26 Oct

Wildbird welcomes composer Helen Gifford

Wildbird is delighted to announce the publication of Fable for solo harp by Helen Gifford, in a new critical edition by Jacinta Dennett.

Fable (1967) is one of the key works in the repertoire for the harp by an Australian composer. It calls on the harpist to evoke the mysterious world of an old legend, using a wide range of techniques and sonorities specific to the harp.

This publication is a new edition by Dr. Jacinta Dennett. The score has been prepared in consultation with Helen Gifford. Dr. Dennett has examined annotations by other harpists and clarified aspects of the notation with the composer to produce this critical edition of the score.

Fable was commissioned for the 1968 Adelaide Festival by Donald Peart through the International Society of Contemporary Music (Melbourne Branch) and was written for an advanced harpist. Huw Jones, principal harp with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, gave the first performance.

Fable can be ordered online for $15.95 plus postage. The score will also available for purchase from the Australian Music Centre.

02 May

“Sentinel” by Brian Howard reviewed in Limelight Magazine

Wildbird is pleased to read the latest review from Vincent Plush at Limelight Magazine for the premiere performance of Brian Howard’s Sentinel (2020) which took place at the Canberra International Music Festival, May 2021, with Noriko Shimada on contraforte and Roland Peelman conducting. About Howard’s work for contraforte and chamber ensemble, Plush writes:

Nothing could have prepared us for the shock of Brian Howard’s new work. … Long ago, Howard eschewed the easy options of post-modern euphony in an uncompromising assertion of a tough, gritty and flamboyant personal language. Sometimes the result is confusing and disorienting. More often it is exhilarating and revitalising as it challenges the conventional orthodoxy of what new music can and might be.

Vincent Plush, Limelight Magazine

The full review of the concert can be read at the following link: https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/ḥarim-ميرح-canberra-international-music-festival/

08 Apr

Wildbird welcomes composer Elliott Gyger

Wildbird is delighted to announce the publication of two scores by Elliott Gyger: Inferno for solo piano and Precipice for oboe and piano.

Elliott Gyger is one of Australia’s outstanding composers, known for his wonderful chamber operas Fly Away Peter and Oscar and Lucinda, orchestral works, choral music, chamber music and instrumental and solo works. He is a highly-respected composition teacher at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne and author of the book The Music of Nigel Butterley in Wildbird’s Australian Composers series.

Inferno (2013) for solo piano is one of the great Australian piano works. The composer has written about Inferno in the introduction to the score:

Powerful images from Dante’s vision of Hell provide programmatic starting-points for a series of pieces whose internal logic is nonetheless purely musical. The vocabulary imprisons powerfully expressive gestures within tightly controlled structures, creating Lisztean tableaux of virtuosity and damnation influenced by Messiaen, Carter, Ligeti, Birtwistle and other giants of the post-war avant-garde.

The cycle consists of nine Etudes for the nine Circles of Hell, framed by four brief Interludes corresponding to the Rivers of Hell, together with a Prelude and Postlude. Each Etude explores a different subset of the piano’s range, moving gradually downward and alternately expanding and contracting across the cycle. All four Interludes, by contrast, traverse the same harmonic field spanning the entire range of the instrument, as well as the same metrical structure. Another recurring element is the transposition of Dante’s distinctive terza rima (three-line stanzas with interlocking end-rhymes: aba bcb cdc …) onto musical parameters.

– Elliott Gyger

Inferno was conceived as a single work, designed to be played in its entirety. However, Gyger shows us in the introduction some possible selected sections of the score for pianists not wanting to play the complete work.

A recording of this work is available on Inferno: The piano music of Elliott Gyger (MD3376; 2014) an album recorded on the Move Records label by pianist Michael Kieran Harvey.

Precipice (2010) for oboe and piano was commissioned as part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The composer has written in the introduction to the score:

A pièce de concours denotes a work for solo instrument and piano, intended as a test piece for advanced students. It typically includes opportunities for slow, expressive playing, demonstrating the player’s control of tone quality and phrasing, as well as rapid, agile passages to display technical facility. The term sometimes carries connotations of musical slightness – but there are certainly counterexamples, among them Debussy’s celebrated Première Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano.

