songbirds
program notes
Fiona Loader – Lorikeet Corroboree (2015) flute, clarinet, vibraphone
This work scored for flute, clarinet and vibraphone was written for Ensemble Offspring in 2015 during a residency at the Sydney Conservatorium. It was inspired by the beautiful
rainbow lorikeets that visit me every morning and who dance after a feeding frenzy. This led me to many hours of documenting bird call and transcribing melodic fragments derived from not only lorikeets but also other Australian birds including butcher birds, magpies, and even a nightingale (also a musical reference to Lamorna Nightingale, our flautist). There is much melodic dialogue between the parts in Lorikeet Corroboree just as birds in the forest do not sing in isolation but in melodic collaboration, by answering each other’s musical sentences.
Ella Macens - Falling Embers (2019) percussion solo
Falling Embers was composed as a meditation for peace and relief from the fires that raged across Australia in the summer of 2020/2021. The work traces a glowing particle suspended above desolate land where all has been lost and destroyed. Falling Embers represents the last moments of something.
When I was 11 years old I noticed a huge, peculiar cloud in the sky. It was New Years Day, the start of 2002, and the whole family was milling about the kitchen in pyjamas. Unaware of what I was seeing, or what this unusual cloud signalled, I continued with my breakfast and the merriment of New Year’s Day. Twenty minutes later our neighbour rang the doorbell, and in his broken English he told me ‘The fire is coming!’. We ran to the upstairs balcony and looked out to see a valley of bellowing smoke and flames. Cheltenham, my home, was on fire. One of my strongest memories comes from the evening that followed, after the army of fire engines retreated and a feeling of safety restored. My sister Kate and I awoke in the lounge room. We stood side by side and gazed out through the big glass doors and watched as embers fell like hot snow from the sky all over our backyard. They melted and turned to ash as they hit the damp soil. We thanked the wind that day, and the modest creek that saved our home from burning fire. The elements were certainly on our side that day.
Brenda Gifford – Mungala (Clouds) (2018) alto flute, percussion
Mungala is the word for clouds in composer Brenda Gifford’s Yuin country, the South Coast of NSW. The music evokes the experience of watching the clouds build across the sea from a clifftop at Wreck Bay. The clouds dance across the sky bringing thunder and then the relief of gentle rain.
Nardi Simpson – Of Stars and Birds (2020) flute, clarinet, vibraphone
Of Stars and Birds was written after an invitation to contribute to Ensemble Offspring's birdsong collection. As a new composer in the earliest development stages of my craft, I worried how my work would stand alongside the pieces of experienced, accomplished composers who had already contributed to this series. As an Aboriginal musician with limited music theory, I also worried if I could create something of a standard suitable for the ensemble and its project partners. In times like this I look to culture to provide guidance. I quickly realised Yuwaalaraay knowledge, connection and relationship to birds equaled the complexity and detail of advanced musical theory, compositional practice and creative conception. So I worked hard to imbue this piece with the things I know well, cultural concepts and knowledge, enabling a transformation away from a commissioned composition and into an extension of my own lived and practiced cultural experience.
Of Stars and Birds developed then from a significant Yuwaalaraay story ending in the creation of the southern cross but traversing the enormity of land, lore, death and rebirth. Birds weave this story into our dreaming cosmos, the conventional limitations of earth, sky, death, day, life and night dissolving and creating its own universe of existence- a bit like my compositional craft, a mixture of traditions and teachings, an extension of the storytelling and songmaking of Australia’s First People’s and the explorations and expressions of a new composer at the beginning of an exciting musical journey.
Felicity WIlcox - People of this Place (2016). bass clarinet solo
This work for solo bass clarinet is an expression of my sense of shared place. It contains multiple influences that reflect the echoes of nature and the blend of lives lived in this beautiful country of birds, bush, grasses, sandstone and sea. D'harawal man Gawain Bodkin-Andrews (UTS CAIK) was consulted on the creation of work that considers Indigenous spaces and perspectives, and research was conducted with leading Australian clarinettist Jason Noble to develop new approaches to multiphonics and other extended performance techniques for the instrument. The resulting work is a valuable addition to the recent Australian solo bass clarinet repertoire that has enjoyed multiple performances nationally and internationally over the past 3 years. In presenting People of This Place, the composer and performer acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as traditional owners of the land that inspired it, and to whom the work is dedicated. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, and to all Aboriginal people.
Robert Davidson - Magpie Riffs (2024) flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone & tape
Each morning and afternoon, I get to hang out with magpies on my balcony - a group of three we like to call "the teenagers". They make a splendid sound; it's one of my favourite sounds that exists. I remember the excellent Melbourne composer Warren Burt telling me the reason he originally moved to Australia from his home in San Diego. On his first landing in Australia, he got off the plane and heard a magpie, and immediately said "I've got to move here. I want to live in a country where the birds sound like synthesisers!" (or words to that effect).
This little piece gets musicians to play along with two short phrases, looped throughout the music, picking out a catchy riff from a magpie in an Australian front yard (trying to eat some cheese on the ground), with some percussion added to keep everyone together with the recording. The magpie recording, made by Digifish Music, is used with permission.
Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose – Bitter Springs Creek 2014 (2019) flute, clarinet, vibraphone, electronics
The road from Alice Springs heading out to the East Ranges runs in fits and starts for 80 kilometres before ending at Ross River. The pied butcherbird recording heard in and transcribed for this composition was made at Bitter Springs Creek, 6.6 kilometres before the road terminates. These feathered songsters were recorded nocturnally on 17 August 2014.
Bitter Springs Creek 2014 belongs to the twenty-first century, to be sure, but the music sung by these birds is ancient, extending back millions of years. Although they may share some phrases, each bird has their own unique songs that develop and transform from season to season. A degree of what we may describe as improvisation pertains to each performance, and this quality of flexibility is key to the work.
Gerard Brophy – Beautiful Birds (2019) flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone
Beautiful Birds showcases birds in 3 distinctive movements:
Lyrebirds – skittish, quirky birds with a mischievous temperament and an astounding penchant for mimicry;
Flamingos – elegant, stately yet slightly melancholic creatures;
Hummingbirds – fluttering, quivering souls flitting from one gorgeous blossom to the next.
A true exploration of the trio’s virtuosity, Beautiful Birds sets these joyous bird calls into dexterous, interwoven lines. While Lyrebirds establishes the piece as a highly energy celebration of sonic colours, Flamingos explores delicious and still moments of quiet conversation between the three instruments. The piece finishes with Hummingbirds, mimicking the fast yet ever changing humming in an impressive display of swift-flying unison lines.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
