Neighbours

It was a stunner that such a complex performance would be gathered by singer and pianist for a Wesley lunchtime concert, it being unpaid as a musical donation to the music centre.  The works were complex, demanding and the performance of great worth.  To be expected with Rachel Mink singing with Ian Le accompaniment.  I didn't know of Ian Le, but he's trained in both math(s) and music and a Senior Lecturer at ANU, in maths, but even more unlikely, Rachel and Ian were neighbours in their childhoods, growing up half and hour from each other in the USA.  Here's one we won.  The works were major: several movements of Faure Chanson d'Eve, singing of nature and God and death, Randall West Judith, a mad and lively musical description of Judith cutting off Holoferene's head (ref. Botticelli and more) and Lori Laitman This canopy of trees, an aria from The scarlet letter, ultimately derived from the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel of Puritan settler Hester Prynne's accusation of adultery in a Massachusetts settlement in the 1660s.  So the program had the title In the Garden of Good and Evil; apt.  It must have been a massive job to deliver very richly complex music, for piano and voice, for just this gig.  Wordy, in French and English, convoluted melody and responsive or explosive accompaniment.  And for one gig one afternoon in Canberra.  Stunning ... and a perfectly good way to recognise a neighbour!

Rachel Mink (soprano) and Ian Le (piano) performed at Wesley.