Precipice takes the idea of the pièce de concours as its starting point, but arranges its various components into an unexpectedly dark narrative. In addition to its topographical meaning, there is a less common definition of “precipice” as a precarious state or situation of great peril: connotations of danger and excessive speed (as in the adjective “precipitous”) are also relevant to the mood of the work. The oboe here is intrinsically a plaintive, lyrical instrument — agility is attainable but doesn’t come naturally, and always seems vulnerable to collapse.

– Elliott Gyger

Precipice has two movements: “At the edge” and “After the fall.” This publication comes with a main score for the pianist and a separate part for the oboist.

Wildbird is pleased to announce that these two scores can be ordered online: Inferno $45.00 plus postage, and Precipice $29.95 plus postage. Scores will also be available to purchase from the Australian Music Centre.

15 Jul

3 Helpmann Award nominations for “Metamorphosis”

Wildbird Music congratulates the production team for the 2018 staging of Brian Howard’s opera Metamorphosis on the following nominations for Helpmann Awards in the Opera & Classical Music category for 2019:

  • Opera Australia, nominated for Best Opera
  • Simon Lobelson, nominated for Best Male Performer in an Opera, for his role as Gregor
  • Taryn Fiebig, nominee and winner in the category Best Female Performer in a Supporting Role in an Opera, for her role as Mother
21 Aug

Two new score publications

Wildbird is pleased to announce the publication of two more scores by Brian Howard:

Alchemy, his String Quartet No.1

Desires Ingrained, for solo violin

You can listen to Desires Ingrained performed by Vera van der Bie in Amsterdam in October 2016 in the Resources section of this website.

Wildbird has a Special Offer on these two new scores from 21 August to 4 September. You can access this at Shop / Special Offers.

04 Sep

Metamorphosis

Opera Australia has announced that Brian Howard‘s opera Metamorphosis will receive a new production in the 2018 season.

This will be the fourth production of this opera after Nigel Triffitt (VSO) Melbourne, Graeme Murphy (OA) Sydney and John Milson (WAAPA) Perth.

Metamorphosis will be staged in Sydney on 26, 27, 28 and 29 September 2018 and in Melbourne on 25, 26 and 27 October 2018.

The new production will be directed by Tama Matheson with set and costumes by Mark Thompson.

Paul Fitzsimon will conduct with Simon Lobelson, Julie Lea Goodwin, Christopher Hillier, Taryn Fiebig, Adrian Tamburini and Benjamin Rasheed as the cast.

Find out more from Opera Australia: https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/metamorphosis-sydney

22 Sep

Premiere of new work by Brian Howard

Brian Howard’s Desires Ingrained (2016) for solo violin will be premiered at the first of the three After the Silence concerts in Amsterdam in October. This work will be performed by Vera Van Der Bie on 3 October 2016. The concerts will present a series of compositions all 8 minutes or less in duration. Kate Moore and Konstantin Koukias will also have works performed at these concerts.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/138974306552240/

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/tickets-after-the-silence-new-sounds-concert-1-of-3-27684587346

31 Mar

Limelight Australian Composition Seminar 2016

Wildbird Music is delighted to support the Limelight Australian Composition Seminar again in 2016.  Taking place on Tuesday 19 July at Santa Sabina College, Strathfield (Sydney), and hosted by Karen Carey, Richard Gill and Andrew Batt-Rawden, we hear this special and enriching event for secondary school music teachers and students has already sold out.

We’re very pleased that alongside workshops of student compositions, the music of Wildbird composer Brian Howard will be featured this year, with a performance and analysis of Voyage through radiant stars 6, the stand-alone string quartet movement from Howard’s larger chamber work Voyage through radiant stars, also connected with the solo saxophone work Voyages 1-8. We’re looking forward to the education kit arising from the seminar, as well as a recording of Voyage through radiant stars 6.

14 May

Broadcasts

Saturday’s concert at the Canberra International Music Festival will be broadcast 8pm tonight (14 May 2015) on ABC Classic FM. Tune in to hear the world premiere of Brian Howard’s Full Fathom Five.  For those catching up on the broadcast on a later date, the link is:

http://www.abc.net.au/classic/content/2015/05/14/4236712.htm

Also, on Saturday 9 May 2015, author Elliott Gyger spoke with presenter Andrew Ford on ABC Radio National’s The Music Show about his book The Music of Nigel Butterley. The interview can now be downloaded/streamed at this link:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/musicshow/elliott-gyger-on-nigel-butterley/6455916