Beyond the Noise

Today, I'm having another one of those 'pinch-yourself-to-check-you're-not-dreaming' days. Tonight, Song Company perform alongside the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in the Metropolis New Music Festival. We just had our sound check with Robert Spano, long time director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Amongst the town cries of Gibbons and Janequin, we're performing Luciano Berio's extraordinary (and difficult) Cries of London, written in 1975.

The score for Luciano Berio's Cries of London

In performing this masterwork of the 20th Century, I've been reminded of someone from my past. Just over ten years ago, when I was still at high school, I starting taking piano lessons with a woman in Palmyra. Her name was Mrs Thompson. She had been a promising concert pianist in the U.S (very much knocking on the glass ceiling) before she was hit by a car (the driver ran a red light) crossing the street, suffering major injuries. She survived, but needed extensive rehabilitation, and slowly learnt to walk and regain fine motor skills again. Her back would never truly heal. The pain of standing would be so great that she would be mostly wheelchair bound for the rest of her life. Hopes of a concert career vanished. But, slowly, she learnt to play the piano again, and began teaching. She was an exquisite musician, a great teacher, and had the most amazing hands. I remember her laying her hands over mine and playing 'through' them to show me what pianistic 'touch' really meant.

She has been on my mind because I can point to her being one of the first people to expose me to contemporary classical music. In our lessons we of course played beautiful keyboard music by the likes of Bach, Scarlatti, and Mozart, but we also explored some little known early keyboard music, including the likes of Domenico Zipoli, the 16th Century Italian Jesuit missionary who moved halfway across the world to Argentina before dying very young of a mystery illness. But more importantly we played lots of contemporary music. We played the Bartok Mikrokosmos, serial music by American, Canadian, European, and Japanese composers, and a number of Australian works. After my lessons (which usual included at least half an hour of her time for free) we'd sit in her lounge and she'd play tapes (yes, real cassette tapes) of Copland, Cage, Stockhausen, Berg, Schoenberg etc. over a cup of tea. It was here, at the age of 16 that I first learnt to listen to contemporary music, how to get past 'the noise' and find the music. I will forever be grateful to her for that gift.

The Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne. 

Now, some ten years later, my life is full of contemporary music. Last year I premiered two new Australian song cycles at the Sydney Opera House, and premiered seventeen new vocal works with Song Company. Tonight, I perform one of the most famous works of Luciano Berio, and the next day give six world premiere performances of Australian works, specifically written by Melbourne composers for a project in the Melbourne Recital Centre.

I have no idea if Mrs Thompson is still teaching (or still living in Australia) but I am making it my mission this evening to find her phone number and call her. It may be difficult as she was a notorious technophobe (see above re: cassette tapes) but I wonder how she'll react when I tell her that I've just sung / am about to sing Berio with the MSO.

Thank you, Mrs Thompson, and all the other teachers who aren't afraid to show their students that the teaching and performing classical music doesn't have to be limited to the distant past.

Where the red dust stirs...

It is no secret that one of my favourite times of the year is our time in north west NSW, assisting with the Moorambilla Voices project.

Song Company has been an artistic partner with Moorambilla every year since 2013, and this year we have expanded our involvement (thanks to the generous support of the St George Foundation) to include a week of skills tours as well as the residencies in August and September. We will also be performing with Moorambilla Voices at both Parliament House and Government House in June.

Mark Donnelly, Hannah Fraser, and Andrew O'Connor on the road with Song Company just outside Lightning Ridge. 

If you haven't heard about Moorambilla Voices I urge you to visit their website here, but I will try and sum up its important work in a couple of sentences.

Moorambilla represents the opportunity for hundreds of children exploring their previously untapped artistic potential, in an environment that connects them to the land that surrounds them. They explore the narrative and rich history of this lands first peoples via some of Australia's finest composers, musicians, choreographers, and regional artists. The program strives to make them proud (sometimes for the first time) of their talents and help them recognise how art can define, nourish, and sustain them as individuals.

