The Safest Ever Show About the World’s Most Dangerous Topic: The Australian Chamber Orchestra’s “The Crowd”

Reviews, , , , , , , , , ,

The Crowd
ACO, ANAM and The Consort of Melbourne
Concept by Richard Tognetti
Cinematography by Jon Frank
Directed by Matthew Lutton

In 1960 Elias Canetti published Crowds and Power, a taxonomy of the crowd drawing on anthropology, sociology, philosophy and psychology couched in a stream of lucid, aphoristic prose. Writing in the wake of the Third Reich, Canetti considered the relationship of the spontaneous crowd to the demonic-charismatic leader. He explored, in an unprecedented way, the survivor whose hidden satisfaction provides a new germ of despotic power.

Waving the book around in interviews, the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Richard Tognetti and the cinematographer Jon Frank promised a fusion of video and music that would address “the gamut of the crowd experience from alienation to the reinforcement of humanity” (to quote the programme). You can imagine my excitement. Finally, Australia’s premier chamber music ensemble would develop a multimedia programme around some historically significant and eminently relevant intellectual grist.

The ACO, students from ANAM and The Consort of Melbourne proved themselves versatile interpreters of the exciting and diverse programme. In perhaps the most interesting exploration of crowd dynamics (because the exploration is immanent to the compositions and the musicians on stage), the orchestra in Ives, Tognetti, Sibelius, Crumb, Schubert, Dean and Shostakovich is whittled down to the intimate quartets, trios and solos of Debussy, Feldman, Leifs and Chopin.

The music aside, the concert was deeply disappointing and even troubling, given the status and resources of the ACO and the Melbourne Festival. Ives’ The Unanswered Question opens beneath Frank’s beautiful, slow-motion footage of street scenes in New York. Faces and gestures emerge from the crowd in high definition and high frame rate detail. The mise-en-scène situates the fundamental antimony of the crowd as that between the unindividuated mass and the feeling individual. The gently emerging voices of Ives’ piece suits the images, but the cinematic gesture is a cliché, giving the impression one is watching Koyaanisqatsi with better music.

Tognetti’s suite (which sounds like something between the Carmina Burana and the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings) breaks in with thumping timpani beneath a quote from Nietzsche: “In individuals madness is the exception, in groups it is the rule.” Cue footage of Nazi rallies and bodies in concentration camps. The message is clear: Crowds are dangerous. There is nothing in the concert to suggest otherwise, no emancipatory crowd to contrast with the despotic ruler or contemporary political example to put the message into context.

The film then vacillates between interminable footage of football matches, street scenes and images of water, providing a pessimistic and narrow vision of the crowd today. After the tokenistic reference to the political crowd, the real axis of The Crowd is football and nature.

But between the show’s creation in 2010 and reworking in 2013, two important crowd-related events have taken place: The Arab Spring in all its complexity and the increased media hysteria around asylum seekers in all its banal horror. It says something about Australia, about our wilful ignorance of the rest of the world and fear of the crowd that the closest one gets to a spontaneous crowd is a football match or a mosh pit.

We like to talk about crises. Here’s one: The ethico-aesthetic crisis of Australian art music. It is revolting to trot out footage from Nazi Germany and the holocaust in the first five minutes of a concert to demonstrate the violence of the crowd upon the individual—and the charismatic leader upon crowds—and then leave the issue aside for an hour of comic relief. You can’t drop half an H-bomb. The use of images from the Third Reich also suggests that violence is only something that happened overseas and a long time ago. Today it is impossible not to know, despite the current government blackout on the issue, that thousands of people escaping their own crowd-related conflicts are held in woefully inadequate conditions in detention centres in and around Australia. If anything, this issue resonates with Canetti’s ideas about our fear of being touched, the distances we create around ourselves, “invisible crowds” and the self-aggrandising effects of “survival” psychology. Even if it appears impossible to film within these detention centres, surely a clever cinematographer would find ways of referencing the demonisation of this crowd by a few politicians and the media for their own ends.

But wouldn’t that be risky? Wouldn’t that be what crowds are all about?


Partial Durations is a Matthew Lorenzon/RealTime joint project.

Concert guide: 9–15 October

News

A curated list of upcoming concerts. See also the Australian Music Centre concert calendar and the New Music Network concert series.

Thursday 10 October. An excellent opportunity for enthusiasts, performers and composers alike. The Australia Ensemble convene a workshop with UNSW composer John Peterson and choreographer/dancer Sue Healey on their latest creation, ‘Double Entendre’ for piano quintet and dancers. 1:10pm, Leighton Hall, UNSW.

