BY ANDREW MESSENGER
The Australian Voices are a very distinctive a’capella choir. You know them when you hear them. Gordon Hamilton has been their conductor for nearly five years. Before he took over the choir in 2009, he was a chorister under legendary choirmaster and composer Stephen Leek. Since then, TAV have won plaudits for their hour-long dramatic choral work ‘Moon’, which they performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
TAV have also been exploring the opportunities for classical music within the new digital world. Under Gordon’s hand-baton (he doesn’t conduct with a stick), the choir has had a half-dozen hits on YouTube, including the very funny ‘Toy Story 3 = Awesome’ (subtitled, the ‘Facebook Song’), and Robert Davidson’s more sombre ‘We Apologise’, which uses bits of ex-PM Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to our Indigenous fellow citizens. Most recently, they released a song (‘A Stain on our Soul (Tony Abbott)’) which includes a speech made by our current executive, to even out the score.
This week they have another premiere. On August 9, TAV sings ‘Ghosts in the Orchestra’. The orchestra in question is the Queensland Symphonic one. I talked to Gordon over the phone about the new work and a variety of other stuff earlier in the week.
(Full disclosure: I was once a member of TAV, in 2011. I was in the choir about six months or so. I couldn’t take the very tough timetable).
So, the Australian Voices are 21 this year. Do you have any members younger than the choir yet? I think that would be a pretty good indication that you’re an institution.
(Laughs) We certainly do have some members younger than the choir – yes we do. In fact, probably a third or even half of them are younger than the choir. It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Thankyou, I don’t know if we’re an institution, but we’ve certainly passed that milestone.
Why do you think you’ve been so successful?
The Australian Voices has had three conductors and each of us has had a different emphasis I guess. The success of the Australian Voices has just had to do with the artistic directors going for what we wanted and inventing our own idea of what a choir should be, and what choral music should sound like.
Of course, those people who know Steven Leek’s music and my music know that I’ve taken it in a very different direction to Steven. I think that’s actually a positive thing – that artists are able to experiment and try weird and wonderful new things without being too dedicated to keeping it always the same. Having said that, there are some really nice things that haven’t changed at the Australian Voices.
Like the value of tradition?
Yeah! I think there’s a strong tradition of the philosophy of the sound – I think the sound has remained quite similar across the three conductors – you know, loud consonants, well blended, good tuning, bottom heavy, flexible line. The conductor shapes the music in the moment, rather than noting down every dynamic marking in the score. That sort of thing has remained quite constant but the ideas behind programming have changed drastically from period to period.
One thing I really like about the current programming style is taking the piss. I think it’s really great. For instance, ‘Toy Story 3 = Awesome’ or ‘The 9 Cutest Things that Ever Happened’. What do you think the value of humour is to any kind of musical endeavour?
You know, I don’t think with these pieces I set out to be funny. I actually set out to combine things that don’t normally belong together. I was just looking for very unusual sources of text, one being my Facebook news feed, the other being a Buzzfeed article. I like the juxtaposition of things that don’t normally belong together – I like to cut the modern world and sort of paste it back together. For me this creates this nice sense of irony.
The fact that they’re funny isn’t really the point. Some of the other pieces that I’ve written, like ‘Tra$hMash’ and even ‘Ghosts’ which has some of the same sort of aesthetic behind it [are meant to be funny]. For me, humour doesn’t have to be banished from classical music. It’s just one of many things that humans feel and do. Why shouldn’t it be part of music?
You mentioned ‘Ghosts in the Orchestra’, which is the current endeavour. It’s a bit of a weird idea – how did you come up with it?
Richard Wenn (Director of Artistic Planning for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra) and I were talking about different ideas we could do with a choir. He specifically said that he’d like to bring a choir in among the musicians.
I thought to myself, ‘if I was in a concert and I saw a choir stand amongst an orchestra, what would I want them to sing about?’. A choir has an extra dimension – text – which an orchestra does not. I would want them to sing about the music.
I thought that it would start with a list of instructions. I actually got out my iPad and jotted down a list of musical gestures and that became the first section of the piece. I also really like computers and really like maths, so the idea of a musical computer program is one that appeals to me so in a way the choir is the software and the orchestra is the hardware.
Is there anything in particular you’d suggest we do before we come? Is there some advice you have for potential audience members?
I don’t think there’s much preparation you can do for my piece. It all sort of works.
I think people should research ‘Symphonie Fantastique’, which is on the same program. It has the most bizarre story of its composition. It’s by Hector Berlioz, a young French composer, he was 23 at the time. It’s such a weird story about basically stalking a woman and then writing a symphony about her, never having met her and then she saw the symphony, eventually married him and they didn’t get on at all. He had affairs and then she died. It’s such a romantic unromantic story.
It’s incredibly French
(Laughs) I know
Steven Leek was your immediate predecessor and he was consciously involved in the project of building up Australian music as a distinctive style. How do you reckon we’ve done some 20 or 30 odd years later?
I think he’s basically achieved his mission. And his mission and the Australian Voices mission are wrapped up in each other, because he started the Australian Voices. His mission and TAV have been all about establishing a national voice in choral composition and choral performance and encouraging ensembles in Australia to program the music of our own composers.
And really, that is the current case. When you go to a choral concert these days, it’s normal to have a number of Australian composers represented on the program. So I think as a nation we’ve become very conscious of our own composers in a choral setting. I applaud Steven for really achieving his goal.
Even the Choir of King’s College Cambridge did a couple of Australian numbers when they were in town.
That’s right! When visiting ensembles come to Australia they do routinely perform Australian music – you know, Paul Stanhope is a well-represented voice in Britain. I think that’s fantastic. It’s been a long time coming, but I think Australia’s come of age.
The world premiere of Gordon Hamilton’s ‘Ghosts in the Orchestra’ will be held tonight at 8pm, QPAC Concert Hall.
Image supplied.
