Joe Twist and Sam Allchurch explore Garden of the Soul

Australian composer Joe Twist. Photo by Pascal Halim

Joe Twist writes about his An Australian Song Cycle in Limelight

The work traverses a comprehensive and contrasting array of Australian voices over the last century, with each movement drawing on poets such as Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, Judith Wright, Michael Leunig, Les Murray and Oodgeroo Noonuccal. These poems are rich with distinctly Australian imagery, perfect for a choral setting, with each exploring different elements of our natural surrounds. Scored for choir, piano and cello, I’ve tried to highlight these musically. For Banjo Paterson’s Sunrise on the Coast, I’ve created calm waves of sustained singing, while Henry Lawson’s Andy’s Gone With Cattle is more intimate and impassioned, a tribute to the life of the drover and the struggles of drought. Judith Wright’s Wonga Vine is more mysterious in its description of flowers, leading to bursts of colour and driving rhythms from rapid piano flourishes and florid vocal writing for Michael Leunig’s Magpie and Les Murray’s Jellyfish.

But something new was needed to relate directly to the bushfires.

You can read the full Limelight article here

Sam Allchurch writes about Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia in Sounds Like Sydney

Since first working with Sydney Chamber Choir as a guest conductor in 2017, I have wanted to perform Britten’s work with them. It’s one of his most technically demanding pieces – requiring enormous and varied technical resources: one minute the choir creates a rich, sonorous singing, the next an extremely light and fast, almost diaphanous sound world. But it also requires great emotional engagement with the possibilities of what the music and text might mean. Having weathered the storm (and continuing to do so) of COVID-19 together, I feel that now is a good time to tackle this beautiful piece – and to go further into the Garden of the Soul.

You can read the full Sounds Like Sydney article here