BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
How has your relationship to the environment changed over the course of your life?
It’s a question the curators of BackStage Music event EarthBound want you to consider as you listen to their electroacoustic concert program.
Through the music of female-identifying artists from Australia and South Korea, you will be positioned to confront your connection to the earth during a climate crisis.
Lamorna Nightingale (pictured below), who co-curates this event with Fiona Hill, tells CutCommon about the themes woven into EarthBound’s thought-provoking program.
Lamorna, you have curated an event that sends some powerful messages, but we’ll start with the primary theme of the event: “Our relationship with our environment amidst the growing catastrophe of climate change.” Before we get into the music, how would you describe that relationship?
Climate change is clearly a pressing issue for our society, and I would say an important role of the artist is to help individuals digest the catastrophic information that we are confronted with in the media on a daily basis. While we clearly can’t change climate change policy with a piece of music, I do believe that art is an opportunity to reflect, and to act as leaders and enablers of positive change.
Each of the composers has explored their relationship with the environment in different ways. In Re-Growth?, Ros Bandt and Jutta Pryor worked directly with regional communities looking at past climate tragedies as a springboard to a better future.
Donna Hewitt’s Permafrost explores the ominous scientific predictions for the future of our climate, ecosystems, and health that may come with the predicted thawing of the permafrost.
Concept:FUTURE by Emma Harlock features snippets of vocal fragments from key political speeches and interviews about the climate.
Felicity Wilcox has created a piece in celebration of the varied song of the currawong. After listening to these birds perform every evening last winter in the gully beyond her backyard, she translated their expressive calls to graphic notation to be realised by violinist Veronique Serret.
How did you handpick those particular works, which you believed would guide listeners through this environment-themed story?
For the 2022-23 BackStage Series, we have worked in a co-curatorial model — I have worked together with a different artist on each program to draw together musicians from particular communities or with a interest in a specialised field of new music. The idea behind this model is to build up a network of artists with the skills and confidence to present music at a grassroots level and, through the process of collaboration, to keep the music we present fresh and relevant.
I also find the process of collaboration to be very creatively stimulating and fun! My co-curator in the EarthBound program is Fiona Hill (pictured below). Fiona and I have worked together on several projects in a composer/performer relationship, and on a big education project which brings electroacoustic music to the classroom. In the EarthBound program, we wanted to bring woman composers working in the field of electroacoustic music to the fore, showcasing the work of Australian composers alongside an international voice.
As we started looking at composers and performer options, we felt that we could also focus in on artists from Western Sydney and regional New South Wales. As we started reaching out to performers and composers, asking about potential repertoire certain connections became apparent, most particularly a common concern for the environment. The performers in this program are Alana Blackburn (recorders), Veronique Serret (violin) and Emma Harlock (electric bass).
You’ve chosen the medium of electroacoustic music. How can we understand the relationship between electronics and acoustic instruments as it relates to the theme of climate change?
The use of electronics opens the composer up to using non-musical elements in their music, which enables them to explore concrete themes such as climate change more directly. The ideas and meaning of the music are made clearer through the use of field recordings, as is the case in Felicity Wilcox and Donna Hewitt’s, or by using political text as Emma Harlock has. The musical elements are then used to explore the emotions behind the ideas. I think this also makes the music a little easier to understand for audiences.
How did you structure your program? Does the event have a narrative flow from beginning to end, or does each work paint a different picture in its own transient way?
When so much of the music is so new, it can be challenging to know how the pieces will work together and what connections may be made by the audience, so we are still working on the flow of the program. I have no doubt that each of the works will be thought-provoking in its own way, and that we will be taken on an emotional journey, but there is no narrative as such.
At the moment, we are thinking about ending the program with the newly commissioned work which is being co-curated by violinist Veronique Serret and our ‘early career’ artist for this program, electric bassist and composer Emma Harlock. This feels like a positive step towards the future — to be finishing up with a new work being created by a young composer in this slightly experimental model of co-composition.
You are already navigating the weight of music in a climate crisis. Yet, through this concert, you are also choosing to send a message of cultural change: your program is exclusive to female-identifying composers and performers. Why did you feel it was crucial to support female-identifying artists?
I know, we are trying to cover a lot of things in one show! A great deal of the planning for this concert series happened during the lockdowns as I sat at home talking to my cat and wondering whether my career as a musician was over, and what it was about live music that I was missing so much.
The answer for me was the opportunity to give voice to living composers, connecting with audiences, and providing spaces for diverse voices to be creative and expressive. So each of the programs in this series focuses in on a group not normally represented in Western classical music.
Historically, the world of electronics, computer music, and audio has been quite ‘blokey’: in fact, as Fiona and I started to research Australian music in this genre, we struggled to find many women at all. But one particular voice did stand out, and that was Ros Bandt. Bandt is an internationally acclaimed sound artist, composer, researcher, and performer. Since 1977, she has pioneered interactive sound installations, sound sculptures, and created sound playgrounds, spatial music systems, and some 40 sound installations worldwide, and we are thrilled to include her work Re-Growth? on the program.
In this program, we also hear music by renowned Korean composer Unsuk Chin, providing a platform for the music of respected elders alongside younger women, and creating sense of community and ongoing history between these creative women.
You’ve also commissioned some new music — tell us a bit about it.
As part of BackStage’s commitment to living music, we have commissioned three new works as part of our 2021-22 series. While almost all the music in the series is totally new or written in the past couple of years, it felt important to also be involved with supporting the creation of some of these works on a more direct, financial level.
In recent times, we are seeing the rise of the composer/performer, and violinist Veronique Serret is a key example of a performer with many years of experience working as an improvisor, and directly with composers, who has started to move into composition herself. Much of her work recently has been on six-string violin utilising effects pedals, and this seemed to link in nicely with the work of Emma Harlock who also composes using effects pedals on electric bass.
Performers and composers often work together very closely to create new work, but it’s a slightly different model to have them formally working together as co-composers and performers. Emerging artists are an important part of BackStage programming, and I’m hoping that this model of mentoring will bring us an exciting new piece.
What do you hope audiences will gain from this event?
Firstly, I hope they will enjoy coming together to experience the joy of something new being presented. It’s a risky business creating new art and putting out in the public sphere. This danger element brings so much energy to the world, and I personally love being in a space with that!
I also hope it gives the audience a chance to sit with some of the challenging feelings that climate change presents, and they can walk away with energy to make positive change or to just live with greater hope.
EarthBound takes place this 25 August in the Blue Mountains and 26 August in Sydney. For full information and bookings, visit the BackStage Music website.
Images supplied.
