BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
What do you need to know about vocal music?
The answer to this question depends on your approach. Are you a composer who has been commissioned to write a new work for voice? A singer looking to broaden your repertoire? Or perhaps a teacher interested in gaining insights to inform lessons with your students?
Stage 1 of the First Stones intensive is open to all artists approaching vocal music. Presented by Halcyon’s artistic director Jenny Duck-Chong in association with the Australian Music Centre, it reveals a rare opportunity for artists to come together and learn about writing for voice through multiple perspectives. Leaders in the industry, from composers to performers, will speak in a forum and Q&A, and give a live performance, from 9-10 July.
In this interview, Jenny tells us why the first stage of First Stones should become a key event in your music education calendar.
Update 6 July 2022: This event will now be online only.
Jenny, it’s wonderful to chat with you about First Stones. Tell us, what’s this initiative all about?
First Stones is designed to provide much-needed insights into the classical voice and the music being written for it.
We want to share our experience and equip new generations of composers to write more effectively and confidently for this mysterious and invisible instrument, and give singers and teachers a chance to learn more about the vocal music being written in our time and the composers who create it.
Across two weekends, it will be presented by myself, composer Elliott Gyger, with arts music specialist and composer Cameron Lam, and cellist James Larsen. We’ll be joined by Australian Music Centre’s Meeghan Oliver for Stage 1, and bass-baritone Andrew O’Connor for Stage 2.
I’m interested to learn that Stage 1 of First Stones is open to quite a significant range of talent — composers, singers, and teachers in particular. How have you designed a program that’ll suit the unique needs of each music professional, all at once?
Over the years in my role as an educator in various forums and institutions, I have discovered time and again that there is a real need for composers to have a better understanding of the voice and its capabilities. Though it is an instrument we all carry with us, there is little opportunity to learn about the many nuances of vocal writing from seasoned professionals.
Equally, there is a real need for singers and teachers to be able to learn more about the music of living composers, and find ways to hear and explore the best of this diverse repertoire.
My work in the Australian Art Song Resource, with soprano Nicole Thomson, is another way I am trying to help connect singers and teachers with the music of their time.
We do not work in isolation but build our practice on relationships. Composers and singers can learn a lot from each other when they engage collaboratively, and I am keen that through First Stones we help them to connect and start conversations of their own.
You’ve run Halcyon for close to 25 years, so one can imagine the remarkable level of expertise you bring to a program like this. What have you found are some of the most important things composers need to know about writing for voice?
An understanding of the basic mechanics of the instrument and its physicality is high on the list. Related are what can aid or hinder vocal production, and what can fatigue or energise.
While range — generally the first question we are asked! — is certainly worth knowing, it is a far less interesting question than what sorts of colours a voice might produce, or where it is most intelligible.
Then, there are all of the intricacies of how and why to set text. That’s why we are devoting a whole day to that conversation! But equally important is that singing is fundamentally about communication. We are always looking for clues to understand the meaning behind a score. I am far more likely to ask a composer ‘why’ than ‘how’.
You’ve teamed up with Elliott Gyger for this project; tell us how this partnership began and why this composer captures the essence of First Stones.
Elliott deeply understands the facility of the human voice, both as an instrument and an expressive medium from the small scale to the operatic stage, and has so many great insights into vocal writing.
We met at university, and we have worked together on numerous projects over the years as well as presenting our first First Stones project over 10 years ago.
He wrote his first piece for Halcyon, From the Hungry Waiting Country, in 2006 and since then we’ve premiered five more amazing works including giving voice, the winner of the 2013 Paul Lowin Song Cycle prize, as well as recording an album of his music.
We have developed such a fine understanding of each other’s ‘language’ that he tells me he can hear my voice in his head as he composes for it, and I feel I understand the meaning behind his music almost instinctively.
We’re currently working on his seventh piece for us, a new work for voice and cello which Halcyon will be premiering later this year. This sort of long-term collaborative output is one of the reasons I encourage singers and composers to get to know each other and learn from each other. It’s clearly worked for us!
