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Sounding The High Court was one of a series of acoustic events celebrating the marriage of music and architecture that took place during the Canberra International Music Festival. Listen to Roland Peelman interviewed on ABC Canberra about programming for this event.

Click here to listen

The Song Company and Australian Master Chef Tony Bilson have teamed up once more to present a beautiful program of celestial music to accompany a heavenly degustation dinner with selected wines.

The six solo voices of the Song Company with Artistic Director Roland Peelman will perform an intimate concert to welcome Alex Knight, Elli Green and Jehan Kanga – the bright new stars of our Young Artists Program.

Early bird tickets are $200 each if booked before June 30^th and $220 thereafter (ticket includes a tax-deductible component). There will be a live auction with major items including indigenous artworks and a dinner for 10 people with a private tutorial by Tony himself at Bilson’s Restaurant.

Proceeds raised from the night go towards supporting the development of the Young Artist Program.

When: 6.30pm, Friday July 30th 2010

Where: Cello’s Restaurant @ The Castlereagh Boutique Hotel, 169 Castlereagh St, Sydney

Dress: Lounge Suit/Cocktail

Bookings: Contact Amy Curl on 02 8272 9500 or amy@songcompany.com.au. Spaces are limited.

I Viaggiatori (The Voyagers) is a bit of an Aussie world/folk supergroup with ARIA award winners Kavisha Mazzella and Irine Vela. With a charming combination of Italian standards, original songs by Mazzella and a touching version of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, this all-acoustic band chronicles the hopes and memories of our Italian community.

FRIDAY 4 JUNE 7.30pm – Illawarra Folk Club, support by Zumpa, corner Burelli and Church Streets, City Diggers Wollongong $15/$12

SATURDAY 5 JUNE 7.30pm – Canberra, Merry Muse, support by Dante Alighieri Italian Choir, Canberra Southern Cross Club, 54 McCaughey St, TURNER $20

SUNDAY 6 JUNE 3pm – The Italian Forum Cultural Centre, Leichhardt, Sydney 23 Norton Street, Leichhardt, Sydney.

www.viaggiatori.com.au

Read the rest of the Time Out review: click here

Read the Sydney Morning Herald review: click here

Read the Real Time Arts review: click here

Read our audience feedback: click here

Watch the behind-the-scenes footage:

Much more significant than a traditional music conference, the themes were explored through discussion and performance.

Contributors included composers Gao Ping and John Huie, sheng player Wang Zheng-Ting and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson.

Workshops scrutinised Sichuan music, the spiritual music of Buddhism and Taoism and kunqu, or traditional Chinese opera. Concerts featured the local Sunshine Philharmonic Choir and a dazzling pipa virtuoso from Beijing.

There were film screenings of Lulu’s Opera House, a photography exhibition and discussions about the impact of Chinese theatre and opera during the gold rush years.

Impressively, the opening concert premiered three Australian and three Chinese works, performed by the New Purple Forbidden City Orchestra from the Central Conservatory of Beijing and Queensland’s Golden Orb ensemble. The concert is to be repeated at Beijing’s Modern Music Festival later in the month.

Curator Nicholas Ng aimed to broaden western perceptions of Chinese music – with traditional forms to folk, contemporary and jazz – and asked audiences to consider whether pieces derived from a fusion of Australian and Chinese idioms are evolving in to a new musical genre.

A provocative series of discussions was chaired by Vincent Plush with Anne Boyd and John Curro as panel members. One intense discussion asked whether there are moral or economic ramifications when composers such as Puccini or Larry Sitsky (in his Violin Concerto No.3) borrow from Chinese music.

The concluding concert, Harvest of Endurance, featured the Song Company and conductor Roland Peelman.

It included the work of 18 composers – Betty Beath, Elena Kats-Chernin, Erik Griswold and Kim Cunio among them – and narration by William Yang.

Each evocative piece reflected on a different painting from a 50m scroll that charts the history and suffering endured by Chinese immigrants.

The Queensland Conservatorium, May 6-9.

