BY JASMINE MIDDLETON
In its return to Western Australia, the dynamic and innovative Ensemble Offspring promises a spellbinding, witty, and vivacious performance series – and all the music is written by women.
The tight-knit group of accomplished performers – Claire Edwardes (percussion and artistic director), Zubin Kanga (piano), Jason Noble (clarinets), and Lamorna Nightingale (flutes) – is certainly a homegrown hero of the new music scene. In the past two decades, the ensemble has cultivated and participated in countless creative projects that continue to push boundaries and disrupt the status quo.
Joining with Tura in its latest nation-wide tour, Ensemble Offspring explores a program bringing the new musical works of international and Australian female composers to the forefront.
We chat to Claire about what’s involved in this upcoming concert series Spel, the importance of embracing living composers, and how we can change the way audiences experience new music in the 21st Century.
Hi, Claire. Tell us a little about your collaborative process between musicians when preparing for a concert of such diverse styles and genres.
I guess it’s always collaborative. We have had a group for over 20 years now, and all the members travelling to Perth for this tour (myself, Zubin, Jason, and Lamorna) have played together for over 10 years.
Because we play together so much, the process of collaboration and feeling what each other is about to do – or even say – is just innate.
I love the fact that we are so familiar with each other, both musically and personally. We are all great friends, so that is a really special bonus.
Music is often reflective of its cultural landscape. What can new music bring to classical music that differs from the traditional canon dominated by ‘dead white men’?
Aside from Xenakis and Stockhausen who only recently passed away, we specialise in music by living composers. The consciousness around programming female composers has been more recent for us, I guess; that moment where you reflect on your programming and realise it is seriously skewed towards living white men such as Glass, Reich, Murail, Shlomowitz, and Ricketson.
Both Damien and I (back when we were co-artistic directors) decided that enough was enough – we just had to even-up our programming, which is why decided to commit our entire 2017 season to female composers. It has really worked for us and generally I feel that the overall consciousness across our whole scene is on the rise. It’s great to see.
How do you envision concerts such as Spel can help normalise the presence of women composers in the Australian music scene?
To be honest, I didn’t even really think about the male/female balance when I put together this program – it just happened that way. It has been quite a long time since Ensemble Offspring has toured to WA, so we wanted to bring over a program that showed off the type of music we have been focusing on of late, namely music by female composers.
Like in many other fields, females have been overlooked in musical composition for pretty much all of history. We really want to make sure that, during our lifetimes, this balance is shifted to create equity between the sexes in terms of the way in which they are championed on the stage.
As a result of our 2017 season, where we commissioned over 20 works by female composers, we now have a plethora of amazing female compositional collaborators who we continue to work with into the future, thus skewing our balance much more towards female composers – just as a knock-on effect, really.
What can Perth and Albany concertgoers expect from Spel?
We have a combination of beautiful works, many of which are inspired by jazz harmonies and minimal music. The quartet by Andrea Keller combines samples made by us in the studio on our instruments (piano, percussion, flutes and clarinets) with electronics and a man’s voice reciting a Rilke poem – it’s quite haunting and very striking when all these elements are combined in concert.
Another piece by Felicity Wilcox incorporates the composers cut of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1962 film by Vivre sa Vie. The way she has combined the instrumental accompaniment with the film is really original; often, the bass flute and bass clarinet are ‘talking’ with the characters on screen, and there is an upbeat scene with lots of industrial sounding percussion. It’s a lot of fun.
Also on the program we have the world premiere of Kate Moore’s new trio Blackbird Song, which she wrote for us especially for this tour. It has a gradual build over time and plays on the overlapping of tones between the vibraphone, clarinet, and alto flute. Through its simplicity, it provides the opportunity for reflection; each audience member can take from it what they will and there is very little in terms of prescribed listening that is required.
Finally, we have a piano solo with electronics from New York sensation Missy Mazzoli and Kate Moore’s vibraphone solo Spel. The latter is a hypnotic and mesmeric vibraphone solo which has given the program its title – Spel meaning ‘game’ in Dutch.
I really like the light-heartedness of this concept, as experiencing new music is meant to be fun and not a heavy, arduous task as it has traditionally been perceived in the past.
And finally – what’s next?
Spectral Tech at the Sydney Con on 29 Sept. Three world premieres by Holly Harrison, Alex Pozniak, and Tristan Coelho alongside Murail – it’s going to be mega!
See Ensemble Offspring present Spel in Perth’s Subiaco Arts Centre on 11 September, and the Albany Entertainment Centre on 15 September. Full details online and learn more about Tura on its website.
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Image supplied. Credit: Keith Saunders.
