BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
New kids on the block Note-Aurius are hitting up Tasmania with music by emerging and Australian composers. With a diverse line-up of winds, strings and piano, most of the young musicians in the ensemble have ties with the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music. Note-Aurius was founded mid-last year by fellow composition students Angus Davison and Thieron Booth and is growing with success into a popular local group. Angus chats with us about what it’s like to start up an ensemble from scratch, and the importance of dedicating live performance to new musical works – all on the little island of Tassie.
Composer, hey? When did you write your first piece?
I’ve wrote my first piece after picking up recorder in primary school. I haven’t stopped composing since, though I have given up recorder! I’ve been fortunate enough to have received support from some really top notch performers; people like Michael Lampard and the Elanee Ensemble, who have given me some invaluable opportunities. In my music I value simplicity and restraint, and my pieces often contain a sense of space. I am interested in people’s attitudes to art, as they relate to time and entertainment. My experience is that there are opportunities out there for young composers if you go looking. But there’s also the potential for so much more – and that’s what Note-Aurius is all about.
Talk us through the experience of sourcing musicians, starting an ensemble, and growing it into a paid and established musical group.
First law of musical ensembles: In any group of more than four players, someone will always have flu or a broken finger. We’re a nine-piece, so logistically Note-Aurius has its challenges! It’s taken a good deal of commitment from everyone to get to the point we’re at now, presenting a series of three different programs in just 12 weeks. But having reached that point, it’s a very exciting venture to be involved with.
But of course, what it’s really about for all of us is the money. We made almost $3 each from our last concert, so yeah, you can’t put a price on that sort of money. Oh, wait…
Tell us about your decision to focus on works by emerging composers.
There’s a great Ira Gershwin quote about the songs he wrote with George Gershwin: ‘We never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them’. That quote really sums up the motivation for Note-Aurius’ engagement with emerging composers. You might have composed a masterpiece, but without a quality performance, no-one will ever know. For emerging composers, quality performances can be hard to come by. Normally, you’ll cobble together an ensemble from your friends and someone’s little brother (who doesn’t actually play viola but reckons he can simulate the sound pretty well on his euphonium), then you’ll perform on one hour’s rehearsal. I’ve had a piece performed where the concert was the performer’s first full run-through! In situations like that, the performance is never going to do justice to the piece. Note-Aurius aims to provide emerging composers with an opportunity to have their music workshopped and properly rehearsed by a stable group of committed performers.
Have you had works composed specifically for your group?
We’ve had works written for us by around ten emerging Tasmanian composers and we have more collaborations on the horizon. We also like to balance this out by including existing works by established Australian composers. We’ve performed works by Ross Edwards and Margaret Sutherland, and we’ve also focused on some Dulcie Holland and Percy Grainger.
In your recent Hobart concert on September 14, you premiered a work by renowned composer Don Kay. How does it feel to perform such a work for the very first time so early on?
Don Kay’s had such a positive influence on Tasmanian music through his compositions and through his long-running commitment to teaching. It’s a great honour to have premiered the chamber ensemble version of his song cycle ‘Menagerie of Birds’. It’s a very lush and expressive piece, making it quite approachable from a listener’s point of view. But also it contains that sense of sparseness and space which is so characteristic of contemporary Australian music. The texts are come from a variety of sources, but share a common theme of birds, which are also evoked in the music through allusions to bird song.
With such a diverse range of musicians, how do you find sourcing music for your concerts?
There’s very little music written for Note-Aurius’ instrumentation, which is another reason why so much of what we play is custom written for us. To broaden our choices of existing repertoire, we also include some works for subsets of the ensemble. That also adds an extra bit of variety to our concerts.
Why is an ensemble like this important in Tasmania?
There are some great musical initiatives in Tassie: MONA FOMA, Festival of Voices, Hobart Baroque. There are also lots of fantastic ensembles. But not a lot have a new music focus. The United States has a vibrant culture of inventive, versatile groups dedicated to the performance of new music – Bang on a Can and Eighth Blackbird spring to mind. We have a few Tasmanian equivalents such as Opus House, but there’s still room for more music-making of this aesthetic. It’s a really fun, accessible performance format. We hope to make our concerts welcoming to everyone, even those who might not be ‘initiates’ into the sometimes intimidating world of classical concert-going! New music is exciting to be involved in and we want to share it around. Going to a concert and knowing the entire program consists of acknowledged masterpieces is great. You know what you’re getting. But equally, there’s something invigorating about having no clue what might be dished up. Anything could happen. And, often, it does!
Is it important for new groups today to focus on new works, or do you feel there will always be an audience for classical music?
The proportion of new music on classical concert programs today is at an historic low. Works of the classical canon predominate. Collectively, we seem to have forgotten that in Bach’s day, premieres comprised 80 per cent of concert programs. Until quite recently, ‘music’ was synonymous with ‘new music’. The classical canon has its place – but it’s best consumed it in moderation as part of a balanced diet. There’s an irony in programming music from an era defined by a voracious appetite for new music to the exclusion of the new music of our own time.
Check out Note-Aurius’ page at www.facebook.com/NoteAurius.
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