Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Ensemble Offspring's tourists: Claire Edwardes, Jason Noble, Bree van Reyk and Lamorna Nightingale  

2013 has been an exciting and very busy year for Ensemble Offspring - so many strikingly varied memories, from collaborations with Sydney Grammar students in our final concert of the year, 'Sagittarius', all the way back to the Sydney Festival in January when we (crazily) performed Ligeti's classic Atmospheres for two violins, two percussion, electric guitar and turntables. In 2014 we look forward to the inaugural year of our 'Hatched Academy' and another performance at the Sydney Festival, this time with Mike Patton of Faith No More fame.

Hatched is our new elite education program, designed to provide hands-on experience to one Australian performer and one composer. They will be mentored throughout the year by Damien Ricketson and myself, culminating in a showcase concert that they will compose for, perform in, help curate and administer, at the end of 2014. Applications for this program close 11 December - please spread the word and get your application in asap if you are under 30 (for details, see the EO website).

Whilst this year's Sydney Festival seems like eons ago, what is still etched in my consciousness is our recent European tour, which we embarked on in October 2013. We toured a quartet of musicians. I am so proud of Lamorna Nightingale (flute), Jason Noble (clarinet) and Bree van Reyk (percussion) for what were truly memorable performances in Den Haag, Brugge, London and Glasgow. While the rain attempted to dampen our spirits almost every day (as well as dampening our non-waterproof shoes and jackets) the standard of performance just kept getting better and better, culminating in our Glasgow concert, which was probably the tightest we have ever played as a group. The opportunity to perform this dynamic Aussie repertoire over and over again was one that we don't really get to do at home and it was much appreciated in terms of the standard we were able to achieve.

As part of the program, which we called 'Roar', we took over works by Aussie ex-pats Matthew Shlomowitz, Kate Moore and Jane Stanley and teamed them with Australian pieces written for us by Rosalind Page, Erik Griswold, James Humberstone, Elena Kats-Chernin and our own Bree van Reyk, plus some international composer friends Laurence Crane, Jennifer Walshe and Bryn Harrison. We were initially unsure of what sort of program we should be taking with us to the hallowed new music grounds that are the European concert halls, but I think that, in the end, touring an almost exclusively fresh and new Australian program was the right thing to do. It was Ensemble Offspring's own unique brand of new music making that we showed the audiences over there, and the feedback was surprising and very positive. These were some of the things they said: it was 'fresh', 'fun', 'dynamic', 'somehow very Australian', 'eclectic programming that showed every side of the ensemble's skills'…

Some personal highlights were the concert at Kings Place in London, which was very well attended and a real buzz, for me, as I got to perform two solos with the composers in the room. Irish composer Jennifer Walshe's reaction afterwards was something I don't think I will ever forget either - she was enamoured with the group. We were so relieved because it was at that concert that we performed, for her for the first time, the theatrical wonder she had written for us earlier in the year called Everything you own has been taken to a depot somewhere and we weren't sure whether she would like our interpretation or not. She did!

We were lucky enough to present a concert for 150 seven-year-old children and their parents at the Brugge Concertgebouw, hosted by the lovely Sterre de Raedt. We performed for them our 'Music to Infinity' program, and Sterre engaged the kids through activities during the concert including their own rendition of Musique de Table on wooden stools led by Bree - what a great idea and how awesome to see so many excited and inspired seven-year-olds leaving an Ensemble Offspring concert desperate for more.

And finally our time at Glasgow University, working with the composition students, was very satisfying, and the reactions from these students to our honest and open Aussie feedback on their compositions was heart-warming. Our Australian style seemed very compatible with the Scottish sensibility and we hope to return there some day soon.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this tour so successful including our 'men' on the ground in the various European cities, Kate Moore, Matthew Shlomowitz, Davina van Belle, Jane Stanley - and of course the wonderful EO musicians who went above and beyond the call of duty. That instrument lugging in the rain was not for the faint-hearted and at times it felt more like something a twenty-something-year-old should be attempting rather than a late thirty-something-year-old. But being an exponent of new music is not for the faint-hearted either, so if anyone was up for the challenge, we were!

Ensemble Offspring's tour received funding from the International Pathways initiative by the Australia Council for the Arts.

Further links

Ensemble Offspring (http://ensembleoffspring.com/)
EO Academy: Hatched