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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

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

Carol Shortis  

Five Golden Songs

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
a song cycle for SATB choir

Jeff Lin  

Infusing Zen

Duration: 11' 50" Year: 2010
for flute, viola and harp

  • Programme Note

    This composition is based on a Chinese poem by Wang We (701-761), who was one of the most admired Tang Dynasty poets and painters. Many of his works take a Buddist perspective, and reflect his focus on Zen practice. He is able to combine love of nature with the philosophy of life. Su Shi (1037-1101), a Chinese litterateur and artist once said, “The quality of Wang Wei’s poems can be summed as, the poems each hold a painting within them. In observing Wang Wei’s paintings you can see that, within the painting there is poetry.”

  • Availability

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

M Louise Webster  

Learning to nudge the wind

Duration: 10' 40" Year: 2010
for orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    Piccolo, Flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 Bsn, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timp, Percussion (marimba, susp. cymbal, triangle, tam-tam, metal wind-chimes), strings
  • Programme Note

    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.

  • Availability

Gillian Whitehead  

Mata-au

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