couple of scene finished and worth being shown around. The story, which is included in the anthology Masques is a beautiful and slightly disturbing fairy story set in Flanders and celebrates the cultural life of that part of France and Belgium, particularly the giants that are the emblems of the local communities.

For an introduction to the giants as they are celebrated today, her's a great little video, despite the rather "stuffed shirt" style of narration:



More about the details of the opera as they come to hand, but we are starting on a very long and exciting journey with this one!

A Little Update

For nearly 15 years now my bio has begun with words along the lines of my being a Lecturer or Senior Lecturer "in Composition at the University of Wollongong." Sadly, that is no longer going to be the case soon. Our program, Sound, Composition and Music Production, is to be cut. So passes one of the most innovative and egalitarian tertiary music programs in the country. We will be offered voluntary separation and made, and perhaps the word has more reverberations than just an industrial relations term in this case, redundant.

I have had a fear for a long time that the full time composer/academic was turing into a thing of the past. It seems the perfect model for the University of the future, in this country at least, is that each department be run by an administrator, who need not be a specialist in the area, and the teaching and research be done by limited-term, casual staff.

This reflects the direction that I believe universities are heading: toward the situation where they produce drones who have varying degrees of flexibility of thought, but no real specialist skills.

Universities, rather than leading social change, are responding to it. They are not looking to produce leading thinkers who can shape the future, but people who are able to read the changing societal winds and set their sails accordingly - the middle managers of the world who don't make policy but carry it out without questioning where we are all headed, or the wisdom of the powers that be - the career administrators. They will be the people who can do the most with the least amount of money and reflective thought.

That will be our future unless we do something about the dreadful way universities are funded and the staff are treated.

It may be that I am completely mistaken here, but I find it is so tempting to say, "Be seeing you!"

A Little concert review

I'm approaching this with a little trepidation, and promise not to do this too often, but an otherwise nice little concert in The Australian Museum on Thursday night has left me a little troubled.

The Noise is a new string quartet, based in Sydney, that gave its debut concert in the TAM as part of Biodiversity Week. The concert was a series of improvisations based on issue arising from biodiversity. Simple enough, and a lovely idea when species are dying all around us and every extinction affects us somehow (just ask the beekeepers of the world).

The sound world the quartet inhabited was beautiful. The instruments were all amplified and connected to foot pedals which had some effect on the sound, so it all looked excitingly electronic. At the beginning, two of the instruments' sound failed, which made those of us in the audience who regularly use such things as electronics feel simultaneously sympathetic and smug.

The ideas the quartet passed around for improvisation were sophisticated and very well-structured, aided by mastery of the instruments they played. This was clearly an enjoyable adventure for them, and that proved infectious to the audience, which was larger than what one might expect at a concert of improvised music.

The little stone in my shoe here is the fact that this concert was presented as a bit of a ground breaker - part of the avant garde. If so, then it is pleasing to note that the avant garde has at last caught up with what many of us have been doing for 20 or 30 years and what I, for one, have been teaching for the past 15. The ideas seemed to be manipulated by some traditional techniques such as imitation, retrograde, inversion etc. so not a lot to add there.

However, even with that in mind, it was a successful night of music making, in a way that was new to the players and, I'm sure, a few of the audience. There was a goodly gathering of composers and improvisors in attendance, and perhaps their response to the premise of the evening is a little different to mine - a little more generous maybe. However, it is hard to get around the fact that this sort of music making is not the cutting edge that it seemed to want to be, or the dark suspicion that because it was being performed in the big smoke of Sydney, rather than, say, the hick towns around it, like, say Wollongong (grin), it now had some form of legitimacy in Australia.

None of this will stop me going to hear further concerts by this group though, as there is so much potential for great music making here. I will watch them grow with great pleasure and help when asked.