‘Who Are We’ marvels at the enormity of the universe. The text is by the great scientist, communicator and atheist, Carl Sagan:We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum starlost in a galaxy in some forgotten cornerof a universe containing far more galaxies than people.
Download the score: https://goo.gl/nXpT7o
Performed by Podium Strings at Beethovenfest Bonn 2019 Telekomforum BonnMovement II from Antarctic Symphony '`Far South' for strings and any four solo instruments.Conductor: Gordon Hamilton
I arranged 'Nessun dorma' for the WDR Rundfunkchor (under Nic Fink) and they sang it at the Domplatz Münster.
My composition “It’s Melting” for WDR Funkhausorchester, filmed live in the Philharmonie in Cologne.
In this piece I use a field-recording I made in 2018 near Casey Station, Antarctica of multi-year ice melting (thanks to the Australian Antarctic Division). This recording plays throughout the duration of the piece through speakers. The orchestra plays a series of musical warnings, underlining the danger this presents. Each of these musical moments is played back immediately through though the speakers, but the direction of the audio file is electronically reversed, such that with every step forward, the progress of the piece is undone.
BACHCHOR SALZBURG
I honestly never thought of composing a violin concerto, a form with so many giants looking over your shoulder. And least of all in a lockdown in Germany. Writing Loop Guts together with Hannah Solveij was a glorious trippy trek… We smooshed violining with sampling, loops, electronic effects, singing, incanting nonsense syllables, all in a psychedelic supernova of our favourite musical genres from all eras. It was a protest against the ‘borture’ of this long German silence. We are so insanely grateful to the musicians and management of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker for working with us on this video.
BACHCHOR SALZBURG
Theorbe: Hans Brüderl
Violone: Johannes Gasteiger
Dirigent: Gordon Hamilton
Elinore Pruitt Stewart was a Wyoming settler and memoirist who wrote letters between 1909 and 1914 describing her life and hardships on the American frontier. Nico Muhly's setting of this letter forms part of TAV's 'Far and Near' commissions in 2020, in response to the shutdowns. Nico himself features (from faraway New York City) on keyboard.
#’IGNITION vol. 2. Mozart 40 with Düsseldorfer Symphoniker.
A tasty new song from Lisa Young as part of The Australian Voices’ 2020 'Far and Near' commissions.
“Come, dear May, and make the trees green again” with the wonderful Bachchor Salzburg. This is my rearrangement of Mozart’s familiar melody ‘Komm, lieber Mai’. In Salzburg I got to know Johannes Forster who developed, recorded and helped edit the Jodel part. Also thanks to solo soprano Heidi Baumgartner, who has a voice from the outer solar system. I recorded the keyboard part on five different instruments and sliced them up into a psychedelic basso continuo. Danke an die wunderbaren Sängerinnen und Sänger des Bachchors Salzburg!
wider rough rider supercollider
Welp, I went deeeeep into the Edit Cave for this one. I asked singers of The Australian Voicesto send me a sound that “only they can make”, and used the samples to make this brobdingnagian monster. (All sounds are human voices)
From Tom: This is something mad different for me. We wanted to write a piece in which the verse mirrored the time-signatures and tempo changes in the music. I don't think I have ever been more confused in the writing process ever, I had to relearn where to place rhyming couplets in 5/4 and 7/4 which made my brain melt but i'm super happy with the result.
Tom Thum and I performing a streamlined version of Thum Prints with the Bombay Chamber Orchestra at TEDx Gateway, Mumbai.
The Machiavelli Sessions continue.... this instalment w/ English singer/songwriter Jorja Smith + German rapper OG Keemo + WDR Funkhausorchester. Blue Lights is Jorja's best-known song, so I was excited + scared that both artists gave me freedom to reimagine it in combo w/ Keemo's 216. Both songs are about racism + police brutality. At the start and the end of this version Keemo repeats the German word 'lauf' while Jorja sings the same idea ('run') in English. I removed the beats from both songs, to try to let the orchestra be supportive of the lyrics (especially in imitating doppler-shifting sirens). Thanks to WDR, all musicians & the Machiavelli Podcast (which u should auschecken if German rap and/or politics is your thang).
