BY CAROL SAFFER, NEW PALM COURT ORCHESTRA CHAIR
In the summer of 2013, Gemma Turvey was in Boston, lying on the grass on Bunker Hill and basking in the warm sunshine.
While looking up at the clouds, a realisation that she was on hallowed ground jolted the Australian pianist. At the scene of the most definitive battle of the American Revolution, the New Palm Court Orchestra artistic director was inspired to compose the penultimate movement of her American Suite – Bunker Hill.
The movement’s melody has a “wistful daydreaming quality,” Gemma says.
“But then, the horn keeps coming in on the melody, dragging it down with the echoes of history.”
Gemma returned to Boston just over a year later as the Recipient of the Hugh Rogers Fellowship. When knowing she would have to leave eventually, yet not wanting to, the final movement of the suite came to her: Boston Calling is her reflection on “projecting forward and looking back”.
It is an extremely energetic movement with a driving rhythm from a percussive piano. When Gemma played Boston Calling at a recital in Newport, one of the audience members afterwards said to her: “You should rename that The Ride of Paul Revere. I could hear him charging in on his horse!”.
These two Boston-centric movements of the American Suite form the basis of Freedom Trail – a performance by the NPCO on July 4 this year celebrating America’s Independence Day and featuring a range of music as vast as the country itself.
Americans do patriotism. The word – with its red, white, and blue connotation – appears everywhere in these times of the Trump administration. I thought about this as the orchestra’s repertoire came together to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Personally, when I first heard Arrival, the opening movement of Gemma’s American Suite, I didn’t need her to explain the inspiration or meaning – I got it. I was on that plane as it circled and came into land at JFK. I have seen the lights of New York City a number of times, now. Each time is as exciting and more amazing than the last. Gemma’s composition captures my feelings.
I haven’t been to Boston. However, hearing Gemma’s passion, enthusiasm and inspirations from the city that was the seat of the American Revolution, it seemed appropriate that here was an opportunity for a Melbourne audience to experience America’s love of country and music through the lens of the NPCO.
While Americans party on the Fourth, devouring their favourite food – hot dogs, popsicles, BBQ and fried chicken – Gemma wants to have a “little party in Melbourne” for expatriates and locals who have a love of American music. A party where we, the audience, can share Gemma’s view and inspiration of the diversity of their music in an Australian performance.
Gemma says “it is a great opportunity to give people a smorgasbord of American music without being the classics”.
As Gemma explains, the spread on the Fourth will include Gershwin, but not his most well-known Rhapsody in Blue.
Sondheim, considered by some to be more sombre and not as flashy as the more popular Gershwin (therefore sometimes overlooked) is also included in the night’s repertoire. Gorgi Coghlan will perform composition Send In The Clowns.
Gemma’s taste for Appalachian music influenced the NPCO and Gorgi Goghlan, set to perform together the deeply spiritual, patriotic classic Down to the River to Pray, while violinist Jeremy Blackman continues the theme of popular music of the time with an exhilarating bluegrass violin solo.
Bringing a mix of contemporary with traditional to the table, Gemma has incorporated improvisations and works by the Paul Winter Consort’s Eugene Friesen, with whom she studied while on the fellowship in Boston.
Traditionally, Independence Day parties, picnics and shindigs finish with the colourful burst of bright stars, roman candles and sky rockets lighting up the sky in a glittery trail. Gemma’s improvisations on the theme of patriotism and Independence Day resulted in the creation of Fireworks, a piece that will conclude Freedom Trail’s celebratory feast of American music – although with a musical bang; not a pyrotechnical boom!
See the New Palm Court Orchestra’s Freedom Trail on Independence Day, 4 July, at the Melbourne Recital Centre Salon. Bookings on the NPCO website.
Images supplied.