Education is one of the cornerstones of Song Company's mission. We believe that every child deserves to know and hear the magic of song, and understand the joy of music making. This is one of the key objectives we share with Michelle Leonard and her Moorambilla Project.

We belong to a continent whose first peoples use songlines, dance, and stories to pass knowledge and culture from generation to generation. The Moorambilla Voices project, now in its eleventh year, connects thousands of students to music, music literacy, and music making each year. At best guess, Michelle guesses that at least 12,000 students have been engaged in these workshops over the past decade, and at least 2,000 of those have been directly involved in Moorambilla Voices or the MAXed Out Company. This is an amazing achievement.

Java Jive! Song Company (when we were four with Susannah Lawergren) on tour with Moorambilla Voices Artistic Director, Michelle Leonard. 

 In our week of skills workshops we worked with children from:

• 27 Primary Schools
• 13 High Schools
• 1 Distance Education School

These children, some of whom we will see again at the Moorambilla camps in August and September came from:

• Dubbo
• Wellington
• Narromine
• Gilgandra
• Coonamble
• Gulargambone
• Carinda
• Wallget
• Bourke (via Satellite)
• Lightning Ridge
• Goodooga
• Collarenebri

Sunrise in Coonamble, NSW. Desert skies really are unbeatable. 

Michelle then continues her journey (she's still on the road at the time of writing) and visits schools in:

• Brewarrina
• Bourke
• Cobar
• Nyngan
• Girilambone
• Warren
• Trangie
• Coonabarabran
• Binnaway
• Baradine
• Dunedoo
• Mendooran
• Coolah

As you can imagine, this is no small feat!

I want to extend my personal thanks to the St George Foundation who allowed Song Company to join Michelle, and her team (Dayle, Annie, Beth, and Karen) who are an organisational force to be reckoned with. Their support allows us to do this valuable artistic work.

Who says learning can't be fun? Making music (Playschool style) at Bourke-Walgett School of Distance Education. 

Now. Back to the music.

Some of you might be wondering: What does this type of skills workshop looks like? How do you make 100+ kids sing for you when they've never met you before? What did you sing for the kids? The answers might surprise you.

A typical day involved back-to-back workshops in different schools, sometimes separated by hundreds of kilometres. We became very quickly accustomed to a packed lunch which we'd hurriedly eat between schools!

Here's a fly-over of our time in regional NSW.

We flew out of Sydney at 7:25am on Tuesday morning (looking glamorous in our new t-shirts) and arrived in Dubbo with just enough time pick up a car, order a coffee, and make for our first school. The sessions begin with a brief musical introduction from Song Company (Java Jive as made famous by Manhattan Transfer) before Michelle gave them a crash course in basic music literacy and notation. What normally can takes weeks in a classroom, can take fifteen minutes with the right tools. With a little help from Song Company, a small splash of silliness, and a system that ties score reading to the human body, children can read music in treble clef within fifteen minutes. Proof that music is an innate language if we give children the right tools.

We would then usually jump straight into more singing. We began our week with a quartet of singers (Susannah, Hannah, Mark, Andrew) but sadly we lost Susannah to illness on the first day. Already due to be 161km away by the second day, we had no choice but to send Susannah home to rest, and battle on with three. Sometimes that's what life on the road is like!!

In the remaining workshop time (sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes less) children would learn (entirely by ear) Stephen Leek's Ngana, and Alice Chance's Palapalaa or Andrew Howes' Yanaya - the latter two being works composed for Song Company and Moorambilla Voices. We'd teach these pieces by breaking the works down into their musical parts.

Ngana is a buzzing and energetic three part canon (in our adaption for three voices) that illustrates the concepts of syncopation, the harmonic language and modality of much of Leek's music, the strength of rhythmic and harmonic unison, or the sonic effect of a three part canon, usually performed from three points in the room for full surround sound effect.

