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Canberra Today 15°/17° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

The stars come out to play

WITH his head in the stars and one eye on the Burley Griffin plan, director Christopher Latham, has dreamed up a whole galaxy of musical events for this year’s Canberra International Music Festival.

Pianist Daniel de Borah.
He even found a Nobel laureate, astronomer Prof Brian Schmidt, to launch his program of 27 concerts.

But Latham’s stars aren’t just human and celestial. Some of them are buildings – “amazing spaces”, he calls them, and he’s lined up a constellation of national architectural treasures where fine musicians around

NZ String Quartet's violinist, Helene Pohl.
from around the world will perform.

Old Parliament House, for instance, will be the setting for a performance on May 17 of Edinburgh Festival director Jonathan Mills’ homage to the Burley Griffin Plan, “Ethereal Eye”, at the end of which the Centenary of Canberra will announce shortlisted finalists for the CAPITheticAL design ideas competition.

Latham’s heavenly bodies include the High Court, the National Film and Sound Archive, The National Museum of Australia, The National Gallery, The Australian War Memorial, Old Parliament House, The National Library and The National Portrait Gallery.

How serendipitous, then, that the opening concert, at noon on May 11, will take place in the NPG, with Canberra’s own Griffyn Ensemble joining in a celebration of this modern space.

The ensemble, once described by “CityNews” reviewer Ian McLean as “Canberra’s leading chamber music ensemble”, easily rivals Latham’s enthusiasm for star-watching, having recently performed “The Southern Sky” in the ruins of Mount Stromlo Observatory and, on May 11, it will perform a new composition, “Mirage”, by its director Michael Sollis.

There’s no mistaking the excitement in the voice of Canberra soprano Susan Ellis, one of the ensemble’s principals, as she describes her Peter Sculthorpe piece, “Patrick White Fragments”.

“It’s quite a special piece, quite a theatrical piece,” she says, in which the spoken text is overlaid on to the music

Another exciting work for her will be John Cage’s “Melodies”, one of his “chant” pieces and, for sheer fun, she’ll do Henry Cowell’s rarely-performed “Mother Goose Rhymes”.

As Ellis says: “I love the fact that The Griffyn Ensemble is really eclectic”, so the emotional highlight will be Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”, re-arranged by John Corigliano for soprano, piano and percussion. The last time she sang it, that “magic moment” brought tears to her eyes.

Latham’s musical telescope is also on artists from afar, such as the Latvian composer-in-residence Peteris Vasks, the NZ String Quartet, headed up by violinist and co-director, Helene Pohl, or pianist Daniel de Borah, the former Canberra Grammar School student who studied at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, the St Petersburg State Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Music and has been placed in events such as the “Arthur Rubinstein in Memoriam” competition in Poland.

Canberra International Music Festival, all around the national capital from May 11-20. Full details at www.cimf.org.au

 

[box]We’ll be listening…

“CityNews” reviewers IAN McLEAN, CLINTON WHITE and arts editor HELEN MUSA will be will be comphrensively critiquing the Canberra International Music Festival every day on at the special festival hub www.citynews.com.au[/box]

PHOTO (above): Griffyn Ensemble, from left, Matthew O’Keeffe (clarinet), Susan Ellis, (soprano), Wyana O’Keeffe (percussion), Meriel Owen (harp), Michael Sollis (composer and director), Kiri Sollis (flute) and Carly Brown (horn).

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Helen Musa

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