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Robbie Ellis  

#llamadrama

Duration: 12' 30" Year: 2010
for solo piano

  • Programme Note

    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/

  • Availability

Chris Adams  

Antonyms of Trust

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
for actor and orchestra

Robin Toan  

Concertino

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2010
for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and orchestra

Yvette Audain  

Eulogy

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
for full symphony orchestra and narrator

  • Instrumentation
    piccolo, flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon 1 and 2, 3 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, 2 percussionists (crash cymbals, suspended cymbals, roto-toms, claves, rain stick, vibraphone), harp, strings and narrator
  • Programme Note

    I enjoyed performing and recording Eulogy very much. Such a warmth of texture and harmonies which created a sympathetic palette for Olivia Macassey’s word painting” – Kenneth Young

    My decision to set this text for orchestra initially arose, not only from reading the poem and appreciating it for what it is, but also from the recent passing of a dear musician colleague with whom I had collaborated on many early jazz projects.

    However, at time of writing, I have become most un-nerved by the senseless loss of young life that has been occurring with alarming regularity at a couple of schools I have recently taught at. It was with these tremendously sad, sudden passings in mind that I completed my work on the piano short score of Eulogy, before commencing work on its orchestration.

    Yvette Audain

  • Availability

Neville Hall  

eye-glitter out of black air 1

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
for wind quintet

Neville Hall  

eye-glitter out of black air 2

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
for wind quintet

Chris Adams  

Jekyll Rat

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2010
for piano trio

  • Instrumentation
    for violin, cello and piano
  • Programme Note

    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.

  • Availability

Gillian Whitehead  

Mata-au

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2010
for solo clarinet

Peter Scholes (composer)  

Relic

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2010
for 13 players

  • Instrumentation
    fl/picc, ob, cl in Bb, hn in F, tpt in Bb, tbn rototoms (starting G below middle C, GABCDEFGA) one player harp, vln1, vln2, vla, vc, cb
  • Programme Note

    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.

  • Availability

Michael Jamieson  

Sonata for tenor saxophone and piano

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
for tenor saxophone and piano