BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
When Tim Munro performs this June, he’ll do so with few comforts: there will be no score, no physical guidance for performers, and no barriers to separate the audience.
Sound like a challenge?
Actually, the flautist and music director says it’s a “brilliant educational opportunity”, and we’d tend to agree.
Tim will perform John Luther Adams’ Ten Thousand Birds with musicians of the Australian National Academy of Music.
The work pays homage to the environment through birdsong and, much like creatures in the wilderness, performers will be scattered throughout the space. The audience can watch them play from any number of positions, whether standing up or lying back to chill out to the sounds.
Tim, a triple-Grammy-winning musician from Chicago (who, somewhat coincidentally, was the co-artistic director of renowned group Eighth Blackbird), talks us through the event.
Tim, thanks for chatting with us about Ten Thousand Birds! You’ve said that you wanted to perform this since it was first composed in 2014. Why are you so drawn to this work?
Two reasons. First, it is immersive, putting the audience at the centre of the experience, free to wander through a kind of musical forest. Second, it is a brilliant educational opportunity, giving these young musicians the opportunity to be creative musicians in a different way; to become, in a certain way, co-composers.
The work, which isn’t widely performed, has been described by Adams himself as an “atlas of musical possibilities“. What does this mean on a practical level? How can we hear the atlas of bird songs and sounds in the single work?
There is actually no score for the piece. John Luther Adams has provided a collection of notated and orchestrated birdsong and frog calls. But he has given little guidance as to how these should be layered or ordered, and no guidance as to how we should be positioned around the performance space. We as performers have to figure that out for ourselves!
Why do you think the songs of birds so fascinate people throughout history? What do we love about their repetitious, sometimes hilarious and other times soothing, chirps?
Birds are nature’s greatest virtuosos. Their song is beautiful, yes, but also humbling. In a piece like this one, we as musicians are trying to match the virtuosity of these animals, but we are all bound to fail. It’s also humbling to acknowledge that we can never fully understand birdsong. It is communication, yes, but it is so beautiful and complex, and to some extent lies beyond our understanding.
Beyond the aesthetic, it’s a musical idea that certainly pays respect to the natural environment. How does a work about the calls of wild animals resonate with you, and your listeners, today?
The song of birds reminds us that our actions have consequences; that what we have done to the earth affects other living beings. Ten Thousand Birds gives me a greater respect for these amazing creatures, and helps me pay more attention to the sound of birds in my own backyard.
I’d like to ask you about a point of difference on this program: as part of the concert experience, you’re going to give a Q&A session about the music after the fact. Why did you specifically want to talk at this event?
Everything I do as a musician is ultimately about communication, whether it is flute playing, writing about music, speaking about music, teaching music. It is all, to some extent, the same act. A post-concert chat made more sense for two reasons:
1. I didn’t want a pre-concert talk to color any audience member’s experience of Ten Thousand Birds.
2. Post-concert chats are a great way to give those who want to stay (it’s entirely voluntary!) a peek under the hood of the unique artistic process for this piece.
How else will your event “blur the line between performance and spectator“?
There is no physical barrier between performer and audience in Ten Thousand Birds. Performers will be scattered throughout the concert space, and audiences will have the freedom to take in the performance from many vantage points. They can sit, stand, lie on cushions. They can listen intently, zone out, focus on one performer or many. Audiences hold more power in this situation than they usually do in concert settings.
You return to ANAM for this event, having been a student yourself more than a decade ago. When you look back on your career so far, what makes you feel most proud?
I feel so very lucky to have had such an interesting life in music. I still think back to the hugely influential experiences I had at ANAM, playing and working alongside fellow young (and now, not-at-all-young!) ANAM musicians who are now doing amazing things across the professional world. I think about the way that my time in the group Eighth Blackbird helped me grow in confidence as a musician and as a communicator. And I think about the way my heart grows anytime I am able to bring my work back to Australian audiences (and anytime I get to play for my family; particularly my mum!).
To other young musicians who are starting to spread their wings (yes, I went there), what advice would you offer so one day they too may return to ANAM to perform in a concert like this?
Go there! It’s a valid question. I would once have keenly read a musician’s response to this question! Honestly, I would have wanted to read something like this:
Tim, I know you’re scared — it feels as if you are never going to to be good enough to ‘make it’, but you will eventually know that there is not really an ‘it’ to ‘make’. You will always love the arts and, no matter what you end up doing, it will be with every ounce of your creative heart.
Tim, when it comes down to it…what’s your favourite bird? (And don’t say the “Eighth Blackbird” — that’s cheating!)
Oh, it has to be the mourning dove. It’s a super-common American bird, but it has such a haunting song (which John uses amazingly in Ten Thousand Birds), but it also creates this crazy sound by flapping its wings (sometimes called a ‘wing whistle’) to warn off predators.
See Ten Thousand Birds at ANAM, South Melbourne Town Hall, 7.30pm June 4. Watch the trailer below.
We’re teaming up with ANAM throughout 2019 to bring you interviews about music education and industry. Stay tuned for our next story!
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Images supplied. Tim captured by Joe Mazza Brave, Lux Chicago.
