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Starting in a field close to Melbourne’s Western Ring Road, a llama lives a placid and slightly bored existence. Absent-mindedly picking at a chain-link fence, a gap appears: the animal can fit itself through and escape its confines. After a few cautious steps, it lurches forward and runs in sudden jerks. Making its way down a grassy hillside, it reaches the freeway crash barrier. Occupants of moving vehicles begin to notice the animal: “there’s a llama!” After a few tries, it successfully vaults the crash barrier and makes it onto the road itself. Vehicles whizz by and drivers honk their horns, but the llama is enjoying its freedom too much to be affected by them. Reports begin to reach news services: we hear a radio news theme and the growing noise of the Twitterverse.

The din of chatter around Melbourne becomes overwhelming and little more than indistinguishable noise, so the llama retreats into its head and to its elated thoughts: “I’m free! I’m my own animal! This is my dream, I’m no longer bound by a chain-link fence! It’s a whole new world! There’s a smile on my face for the whole…”

SQUEAL!! Its reverie is interrupted by an SUV with an absent-minded yet aggressive driver: the vehicle has to brake extremely suddenly to avoid hitting the llama, and misses it only by inches. Police have arrived on the scene and have begun to divert traffic. The llama becomes outnumbered to a greater and greater degree: there’s one last chance for escape, one tricky path to freedom, one last high-stakes roll of the “OOH TASTY TASTY LLAMA TREAT ON THE GRASSY BANK!! I LIKE TASTY LL… oh damn.”

Thirty minutes later, in the same field close to the Western Ring Road, the llama is once again bored. Picking at the chain-link fence, there’s no chance of escape. The fence has been repaired, the gap closed, the llama’s life restored to its former boredom.

More details here: http://www.robbie.co.nz/2012/12/09/llamadrama/

• Robbie Ellis: #llamadrama - hardcopy score 

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• Toan: Concertino; computer-set 

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• Toan: Concertino; computer-set 

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• Shortis: Five Golden Songs; computer-set 

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• Shortis: Five Golden Songs; computer-set 

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This work was written for the NZTrio while I was the inaugural University of Otago/James Wallace Artist in Residence at the Pah Homestead.

Twinkle twinkle little star
how I wonder what you are?
A little bit hound, a little bit fox,
a junkie for the ballot box?
Twinkle twinkle little star
who’d have thought you’d come this far.

[adapted from Sam Mahon’s A Knight’s Tale]

While Jekyll Rat is based on a prominent New Zealand politician, it unfortunately could be applicable to a number of political figures. It deals with my anger and frustration that a number of local body representatives and nationally elected politicians forget that they were elected to represent their constituents and instead become absorbed by the power and prestige of the position, or use their power and influence for personal gain.

Jekyll Rat has three movements. The first “Me ne frego” (translation: I don’t give a dam), starts with the statement of the principal theme but then over the course of the movement is gradually consumed by an insidiously growing chromatic semiquaver sequence in the strings. The second “Sycophant’s Dance,” moves between sections of slightly awkward and clumsy pomposity, teetering fragility and vicious rage. The final movement “Insanity represented by Mustard Yellow” is fast and frenetic until it finally ends with an almost elegiac reprisal of the principal theme.

• Chris Adams: Jekyll Rat - hardcopy score & parts 

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Aotearoa is a long narrow land surrounded by sea and buffeted by the wind. We who live here learn to know the direction of the prevailing winds and to track the changes in the sky and on the water. As a child visiting grandparents in Wellington I was mesmerised by the evanescent sweep of wind and wave patterns on the harbour surface as gusts blew silver and black across the water. I listened to the adults talk; they spoke of ‘southerly changes’, of ‘squalls’, and of the wind ‘going around to the south’. A new language that conjured images of a dynamic interchange with the wind. The line ‘learning to nudge the wind’ is taken from a Stella McQueen poem, and captures for me that relationship. ‘Learning to nudge the wind’ was written for St. Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra and had its first performance in May 2010.

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• 5 Works by M Louise Webster 

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Mata-au is the original name of the Clutha river, which I see from my window in the Henderson house, built by the Austrian architect Ernst Plischke where, courtesy of the Henderson Arts Trust, I was artist-in-residence. Mata-au refers to the river’s characteristic whirlpools, caused by layered currents flowing at different speeds, which resemble the wake of a giant waka, and the piece has its origins in Māori chant.

Gillian Whitehead

• Gillian Whitehead: Mata-au - hardcopy score 

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This work was purpose-written upon request from one of the schools I work in, as a companion piece for my solo work Hazine (Treasure). The musical material here needed to be in a similar vein: that is, using exotic modality in a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean style, which in this case alternates with a more jazz-fusion-based, contemporary sound.

The title originates from a tale by the great storyteller Nasreddin Hoca, called ‘Hide and Seek’. The protagonist says at the end “If you do not look in your own heart first, then you will not find wisdom”. My work consists of 5 short, intuitively-composed ‘meditations’, linked together by either solo saxophone cadenza-like passages, or pianistic interludes.

To reflect a little upon the purpose of this work’s composition, the last of said meditations is actually ‘old wine in new bottles’, so to speak: it revamps and then develops, in a written-out improvisation, a melody and accompaniment I composed when in my final year of high school, seeing as I was writing this for an advanced student in their own final year of high school.

Yvette Audain

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A reaction to Greenpeace’s efforts to stop whaling.

• Hextall: Planet Vandal; computer-set 

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A doorstep is the highest mountain.

• Hextall: Portal; computer-set 

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In 1997 I visited Cairo to work with Arabic musicians and a dawn trip to the pyramids was on the schedule. Then there was a visit to a local tourist shop and I came away with my own relic – a plaster copy of a golden Isis with wings outstretched. The seller did warn me that it was not the real artifact. It has sat in my studio and in idle moments I have pondered the fact that this goddess was worshipped as far back as 2500 b.c. and later her worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world until the 6th century. Temples to Isis were built in Iraq, Greece, Rome, even as far north as England where the remains of a temple were discovered at Hadrian’s Wall.

“Relic” opens with a call from the harp and drum and through the melodic and darker passages I seek to convey a sense of ritual – each element in its place, taking time to breathe, delivering then moving on. The fast second section exploded into this piece quite spontaneously as the potential of the harp and drum combination demanded to be realized. Unison and ornate figures dominate the melodic material and an urgent dance in the Locrian mode is the result.

• Scholes: Relic; computer set 

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