31 Jan

A Singular Voice now in stock

Have you ordered your copy yet of William Kempster’s new book A Singular Voice: the Choral Music of Ross Edwards?

Behind-the-scenes: receiving first copies from the printers and sending out pre-orders in early January.

There are even more reasons to do so. Wildbird has made available on our website a playlist of streamable recordings of some of the works featured in the book. We aim to provide this service with all our books. Please go to Resources and enter Audio and start enjoying some of Ross’ choral music. Some of the compositions you can hear include Dawn Mantras, Mass of the Dreaming, and Quem Quaeritis – a play of the nativity.

Also, since our last news, Ross has turned 80.

Happy Birthday, Ross!!!

We hear more choral music is on the horizon from Ross and a new chamber opera Love and the Music, on the love story of Gustav and Alma Mahler. So we look forward to the incredible body of vocal writing by Ross continuing to grow.

Besides being able to order a copy directly from our website, the book is now available from the Australian Music Centre, Amazon in the USA for international purchases, and at selected bookshops.

We hope you enjoy our latest book.

01 Dec

New book about Ross Edwards

To celebrate the 80th birthday of distinguished Australian composer Ross Edwards this month, Wildbird has much pleasure in announcing the publication of A Singular Voice: the choral music of Ross Edwards.

Written by Australian/American choral conductor and scholar William Kempster, who has conducted numerous performances of Edwards’ choral music and spent many years researching and writing this book, Wildbird’s latest publication celebrates both the composer and his extraordinary compositions for choral groups.

Edwards has written a wide-ranging body of vocal works throughout his life as a composer and has had many performances throughout the world. Following the Wildbird style of books on Australian music, A Singular Voice examines Edwards’ vocal works chronologically with many musical examples which underline and support the text.

A Singular Voice will be available from Wildbird for $44.95 (plus postage) and from other outlets from January 2024. However, Wildbird is pleased to make this book available for pre-orders until 31 December 2023 as a Special Offer, for $39.95 (plus postage).

With all good wishes to Ross for his 80th birthday on 23 December 2023,

The Wildbird team.

Ross Edwards portrait
12 Aug

PRE-ORDER “The Music of Liza Lim”

New book by Tim Rutherford Johnson

Wildbird is very pleased to announce that advance orders for the fifth volume in our Australian Composers series are open from Thursday 11 August 2022.

Following on from our books on the music of Peter Sculthorpe, Richard Meale, Nigel Butterley and Carl Vine comes the latest volume on the music of Liza Lim written by one of England’s leading authorities on contemporary music, Tim Rutherford-Johnson, well-known for his book Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989.

The Music of Liza Lim will be launched at the Philharmonie in Berlin on 11 September by Musikfest Berlin in association with the Australian Embassy in Germany.

Advance orders received via the Wildbird website up to 11 September will cost AUD$49.95 (incl. GST) and will be posted on Monday 12 September with no additional charge for postage for orders within Australia. After this date, Wildbird will need to add standard Australia Post charges to all domestic orders due to a surge in costs since the onset of COVID.

From 12 September 2022, The Music of Liza Lim will also be available from the Australian Music Centre, some Amazon sites and selected bookshops.

We hope you will support our efforts to examine and promote the work of Australia’s leading composers by ordering your copy of The Music of Liza Lim.

26 May

Coming Soon: The Music of Liza Lim

Wildbird is delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of the fifth book in the Australian Composers series: The Music of Liza Lim. This volume follows on from Wildbird’s books on Peter Sculthorpe, Richard Meale, Nigel Butterley and Carl Vine.

The Music of Liza Lim has been written for Wildbird by Tim Rutherford-Johnson who is well-known as a British new music critic, journalist and blogger, author of Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989 (University of California Press) and editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Music, 6th edition (Oxford University Press). He recently co-authored a history of music in the twentieth century with Stephen Graham, Tom Perchard and Holly Rogers (Cambridge University Press). He studied at the University of Nottingham and at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Liza Lim is one of Australia’s most outstanding composers with an ever-growing international reputation. She has written a large body of work for a wide range of performing bodies from solo instruments and chamber groups to large ensembles and orchestras, from stage works to music for installations.

