BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Cyrus Meurant hasn’t stopped composing since the pandemic began.
While performances of his work have been impacted by concert cancellations, Cyrus has nevertheless produced a series of solo and chamber works, a song cycle, and a string quartet.
He also released his EP Sortie — and this piece of music will soon be performed on a program that features other standout pieces from this resilient Australian composer.
Music by Cyrus Meurant is a collaboration between Cyrus, saxophonist Andrew Smith, and violinist Kirsten Williams. (Cyrus and Kirsten, pictured together above, also partnered up back in 2020 for When I Stand Before Thee at the Day’s End, which he composed for her and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.)
In this interview, Cyrus talks us through the program of works he has composed — including the world premiere of his Sonata for solo violin.
Cyrus, I’ve really enjoyed listening to your piece Sortie. I would love to say this music feels so calming, but I know your experience in recent months must have been anything but! How have you coped as a composer during this pandemic?
I’ve been OK, though of course the pandemic has been seismic. Like everyone, I’ve had to keep my expectations in check for the past two years. I had some major projects cancelled or postponed, so that’s something you must reconcile as simply beyond your control.
That said, I’ve found ways to keep composing, and on reflection it has been satisfying to continue in unanticipated ways, despite the challenges.
Your music was recently performed in a Syzygy Ensemble event that confronted the “dizzying feeling of the past 18 months”. As you reflect, how did it feel to have your music out there for the world to hear — in person again — after two postponements?
Ultimately, it was just a massive sense of relief.
Like you say, the program had been postponed twice in 2021, then it was finally presented at the Melbourne Recital Centre in March this year. My work for the program, The Crossing of a Sea, was commissioned by Mark Wakely in loving memory of Steven Alward and was inspired, in part, by the poetry of Tagore.
The three movements explore themes of love, loss, and transformation. Though, I think what started out as a piece about dealing with grief and personal loss also became a universally cathartic work for me, the musicians, and the audience.
It seems to me that you’re building a new momentum in 2022; you’re looking ahead to a concert that features your music — exclusively. How did this concert collaboration come about between you, Kirsten, and Andrew?
Kirsten was featured as soloist in my work When I Stand Before Thee at the Day’s End, which was commissioned for the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and premiered at the National Portrait Gallery in March 2020. So it was really following that premiere, along with our common interests in the importance of music in the health sector, that it seemed natural we should continue our collaboration in some way.
I’ve worked with Andrew Smith for over a decade now. So, the concert is also partly about us performing together again for the first time since 2019. We will revisit the first work we ever performed together: Constancies for alto saxophone and piano, which I composed way back in 2010. We’ll also perform the Four Pieces for soprano saxophone and electric organ that we released as a 10-inch vinyl EP in 2019.
I like your suggestion of a new momentum in my work. There’s a genuine sense of looking forward with this concert, but it is only possible through re-establishing existing musical relationships.
The concert also reflects my music in a particularly foundational way, and is curated around the realities of our times, with only solo and duo music.
Sortie will feature as one work on the program. But there’ll also be a premiere for your Sonata for solo violin. What’s the story behind this new composition?
Violin is my first instrument, and I’ve written a lot of violin music over the years. […] Given the demand for solo music during the pandemic, and my previous collaboration with Kirsten and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, I suggested the idea of a sonata for solo violin, and she was very supportive. I was then successful in gaining funding from Create NSW for the project, so it all came to pass like that.
As a student, I studied and performed the sonatas and partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach, along with the 20th-Century solo sonatas of Ysaÿe, Bartok, Prokofiev, and Honegger. So there is some inescapable influence from those works which I greatly admire.
That said, I think I’ve composed the sonata on my own terms with a particular focus on creating immersive musical atmospheres and dramatic contrasts between the four movements.
The work will also form part of a new dance project, which is currently in development with the National Youth Ballet Company led by artistic director Brett Morgan and choreographer Timothy Gordon.
I was moved to learn that another piece on the program, Monday to Friday, was composed for listeners who are living with dementia. Why did you choose to include Monday III on this program, and what message does this send during a time when Australia’s treatment of people in aged care, many of whom are living with dementia, is under the spotlight?
Monday to Friday was commissioned for Beaumont Care in Brisbane, and is a work that I’m particularly proud of.
The music was tailored to cater specifically for the moods of dementia patients at different times of day throughout the week. […] With the pandemic and the obvious challenges in the aged care sector of late, perhaps there is an added dimension to programming selections of the work now. I know from friends and family who are navigating through the aged care sector that it can be extremely challenging.
I have however seen firsthand how extraordinarily positive the use of music can be in these contexts, so I think it’s important to keep playing this music for all people in a shared experience, as a positive social action.
In a time when listeners are eagerly — or for some, hesitantly — returning to live music events across Australia, what feeling do you hope to inspire in your own listeners this May?
Perseverance and resilience are two qualities we’ve all had to call upon the last few years, so I hope my music offers some positivity and expresses a will to continue, as well as instilling a further desire to re-engage with live music across the board.
Composing and performing are of course inextricably linked activities. So I really hope that we’re reminded once more of the unique communicative power of music, and how profoundly important it is for us all.
See Music by Cyrus Meurant at the Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, University of Sydney, 8pm May 28.
Images supplied.