Friday 11 October. The ACO, ANAM and The Consort of Melbourne perform The Crowd: A programme of works by Tognetti, Crumb, Ives, Dean, Debussy, Feldman, Leifs, Schubert, Shostakovich and Sibelius with projections by cinematographer Jon Frank. Palais Theatre, St. Kilda, VIC, 8pm. Repeat with Cantillation at the Sydney Opera House, NSW, Sunday 13 October, 2pm.

An unmissable opportunity to hear Larry Sitsky and Adam Cook perform the world première of Sitsky’s augmentation of Ferruccio Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntisticca. 7pm, Larry Sitsky room, ANU School of Music, ACT.

Tura New Music and the Australian Art Orchestra present their Crossing Roper Bar tour in the foyer of the Darwin Supreme Court, NT. Also performing are Wagilak Songmen from Ngukurr, Arnhem Land; Stephen Pigram and Paul Grabowsky. 8pm. Also Sunday 13 October, Ivanhoe Farms, Kununurra, WA, 7pm.

Saturday 12 October. Cellist Rachel Scott and classical guitarists Raffaele and Janet Agostino perform Bach in the Dark, a program of works by J. S. Bach, Richard Charlton and Ennio Morricone in the crypt of St. James Church, Sydney, NSW, 7pm.

John Peterson’s new work Double entendre shares an Australia Ensemble programme with Britten, Bartok and Mendelssohn. Sir John Clancy Auditorium, University of New South Wales, 8pm.

Andrew Ford‘s new song cycle Last Words, featuring the last words of Goethe, Henry Ward Beecher, Alban Berg, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Porter, Noel Coward, Virginia Woolf and Tim Winton’s beloved Fish from Cloudstreet, will be performed at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival at 11:30am. Catch a discussion with the composer at 10am before the performance.

For the opening weekend of the Melbourne Festival fifteen black teepees will fill Federation Square, each big enough for just two people. The Sonic Flock of one-on-one performances will feature Carolyn Connors, Tanea Hall, Judith Hamann, Micheal Hewes, Masayuki Kawai, Pardon Kimura, Cal Lyall, Peter Neville, Tim Phillips, Belinda Woods, the Amplified Elephants (Teagan Connor, Jay Euesden, Liz Hofb auer, Robyn McGrath, Thomas Lutze and Daniel Munnery) and the Noise Scavengers.

Sunday 13 October. As part of the Melbourne Festival, composer and percussionist Ben Walsh (Tom Tom Crew) fronts a 12-strong coalition of Australian and Indian musicians as they perform an energetic, percussive score set to an action-packed montage of scenes from Diamond Queen, Perth-born Bollywood actress Fearless Nadia’s most famous film. Melbourne Recital Centre, 7pm.

The Song Company perform works by Elena Kats-Chernin and Stephen Cronin amongst works by Gabrieli, Dufay, Lassus and Sculthorpe. Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, VIC, 11:30am.

Tuesday 15 October. Andrew Ford‘s Last Words, performed by the Seraphim Trio and New York-based soprano Jane Sheldon comes to Adelaide’s Elder Hall, 5:30pm. Event includes a discussion of the work between Andrew Ford and Anna Goldsworthy.

 

 

 

Chamber Made Opera: Turbulence

Reviews, ,
Anneli Bjorasen in Turbulence. Photo by David Young
Anneli Bjorasen in Turbulence. Photo by David Young

Chamber Made Opera
Turbulence
Composed by Juliana Hodkinson
Libretto by Cynthia Troup
Melbourne Festival of the Arts
A living room in Northcote

Despite being the closest any of us will come to experiencing a miracle, air travel is marked by boredom and sustained physical discomfort. With its staging of the explosive relationship between a mother and daughter in an apartment only wide enough for five seats and an airline trolley, Chamber Made Opera’s latest Living Room Opera Turbulence explores this banal sort of magic that frames and controls our lives. Composed by Juliana Hodkinson and featuring the versatile voices of Deborah Kayser and Anneli Bjorasen (in her first Chamber Made Opera role), the work is a “first” several times over for the company in its 25th year.

A row of fans along one wall generates a drafty hum that is amplified into an ambient drone by Jethro Woodward’s ever-understated sound design. The audience take their seats, the front row facing a white wall. I wondered where the performance would take place until Bjorasen began to hum, “pshh” and “khh” like the pneumatics of an aircraft beside me. This opening is the first duration piece that I have experienced in a Living Room Opera, providing a welcome contrast to the enchanting kaleidoscopism of previous works. It is also the best environment in which to hear Woodward’s minute control of transparent textures, even in a sound world as saturated as a series of amplified fans. Kayser and Bjorasen’s stereophonic sound effects were a delight, making the central seats the best in the house.