In Australia, Liza Lim’s long association as a composer with one of the country’s leading new music ensembles ELISION has been particularly important and fruitful. And her many connections to a wide range of cultural and intellectual sources informs much of her creative work and has been carefully explored by Rutherford-Johnson.

Liza Lim is currently Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the University of Sydney where she leads Composing Women, a development programme which aims to foster and empower women composers.

As with the other volumes in Wildbird’s Australian Composers series, this new book on Liza Lim is full of musical examples which underline the discussion of her musical language. Each chapter specifically examines her music across a wide-ranging repertoire, beginning with solo instrument works and concluding with her incredible operas.

Subscribe to the Wildbird Music newsletter to be informed when this book examining the music of a major 21st Century composer is released in the coming weeks…

27 Mar

‘The Music of Carl Vine’ by Rhoderick McNeill reviewed in Limelight Magazine

In the September 2017 issue of Limelight Magazine Will Yeoman reviewed the fourth volume of Wildbird’s Australian Composers series, The Music of Carl Vine by Rhoderick McNeill.  Yeoman writes:

This is a fascinating and highly readable account of Vine’s compositional and stylistic development over the course of some four decades of sustained work in a diverse range of genres.  As such, it is as clear and thorough an overview to the unique sound-world of one of our greatest living composers as one could wish for.

20 Mar

‘The Music of Carl Vine’ by Rhoderick McNeill reviewed in ‘The Studio’

The Music of Carl Vine by Rhoderick McNeill received a review in the May 2017 issue of The Studio (Vol.23 No.2), the journal of the Music Teachers’ Association of NSW. Reviewer Dr Rita Crews writes:

This book is most highly recommended and provides an accurate and valuable contribution to the study of the complex but distinctive style of Carl Vine featuring numerous musical examples that illustrate the various references made in the text.

13 Mar

‘The Music of Carl Vine’ by Rhoderick McNeill reviewed by Peter Campbell in Context journal

The Music of Carl Vine by Rhoderick McNeill was reviewed in Context journal, Issue 42 (2017) by Peter Campbell, who writes:

This is a wonderful addition to the output of Wildbird Music, an organisation taking up the reigns from the mainstream publishing houses that are rarely bringing forth such volumes these days.
McNeill has succeeded in providing us with a rich reading of all the major compositions across Vine’s career so far, an output deserving of such attention and even greater prominence in Australia’s musical story.

Read the full review via the Context website.

02 Jul

Rhoderick McNeill and Carl Vine on ABC RN The Music Show

Recently Rhoderick McNeill, author of The Music of Carl Vine, and the composer Carl Vine himself were invited to talk about the book with Andrew Ford on ABC Radio National’s The Music Show. During the show several movements from Vine’s Anne Landa Preludes are played, as well as an excerpt from the April 2017 recording of Five Hallucinations, concerto for trombone, played by Michael Mulcahy with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conductor Mark Wigglesworth.  The show aired on Sunday 2nd July 2017; you can listen to the show online at the following link: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/musicshow/music-of-carl-vine/8668152

03 Feb

New Release: ‘The Music of Carl Vine’ by Rhoderick McNeill

Wildbird is delighted to announce the publication of the fourth volume in the Australian Composers series , The Music of Carl Vine. This book has been written by Professor Rhoderick McNeill, Head, School of Arts and Communication at the University of Southern Queensland.

Carl Vine is one of Australia’s great composers. He has been writing music for over forty years. His works include 7 Symphonies, 5 String Quartets, Concertos for Violin, Oboe, Piano (2) and Cello and his much awaited new work Five Hallucinations (2016) for Trombone and Orchestra. His compositions also include major works for the piano, choral, chamber and orchestral music. He is also well known for his ballet and film music including The Tempest and The Battlers.

Vine’s music has been examined by Rhoderick McNeill in this new Wildbird publication. McNeill is particularly known for his book The Australian symphony from Federation to 1960.  A large number of musical examples have been included throughout the book to enable music students, teachers and the interested public to see the key features of Vine’s creative world. Written by leading authorities on Australian music, books in the Australian Composers series are an important resource designed for all music students and teachers, university students and libraries interested in the work of Australia’s leading composers.

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