ExhAust 2012/2013 Season
ExhAust New Music and Music at First present
Sine & Syrinx
featuring Australian soprano Jane Sheldon
‘Sheldon was superb, with a voice of penetrating beauty, precision and variegated colours…’ – Sydney Morning Herald, November 2009
When? 7:30pm. April 19, 2013.
Where? First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn
124 Henry St, Brooklyn Heights
2/3 to Clark St; A/C to High St; R/4/5 to Court St/Borough Hall
With Sean Statser (percussion), Alix Raspe (harp), Isabelle O’Connell (piano), Richard Vaudrey (cello)
Program
Vibraphone Theory by Amanda Cole (2007)
Solo vibraphone with pre-recorded sine tones
Ravensongs by Rosalind Page (2001, rev. 2005)
Text by Hrafn Andrés Hardason. Soprano, piano, harp, celeste, cello, + optional Nord synth.
Invisibility by Liza Lim (2009)
Solo cello.
Seasonal Flocking by Aristea Mellos (2012)
Text by Judith Wright. Soprano and percussion.
The title of Page’s Ravensongs nods to the namesake of her lyricist, Icelandic poet Hrafn Andrés
Hardason, and his poems take birds as their subject. Mellos’ Seasonal Flocking sets a poem by
Judith Wright which considers the behaviour of local birds at the end of autumn. It may be
less clear why Lim’s Invisibility and Cole’s microtonal Vibraphone Theories are important
inclusions. Their presence here is, in quite different ways, inspired by the syrinx, the vocal
organ of songbirds. A fascinating piece of anatomy, the syrinx is a source of great envy for a
singer: the syrinx is a dual voicebox, in contrast to the mammalian larynx, and it endows
some songbirds with astonishing vocal agility. In Cole’s note to Vibraphone Theories, she says it is
her aim that “the sine tone and vibraphone parts should blend together to sound like one
instrument”. In Lim’s Invisibility, she furnishes the cellist with two bows. In the former, two
sounds blend to make a single sonic impression, like sounds from the syrinx; in the latter, the
cellist can revel in her own version of a dual voicebox.
Nadje Noordhuis – composer/trumpeter
Combining cinematic sweep, transportive emotion, and rich melodic grandeur, Australian-born trumpeter/composer Nadje Noordhuis possesses one of the most unforgettably lyrical voices in modern music. Her deeply-felt, clarion tone and evocative compositional gift meld classical rigor, jazz expression, and world music accents into a sound that is distinctively her own.
When? Where? What? TBA
ExhAUST 