BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) aims to unsettle and enjoy – a rare duality adopted in contemporary music that Missy Mazzoli says can “frame our modern world in an unexpected and timely light”.
The New York composer’s work was inspired by the shape of a solar system – “something that was made of small loops of material that combine to form bigger loops of material”.
“The whole piece itself is in a big loop that ends where it started, but in a transformed, developed context,” she explains.
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) is an integration of Missy’s diverse influences, made to sound ‘cool’ in this contemporary world.
The inspiration was from the “strange sound” of a hurdy-gurdy; the end-product involved harmonicas, melodica, and even synthesizer. We hear a violin play in the opening, but “it’s transformed and processed so it sounds like it’s spinning off into space”. We also hear Baroque influences.
As Missy aptly states: “I find contemporary art to be a vital tool in understanding the world around us. I think of composing as the practice of cataloguing, exposing, processing, and ordering the world.”
The work will come to Australia this May to be played on the opening night of the Metropolis New Music Festival.
The joint initiative between the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Melbourne Recital Centre hosts its Metropolis: Night One event in homage to Missy’s former teacher Louis Andriessen on his 80th birthday. It will feature works by two of his past pupils: Missy, and Julia Wolfe.
So what should a composer take away from time spent with their teacher?
The Dutch composer Andriessen moved through serialism to jazz, minimalism to dissonance – all while sounding a little like Steve Reich, with harmonies reminiscent of Stravinsky. And much of the instruments are electronic, of course.
Missy too believes Andriessen’s 80th birthday is worth celebrating and, upon recalling her lessons with the composer, says: “I learnt how to integrate all my diverse influences into my musical creations.”
Whether her lessons were filled with chats about musical theatre, visual arts, and literature, or playing Bach duets on the piano, Missy tells us “they were the best composition lessons I’ve ever had”.
Although Missy says her music doesn’t sound much like her former teacher’s, she maintains music is Andriessen’s “language for understanding and processing the world, but also a conduit through which he can access a larger, deeper universe”.
Missy’s work that’ll be played at the Metropolis New Music Festival does exactly that, too – it elicits a sense of openness and curiosity in this large and deep universe.
Now a composition educator, mentor, and herself a living legend, Missy hopes she would be remembered by her own 80th birthday as “an artist who stuck to her own path and took every opportunity to help make the music scene more equitable and diverse”.
You can hear Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), along with other compositions by Conyngham, Koehne, Wolfe, and Andriessen, at the Melbourne Recital Centre on May 2.
The event is part of the Metropolis New Music Festival in honour of Andriessen’s 80th birthday.
We’re excited to collaborate with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to bring you this story about Metropolis! Stay tuned as we introduce emerging composer Mark Holdsworth, whose work will also feature in the festival.
Images supplied. Credit: Marylene May.