Happy Halloween! I arranged Danny Elfman's 'This is Halloween' for the WDR Funkhausorchester and Rundfunkchor (conducted by Nicolas Fink). It was a feat of sound engineering too: the various families of the orchestra all recorded separately, so as to maintain distance in the WDR Großer Sendesaal (the scene of many Stockhausen & John Cage experiments of yesteryear).
…a very special video for me: ein collab w/ der German rapper Ebow & dem WDR Funkhausorchester. Ebow is of Kurdish descent… und so wenn you hear her say ‘Kanak for Life’, plz unterstand ‘Kanak’ is a derogatory deutsche Wort for ppl w/ roots in Turkish/Arabic/Persian/Pashto-speaking countries, & has been reclaimed als a colloquial term of self-identification. I conducted & arranged THIS THING. The Zusammenarbeit w/ WDR producers was very rich, weil we did a bit of orchester-resampling in post (in case u doubt what u hëar). Plz appreciate legendary drummer Andy Pilger. Danke für your attention. It’s my Geburtstag by the way. I need hugs. Plz enjoy…………….. K4L K4L K4L K4L
Schiff is one of my favourite German rap songs. I was really grateful that Felix Kummer let me reinvent it for him and the WDR Funkhausorchester as part of the Machiavelli Sessions.
Yikes, I just can't get over countertenor Terry Barber's incomparable voice. This is my re-treatment of the Korean folksong 'Arirang', sung by Terry on his album 'Around the World in 80 Minutes' (Purchase: https://bit.ly/2D1FxWx). Terry will perform 'Arirang' throughout USA and Canada in his 'Around the World In 80 Minutes' tour this season and next. All tour dates at www.TerryBarber.com. Check out Facebook.com/TouringArtist and IG @TouringArtist.
Conducting 'Red Live Breath' by Berlin-based Australian composer Cathy Milliken. In this ritualistic work, the choristers gather to sing short phrases, play stones, exchange sonorities with whirlies and interact with torches: all actions that set the space as a magical place. The text is taken from Gertrude Stein, Herbert Zbigniew and Cathy Milliken.
My original score to the German film “Wunderschön – Norway”.
At Easter 2020 I was supposed to be in Bermagui with The Australian Voices for the gorgeous Four Winds Easter Festival. We were even going to do a big community workshop on my new song ‘Tiny Movements’. So due to the state of world affairs, we phoned it in. Thanks to Four Winds artistic director James Crabb for joining in on accordion. Read more about the project here.
Astrid Jorgensen's beautiful setting of On Marriage, the famous poem by Kahlil Gibran. The Australian Voices and I are reading it here at rehearsal in January 2020: the rehearsal room was so hot we moved outside into the bush!
Wheel of Moments
Download the scores here.
One-minute piano pieces // all experiences are temporary // pieces cycle through modes and scales // themes recur // one string is prepared
For this ANZAC Day, we offer 'Dark Hour', composed by Gordon Hamilton. The text is from Prime Minister Billy Hughes' off-the-cuff remarks at the Savoy Hotel in London in 1916. He was summing up the Australian experience at Gallipoli.
In this electro-acoustic piece, Robert Davidson applies a microscope to sound. Using the words "we apologise" from then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's historic 2008 apology to aboriginal Australians for past mistreatment, Davidson creates a beautiful soundscape by slowing the audio down by 250 times.
The Australian Voices sing Waltzing Matilda arranged and conducted by Gordon Hamilton.
From the composer, Rob Davidson: "When I heard Julia Gillard's parliamentary speech addressing misogyny, it struck me that behind the politics there was a lot of personal feeling being communicated. I wanted to put a frame around this slice of time, to heighten my perception of what was being said behind the words, in the intonation of the voice, and in the dynamics of what was being said in interjections and reactions. The resulting choral piece, in which the singers echo and support the Prime Minister's speech melodies, is initially quite humorous, as we are confronted with the melody that perhaps was not evident to us before. As the music goes on, it passes into something more serious, and (it is hoped) we hear the Prime Minister as a woman experiencing very real emotions. The Australian Voices are the ideal performers for such a work - ready for anything and enthusiastic to tackle any challenge, these brilliant young artists threw themselves into the highly unfamiliar approach to choral singing, with results that I find exhilarating as a composer."
Nicholas Ng's beautiful arrangement of the Chinese Lullaby 'Yuè ér míng', performed at the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou by The Australian Voices under Gordon Hamilton.