Source: The Australian Newspaper,  May 11, 2010 by Gillian Wills

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/much-to-celebrate-emerges-from-cons-chinese-collaboration/story-e6frg8po-1225864746477

Interested? Click here for full details.

Jehan is doing his honours year at university, completing a combined degree – not in music but science and commerce. His focus is “investigating new ruthenium based metal-organic frameworks with the purpose of finding new crystals which may store hydrogen gas safely and efficiently”. And here lies a whole other story. What is his passion? All of the above and music, music, music – old, new and helping everyone else who shares this passion. Last year Jehan co-directed the Sydney University Verge Arts Festival, helped various ensemble groups create business models and was a founding member of the Australian Youth Music Council. This year finds him at home in the Song Company and assistant to our own Artistic Director Roland Peelman.

So, why the Song Company you may ask? There’s the fact that he likes early music. Jehan performed with the Renaissance Players in 2007 under Winsome Evans and studied the baroque violin. There’s also a touch of California dreaming involved from a year where Jehan trained as a violinist with Janos Negyesy at the University of California San Diego. At the time, San Diego was fertile territory for new music compositions and no other violinist was quite as willing as Jehan to take these on -he tells us. Perhaps his scientific hat was also on, because he could see the evidence that these works had legs – something needed to be done. What did he do? “I formed my own chamber orchestra – Ensemble Con Brio, which was the first orchestra at the University in its 50 year history.” And so the leap from musician to artistic direction and organization began. Jehan returned to Sydney in late 2008 with “renewed ambition” and contacted Neal Peres Da Costa who ran the Sydney Conservatorium Early Music Ensemble. Although not a student of the Con., Jehan was invited to join the ensemble and here he dived back into the delights of early music. Of course he also found time to found his own ensemble group Barefoot Musica Antigua which had its inaugural performance in March 2009.

Like Roland Peelman, this young Artistic Director likes to keep many competing creative projects on the boil. In 2010, Jehan’s projects include a Dowland concert with a new group formed with the specific intent of giving budding professional singers an opportunity to sing chamber works. There are also two Renaissance Players concerts in the pipeline and a project where he will investigate some early French Baroque repertoire which has never been performed in Australia just before Christmas. All of these projects, an honours degree in science and a year with the Song Company. When asked why the Song Company, Jehan simply says:

“I have been a great admirer of the Song Company for many years after seeing part one of their three part Gesualdo Tenebrae project in the Sydney Town Hall. The mix of early and new music means you get the best of both worlds – with audiences constantly introduced to new sounds. Working with Roland is an absolute honour and privilege. To claim that he is one of the best conductors in Australia would be an understatement.”

Feel like following Jehan’s journey this year? Sign up to the Song Company Twitter and hear him tweet for you.

This Aurora Festival event is a real treat for music and poetry lovers as we present Song Company’s growing oeuvre of work based on Les Murray, our most prominent and internationally celebrated poet. 

The evening includes beautiful new pieces by Andrew Ford, prolific writer, composer and broadcaster, and Alex Pozniak, one of the shining lights of our younger generation.  Also, a dramatic new work by Mexican composer Felipe Waller will be premiered on the occasion. The evening promises to be a very international event and is well worth the trip to Blacktown!

Click here for full details and ticketing information

“Imagine hearing Song Company perform Bach at the opening gala concert as well as Song Company’s rendition of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers on 23 May.  In between there are concerts with music by Arvo Part and John Tavener (yes, his massive Veil of the Temple – something you have to hear in order to believe…)    We also look forward to the world premiere of a magnificent new vocal work by Ross Edwards: Sacred Kingfisher Psalms on May 22. Wish us strength and good luck!” Roland Peelman

From May 14 – 23, the Festival features over 24 concerts, 20 related events and some of the best musicians from all over the world…. Performing alongside Australia’s finest voices with The Song Company under Roland Peelman. Hear the music of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Mahler and Strauss will resonate alongside living legends Arvo Pärt, Peter Sculthorpe, John Tavener, Elena Kats-Chernin and Ross Edwards, filling Canberra’s finest acoustic spaces.

Click here for website and ticketing details