Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

These Friday Afternoon Songs have enabled me to embrace the fun, nonsense, humour, darkness and playfulness of a young person's fantasy world. One takes the everyday of homework and turns it into a parade of monsters while others investigate and poke fun at annual celebrations of Valentines and Easter.

Young voices have an immediacy to them that we as adults can't help but be drawn in by. When this is coupled with fantastical story telling through song, young people can make the absurd believable and both the ludicrous and banal exciting.

I have worked closely with the writer Alan McKendrick on this approach and he has created texts which facilitate the flights of fancy of both my own musical imagination and the young people's. I have consciously reflected on Britten's set of Friday Afternoons songs and included in my set two rounds and a number of technical procedures that work so well for young singers (and old ones too) in Britten's set of songs. It has been an immense pleasure to compose this set of songs, to work with fantastic professional artists and a host of enthusiastic and inspiring young people.

Work Details

Year: 2016

Instrumentation: Young voices (8 to 18 year olds), piano.

Contents note: Black neon sign -- My homework is a monster -- Tattoo negotiations -- Where does the Easter Bunny live? -- Survival party in Sector 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-17 -- Valentine -- Don't disturb me in my tent -- The Ballad of Donk-Cat & Samurai Sword-Dog -- The surprising scary horror of the cafe, the castle and the jungle -- Haunted head -- Ferrari mountain.

Commission note: Commissioned by Snape Maltings for the Friday Afternoons Project

First performance: at The Golden Vanity & Friday afternoon songs (Snape Maltings) on 17 Jun 2017

Lyrics by Alan McKendrick.