Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

WA’s premier new music ensemble Etica presents three cutting-edge contemporary chamber works in Fremantle Arts Centre’s Inner Courtyard as part of Tura New Music’s Scale Variable series. This outdoor concert will see the WA premiere of James Ledger’s Silver Swans, the world premiere of Chris Tonkin’s Transient States and a reprisal of legendary Australian composer Ross Edwards’s Musica Viva commission Laikan which was premiered at the Perth Festival in 1980.

Ledger’s reputation as one of Australia’s most in-demand composers was cemented in 2013 with the acclaimed national tour of his collaboration with Paul Kelly, Conversations with Ghosts. In Silver Swans, the WA composer has drawn inspiration from Orlando Gibbon’s madrigal The Silver Swan and WB Yeats’s poetry in a work that includes both eerie, strange electronic sounds and traditional chamber instrumentation.

Thirty-four years on from its first performance, Ross Edwards’s lively Laikan has lost none of its energy and immediacy. Edwards is famous for drawing on the sounds of nature in his work and this is a fantastic opportunity to hear it under the stars in a truly evocative venue.

Christopher Tonkin is the head of Composition Studies and Music Technology at UWA. In Transient States he has drawn on pieces of text from female characters in Shakespeare’s plays which in turn drive dramatic changes in instrumentations and style.

Performers: Jennifer Barrington – Soprano, Paul Tanner – Percussion, Zac Rowntree – Violin, Melinda Gourlay – Cello, Kathy Corecig – Viola, Phil Waldron – Double Bass, Adam Pinto – Piano, Leanne Glover – Oboe, Phil Everall – Clarinet, Emily Clements – Flute, John Tooby – Conductor

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website or by phone on (08) 9228 3711 or by email to info@tura.com.au

Featured Australian Works

	Laikan : instrumental sextet (1979) by Ross Edwards — performed by Etica Ensemble
	Love, madness and death : for soprano and ensemble (2014) by Christopher Tonkin — World premiere — performed by Etica Ensemble

Featured artists

• Performer Etica Ensemble