Other sounds endemic to airplanes begin to fill the cabin, such as a baby crying (live and recorded), 1950s cabin announcements and Bjorasen struggling with a packet of nuts. Bjorasen leans as the plane banks to the right, leaving me in an awkward position for several minutes.

Against this background of whirrs, cries and muffled announcements, the opera continues as a duet between mother (Kayser) and daughter (Bjorasen). The couple share text drawn from academic literature on turbulence, the mother singing graciously against a Pocket Piano synthesiser and the daughter growling impetuously into a vintage microphone. The texts provide an underlying theme of chaos and order, along with the observation that “normal times are when disorder wins.” But the opera is set in the 1950s, shortly after the dawn of commercial passenger aviation. Air travel is now more common and accessible than ever before and the world is on average half a degree warmer. We are now faced with the task of explaining the workings of the reading lights and seat levers inside the cabin rather than the turbulent air outside: Why in fact do things work the way they do and why is it so difficult to change our orderly progression towards ecological disaster? Faced with the desertion of our future, are we condemned to sing a solo aria, as does the Kayser when her daughter walks out on her, reminiscing about a “sea as blue as a baby’s eye?” With the sensitivity and warmth of her voice, which it is worth the ticket price just to hear up close, you could imagine Kayser was lamenting the loss of oceans.

As well as introducing a new performer and a new style of chamber opera to Chamber Made fans, the opera is the first Living Room Opera under the new Creative Director Tim Stitz, who made everybody feel welcome before and after the show with a pre-flight talk and post-flight refreshment. Most importantly, Turbulence is the first Living Room Opera to fulfill the company’s claim that the series need not only take place in opulent  living rooms of the Eastern Suburbs. The space is perfectly suited to the opera, or the opera to the space, revealing the incredible power of chamber opera to unite disparate environments through artistic aims.

Turbulence runs until 12 October.

Concert guide: 2–8 October

News

A curated list of upcoming concerts. See also the Australian Music Centre concert calendar and the New Music Network concert series.

Thursday 3 October. To celebrate the introduction of percussion studies at ANAM in 2013, Peter Neville curates New Beats, a showcase of compositions by a number of the country’s rising stars including Wilson, Hsieh, Pertout, Horsley, Bakrnčev and Healey. Melbourne Recital Centre, 6pm.

Chamber Made Opera’s Turbulence by Juliana Hodkinson takes off in a living room in Northcote at 7:30pm. Performances until 12 October.

West Space Art Gallery, Vic, hosts More Talk, Less Action, a series of panel discussions moderated by Clinton Green. This week: “Junk Music: redundant technology and detourned devices as instruments” featuring Ernie Althoff, Rod Cooper, Joanne Cannon and Bent Leather Band. 7:30pm.

Chronology Arts presents Vision of Sound, a concert of three new multi-media works for live electronic or acoustic instruments and projected visuals by Aaron Hull and Greg Hughes (aka Hü), Lani Weekley with Julian Day, and Scott Morrison with Monika Brooks. Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, NSW, 7:30pm.

New York-based new music trio Dead Language presents a concert based on vinyl scratching including world premieres of works by David Bird, Gust Burns and Bernhard Lang with a support set by Michael Louttit. Apparently it’s BYO, which should be the case more often. THE BOX Art Space, QLD, 8pm.

Online. Lutoslawski at 100 on New Music up Late.

Friday 4 October. Imogen Manins and Tony Gould perform new Australian works and improvisations with David Griffiths at the Melbourne Recital Centre from 7pm.

Saturday 5 October. The Festival of Toy Music kicks off at the Brisbane Powerhouse, featuring New York’s “Queen of Toy Piano” Margaret Leng Tan, Adam Simmons’ Toy Band (Melbourne), Clocked Out and Matthew Horsley (Brisbane) and Toy Death (Sydney).

Tuesday 8 October. The Australia Ensemble perform works by Nigel Butterley amongst Britten and Bartok at Leighton Hall, Scientia Building, University of New South Wales, at 1:10pm.

6:30pm at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, a concert of new Australian music for solo violin performed by Ole Böhn. Featuring new works by Jonathan Mui, Daniel Riley, Alex Chilvers, Sophie Spargo, Harry Sdraulig, Sharon Calcraft and Daniel Manera.

String quartet The NOISE presents Composed NOISE, a concert of seven new works for string quartet by Australian composers Andrew Ford, Rosalind Page, Paul Cutlan, Lyle Chan, Andrew Batt-Rawden, Alex Pozniak and Amanda Cole at the Cell Block Theatre, NSW, 7pm.

