We are pleased to collaborate with Hammerings Records and Alan Holley again for tomorrow’s recital. Alan has, as always, led us to discover some wonderful new music which we can’t wait to share with our audience. Here are some thoughts from Alan about the music we will be performing tomorrow.
Starting points in an art work
When assisting Sirius Chamber Ensemble with the programming for Saturday’s concert I realised that Pa Titull, which translates as ‘No Title’, the flute and piano work by the Albanian composer Enis Mullaj, was a reaction to a loss in his immediate family. It is a work full of drama, with some moments of raw emotion and also contains moments of intense beauty.
My own Umbra, from 2001, was written as a ‘memory piece’, a musical contemplation fifteen years after the death of my father. It is not sad in approach but rather inward looking. Umbra has as one of its meanings a shadow or darkness. I liked the idea of having two works in the same concert that started from a similar idea – an experience of loss.
What I did not know was the clarinet solo by the young Albanian composer Kris Sopiqoti, AlbPhonia 1 touches similar ground. Kris writes about the influences of his work, ‘In our culture Kaba is a musical form where the folk clarinettist plays a solo improvisation and expresses his deeper emotions imitating a human lamentation for the dead. Kaba was used as a way of crying with no words at all, during ceremonies for the dead.’
And yet these three works, from different spaces, all travel their own musical paths and without tapping extreme musical emotions.
Alan Holley
Christ Church
Lavender and Walker Streets,
Lavender Bay
August 3 at 5pm
Tickets $30 and $20 concession
Tickets on sale at the door
Program
Alan Holley – Piano Sonata
Francis Poulenc – Sonata for clarinet and bassoon
Kris Sopiqoti – AlbPhonia for solo clarinet
Enis Mullaj – “Pa Titull…” for flute and piano
Eve Duncan – From A Star Afar for solo piano
JS Bach – Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor
Paul Smith – Clow Card Variations for flute, clarinet and bassoon
Alan Holley – Umbra for clarinet and piano
Guest Performer:
Danaë Killian (piano)
Sirius Chamber Ensemble
Melissa Coleman (flute)
Ian Sykes (clarinet)
Alison Evans (bassoon)
Claire Howard Race (piano)
sirius chamber ensemble 