So tell us a bit about how singers can benefit from this experience. What insight into the composition process will they gain?
As a singer who has specialised in performing new classical music, I have experienced the joy of interacting with composers, asking them questions, and developing works with them. It is a special privilege to bring new works to life, deciding how the first performance should sound and what I want to communicate to the audience, without years of tradition dictating to me. I want to encourage more singers to experience this, but know that they can often be daunted by scores they perceive as “too challenging”, or that they just don’t know where to begin.
I have regularly performed music from medieval times to the present, so I feel this diverse background gives me an ability to talk to singers of varied experience, and to give them ways to discover and approach repertoire that may be unfamiliar to them. I hope that First Stones gives them more perspective of the composer’s art, but also exposure to some of the wonderful repertoire that Halcyon has been part of creating over the years, which we’ll be exploring across the weekend in score, audio and live performance.
How does this program place a focus on contemporary Australian works for voice, and why is it important to you to highlight this repertoire specifically?
Halcyon has spent decades championing and commissioning new works for voice and chamber ensemble. It has always been important to us to support and nurture the music of our own time and place alongside outstanding international works. Our YouTube channel now features a quite extensive archive of recordings, live performance and interviews with Australian composers, to allow people to revisit and grow familiar with these recent works and the people who write them.
The music we love is rarely born of a single experience. It is in the returning and learning the contours and textures of a piece, and appreciating the ideas behind it, that we build our relationship with it.
First Stones is an immersive opportunity to walk through some of this fantastic music with us — a bit like a tour around some corners of our collection with expert guides.
How do you feel a program like First Stones can help fill the gap in Australian music education when it comes to works for voice? And what should teachers take away with them and add into their own practices?
In a world of small bite-sized experiences, this is a chance to settle in and delve deep.
The team for First Stones are committed educators and specialists in vocal music who have considered the ways in which text and music can intersect, and the important contributions of both performer and composer in bringing new works to life.
While there are some wonderful choral and operatic development opportunities now available to composers, there are still very few chances for them to learn about the solo classical voice, to ask questions, and to engage with experienced practitioners in building their skills. First Stones is an important step in equipping composers with more tools to write better and more idiomatic vocal music.
The teachers and singers who join us will hear a diverse range of well-crafted vocal music, and learn more about its creation and performance. I hope that they will come away equipped with a greater understanding and appreciation of the diversity of contemporary writing for the voice, with new ways of approaching the scores and ideas that will give them more confidence in selecting or presenting this repertoire.
At the end of the day, what do you most love about working with music for voice?
The voice is such a versatile, expressive, and individual instrument, and the composers that understand this give us such scope to explore as performers. Yet they are highly individual in their approach. Learning their own mode of expression is endlessly engaging to me, whatever century they come from.
Then, when the connection between words and music is powerfully conceived — in whatever form that takes — it is a potent force which influences my interpretation. I can become a deliverer of meaning, a conveyor of colour, or an instrumental texture depending on the moment.
I love the interplay between instruments and voice — the true partnership where we are all working as equals — but there is also something wonderfully pared back about the utterance of a solo voice, with nowhere to hide.
As both a performer and a teacher, I want to impart some of this joy and discovery in my practice.
Any words of advice for participants?
First Stones is an immersive experience that offers expert insights from both composer and performer perspectives with plenty of time for questions and conversations, as well as presentations and performance and a chance to hear and view a range of scores. So I hope there is something for everyone in the weekend, and that it is an opportunity to explore, learn, and discover together.
Being curious is the only prerequisite. People can attend in person or online, for a day or the full weekend, so there are lots of ways to join us!
Attend Stage 1 of First Stones (online only), $30 per day or $50 for the weekend, tickets available online.
The live stream sessions will also be available to ticketholders for 30 days after release. Learn more on the Halcyon website.
Images supplied.