Palapalaa contrasts this with two beautifully lyric call and response themes, a modal soprano theme, contrary motion bass line, and a soaring syncopated tenor line. This was our most popular piece of the week, and became a favourite of Hannah, Mark and myself. This was due in no small part I'm sure to the text, a local indigenous story (told to Alice and Michelle by Aunty Brenda, a member of the language nest from Lightning Ridge) which tells the story of a butterfly (from Coocoran Lake) whose wings were captured and set into stone when she flew too far away from home, and was frozen on the ridge of the Warrumbungles. The colours melted from her wings when she thawed in spring, and flowed downstream into the rocks and stones near her home. Which stones? The world famous Black Opals of Lightning Ridge. Remember this story the next time you look at an opal! It made so much sense to bring this piece back to the landscape which inspired it. That's one of my favourite things about the entire Moorambilla project - its connection to the Australian landscape in all its rugged beauty.

Yanaya was reserved for our workshops at Lightning Ridge High School, Coonamble High School, and the Dubbo Regional Conservatorium (where we had extended sessions to also work on dance, composition, and body percussion) and draws inspiration from the nearby Narran Lakes. Usually sung with chamber orchestra and piano, the flowing rhythmic underlay supports the arc of the main melody, and partners with other derivative tunes from the same material. Composed for the MAXed Company (the high school arm of Moorambilla) it was particularly useful when Mark and I were modelling the adult male voice to our teenage participants.

There is great power (and a sense of pride) in being able to model singing to children (of all ages) and having them respond. Singing is so much about physicality, and as any singing teacher will tell you, once a student connects their voice to their physicality (or their brain to their voice) there is sudden and huge improvement. Seeing this 'penny drop' moment in our workshops is always inspiring, and reminds us of why we choose to spend our lives singing. We, the singers of the Song Company, were all that student once. Being able to pass on some of our experience is a very valuable thing indeed.

At this point I must also acknowledge the true impact of this program, in that the children (or young adults) who have been selected for the Moorambilla program bring their knowledge, leadership, discipline, and skills home with them. This region of NSW is geographically and politically isolated, removed from the usual 'artistic' opportunities of the city,  and some children face disadvantages and hardships that we often take for granted. I won't begin to describe the difference between a 'Moorambilla Kid' and a 'Non-Moorambilla Kid' to you, but needless to say, a child who has had access to this program: who is told that they matter, that they have talent, that they are good - is much more able to adapt to challenges, solve problems, and recall skills. In the world of science and education, we call this Neuroplasticity, and music making is one of the only activities known to man that engages the whole brain, and allows neural pathways to reorganise and adapt. A 'Moorambilla Kid' leaves the program not just with new skill set, but with a stronger stance and a more adaptable mind.

Beyond the music, the landscape in this part of the world is also inspiring. The weathered tops of the Warrumbungles (an ancient volcanic mountain ridge) and the surrounding grassland, a sky that stretches in perfect blue across a seemingly limitless horizon, the awe inspiring wonder of a desert night sky, the dry creek beds that belie the water stored below in the Great Artesian Basin, and the artesian bore baths in Lightning Ridge that bring soothing hot  mineral water from three kilometres beneath the earth to the surface.

Sunset in Lightning Ridge, NSW. Just prior to an outdoor screening of Wide Open Sky. 

We ended our week, exhausted but happy, with an open air screening of Wide Open Sky in Lightning Ridge (complete with stereophonic cicadas and a desert sunset) and a midnight dip in the artesian bore baths. Wide Open Sky is a documentary about Moorambilla Voices which picked up an audience favourite award at the  Sydney Film Festival in 2015. It opens in cinemas nationally in April. If you're interested in anything you've just read, or are curious about the Moorambilla program, please check your local cinema for listings.

I can't wait to return to Baradine in August. Until then I'll be dreaming of the crystal clear night sky, the music and dance inspired by the landscape, and the bore baths in Lightning Ridge.