Concert guide: 25 September–1 October

News

A curated list of upcoming concerts. See also the Australian Music Centre concert calendar and the New Music Network concert series.

Thursday 26 September. Flautist Lina Andonovska performs works by Andrew Ford, Tristan Murail and Samuel Smith at the Melbourne City Library from 6pm.

Friday 27 September. Hear new works by emerging composers Michael Bakrnčev (QLD), Adam Cook (ACT), Owen Salome (New South Wales), Dylan Sheridan (Tasmania), Marcus Whale (New South Wales), Yeo Chow (Malaysia), Daniel Lo (Hong Kong) and Celeste Oram (New Zealand) as part of MODART13, the Song Company’s annual young composer development program. Sydney Grammar School, 7pm.

The Sydney Contemporary Orchestra perform new works by Michael Bakrnčev, Chris Williams, William Jeffery, Anastasia Pahos and Brian Chapto Koo. Pacific Hills Christian School, NSW, 8pm.

In a collaboration with Ensemble Interface, Kupka’s Piano perform works by contemporary Italian composers Franco Donatoni, Mauro Lanza, Bruno Maderna and Clara Iannotta, as well as a new work by Australian composer Luke Paulding. Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts QLD, 7:30pm. Repeat 28 September.

Sunday 29 September. The 29th annual ASME conference presents “New Australian Artsong for Low Voices” featuring works by Sitsky, Blom, Dixon, Dunleavy, Howlett, Kerry, Maclean and Paviour, performed by Jenny Duck-Chong, Lotte Latukefu, Susan Reppion-Brooke and Clive Birch. Wesley Music Centre, ACT.

The Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music

News

Just a note from my research hiatus that the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music has begun, featuring performances by the Argonaut ensemble, Elizabeth Welsh, Samuel Dunscombe, Matteo Cesari, Six Degrees ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, Flux Quartet, 1+1=1, Natascha Stellmach and Jessica Aszodi.

It ought to be like nothing Victoria has ever seen, so get the V\Line out there!

In the mean time I’ll be in Liverpool posting about the Music Since 1900 conference!

Women composers in Australia: Really? Only a quarter?

Discussion

Sally Macarthur recently wrote an article for The Conversation about the under-representation of women in Australian concert and radio programming, a topic that has been a subject of lively discussion in the United States over the past year. I was surprised to see the New Music Network, a grassroots contemporary music organisation, criticised alongside the ABC for the gender imbalance in their programming. Does the Partial Durations blog suffer the same disparity? Thanks to my obsessive tagging of composers’ names (I knew it would come in handy), presence at every possible new music concert in Melbourne and occasional interstate contributors, Partial Durations is a geographically and chronologically limited data set that nonetheless provides a cross section of new music concerts from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Metropolis New Music Festival to barely-advertised new music nights at local art galleries. However, in counting performances—especially in the case of new music—we may be looking at the wrong end of the data. Shouldn’t we be surprised that, to begin with, possibly only around 25% of composers are women?

Macarthur draws this figure from the list of composers represented by the Australian Music Centre. As Macarthur points out, despite a quarter of composers being women, very few women composers can be found in the ABC’s Classic 100: Music in the Movies and Triple J’s Hottest 100 of 20 Years. Eleven percent of works presented in the New Music Network’s current concert series are by women composers.

A quick count finds 29% of the 94 composers reviewed on Partial Durations to be women. This is hardly parity, but certainly suggests a greater representation of women composers in new music concerts than in the New Music Network series alone.

Even if my statistics gathered in Melbourne over the past five months were representative of the amount of works by contemporary women composers performed in Australia as a whole, the AMC figure for the number of women composers might not be accurate. The AMC list captures those composers with a few commissions and performances already under their belts, but does not necessarily capture student composers and composers working on the wackier side of the new music spectrum. I suspect a more inclusive figure might show a greater proportion of women, probably closer to that suggested by the Partial Durations count. Even if this were so, why are these women not getting commissions and breaking into the compositional mainstream?

Emma Ayres via Macarthur suggests three reasons why there are so few performances and broadcasts of compositions by women: Lack of familiarity with women’s compositions, the lower number of women composers and the assumption that music by women is of a lower quality than music by men. With new music lack of familiarity is really not an issue. Most concerts include world premières and it is often difficult to hear a work more than once. This leaves us with the actual number of women composers and public perception of the quality of works by women. I imagine the latter could have a lot to do with the former by determining how many young women composers are encouraged and given the opportunities to continue in their careers, but perhaps some actual emerging composers could share their views on this.