Perplexed

I admire and enjoy and am educated by Robert Davidson and his music of politics and art and public matters. I saw the Singing Politician performed at the last CIMF by Robert with his band Topology and a choir and it was thrilling, touching on so many important points in Australian life through political speeches. Being a political junkie helps, and this was true to form and attractive to me in attitude, and the music was thrilling and wonderfully interpreted and performed against the memorable words. I just saw Stalin's piano with piano (and one spoken segment) by Sonya Lifschitz accompanying a projected video. This is multimedia and visual at that, so the musical component was largely lost to me, from following the snippets and their differing stories and doubly so from reading the subtitles. That's to be expected: visuals are so much more intrusive and powerful than sound. It always wins; think TV vs radio. But I remain perplexed about the theme. The work is made up a string of snippets, covering WW2 politics through to today, but introduced by a few architects, touching on music and composers and performers, Communism and Nazism and the bomb, past a few poets reading poems to finish with feminism and dance. Mmm, I am perplexed. Someone suggested there's no theme, or that it was about how politics and art mixing in culture. Too broad for my satisfaction. It ends with identity (today's obsession) but how did it get there, from Le Corbuisier via Hitler. The snippets visited are: Brecht at teh House of Un-American Activities Committee; Le Corbusier and sun, space & light which got a beating; Frank Lloyd Wright and suburbia as grace not disgrace; JFK and Eisenhower and the Cuban Missile Crisis (with some unexpected and even amusing loops); EE Cummings and a poem; Percy Grainger and music as the art of agony; Shostakovich and Stalin and pianist Maria Yudina; David Malouf and another poem; Goebbels with subtitles and truly fascinating film I'd never seen; Thomas Mann on Nazism; Ai Wei Wei on Mao; Arthur Boyd on writing as precise but painting as not (again, words vs visuals); Jackson Pollock on the evolution of painting; Whitlam on Blue Poles "$1.3m for dribs and drabs" (he who had the last laugh); Donald Trump on women; Julia Gillard's Misogyny speech; finally Robert Helpman. So what to take from that? I'll mull further, but you've got to hand it to RD with his broad vision and social concerns. Getting it all to sit together, or to tell a clear story is a challenge. Otherwise, there's lots of grainy video and odd cuts and distorted voices, all perfected appropriate to era or effect, like the hand held books for poetry readings. It's history but also art. But what of the performance? I listened occasionally and it was good, powerful, fitting. I certainly look forward to listening more closely to a future concert by Sonya, but this time the video and ideas took precedence and also stole attention.

Sonya Lifschitz (piano) performed Stalin's piano by Robert Davidson (composer) at the Sitsky Room at ANUSM.

Tragedies

The concert was called the Art of Rhetoric. It was essentially the words of various politicians put to music by composers Robert Davidson and Gordon Hamilton and performed by RD's band Topology and the combined choirs TAV (The Australian Voices) and our local Luminescence Chamber Choir under GH. The first half was less effecting. There was considerable minimalist four-to-the-floor regularity, repeating lines, occasional jazz improvs or written conversations between instruments (not least all the strings, violin, viola and bass). But the key was the treatment of speech. RD would listen to the patterns, the phrasings, the moving pitch and tempo to write a line to accompany selected lines of speech or sometimes just accompany with a wash of sound or an aural counterpoint. The first half featured this style, with words from David Malouf, Jessie Street, Charles Kingsford-Smith and Menzies and some ever-sad words of Abbott. That was the start of the tragic story recited from Australian politics. I chatted a day later with someone who was there, who had worked in Parliament House, and we could only bemoan our recent inability to deal with issues. It seems worse now, but there in some ways the Singing Politician recounted a history of tragedy with little light. There was one of Tony Abbott with one of his simplistic slogans, "No no no". Note, ever in three; ever a slogan. He understood rhythm if not the ease and costs of destruction versus the difficulty and hope of construction: think car industry, govt agencies that fell in one swoop, Julia Gillard for that matter. There was Menzies, the sainted one: we all know the quote about entering the war because the mother country had, but there was also melocholy in his further words of a price to be paid. Billy Hughes about Gallipoli, the Dark hour, and John Curtin about the war approaching Australia and John Scullin, sworn in only 2 days before the Stock market crash of 1929 that ushered in the Depression and, indirectly, another war. And Fraser with his infamous line about the easy life or otherwise: this was done 4/4 minimalist with polyrhythms. The Dismissal was the biggest work, using multiple voices for a long rendition. I hadn't remembered a younger Keating line, "a completely unprincipled act", but I did remember the chants of "We want Gough". Also here was choral accompaniment with a remelodicised God save the Queen: interesting. I hadn't remembered Bob Hawke, then ACTU head, on the day of the dismissal calming workers with a warning of a "snowball into violence". That was admirable (and prescient as we watch democratic politics crumble under right-instransigence and growing inequality and climate and the rest). Also Noel Pearson in his euology to Whitlam recognising Gough's good work for Aboriginals: "The reward for public life is public progress". Howard just appeared as a cricket tragic seeing politics as a parallel game: "politics and cricket ... playing the game, yeah". There was the profundity and truth-telling of Keating's Redfern speech: "the problem begins with us ... it begins in an act of recognition that it was us that did the dispossession ... we took the children from their mothers". [NB: how could you not despair after Stolen Children, with institutional child abuse and deaths in custody and Manus/Nauru as emotional darts to our civic hearts]. There was a fascinating play with the Rudd Apology speech, where two words were extended to several minutes and sung by the choir and recorded, then, live, played back, faster and faster until we heard those words again: "We apologise". Then Gillard "Not now, not ever". I sat thinking of the young women singing those words and how they would relate to this recent feminist history. Then a summary piece that featured various boorish and barbaric quotes: I'm a fixer; No cuts to education, health; the recession Australia had to have; suppository of all wisdom; PM Trumble; Please explain; People have a right to be bigots; by 1990, no child will be living in poverty; shirtfront; kids overboard. Then a final encore on Trump and "total political correctness". So I listened and mighty was the playing, the composing, the voices, not least Luminescence who got their part together in no time, but more so I found myself despairing of this country and its uninformed self-image: forever now "Great" or "Fair go" in the talk of pollies but the home of climate denial, inequality, misinformation and more, once the light of the world with emancipation and the rest, now this timorous server of wealth and denier of evidence. This is music but more. Excellent for the political tragics amongst us.


Topology, The Australian Voices and Luminescence Chamber Singers performed music by Robert Davidson and Gordon Hamilton, mostly on political themes, at the National Gallery of Australia. Topology comprised John Babbage (soprano, alto sax), Robert Davidson (bass), Bernaud Hoey (viola), Therese Milanovic (piano) and Christa Powell (violin). Gordon Hamilton (conductor) led the combined choirs.

Happy birthday

In a nice little twist, at the end, after the premiere of our own Symphony for Canberra, the CSO/Centenary Choir sang Happy Birthday. It s a cute end to a big event, Canberra’s 100th birthday bash, and it's fitting for this town, intelligent but also suburban and homely as it is. But then I've always noticed how this city is bigger than its population suggests. Canberra is only ~360,000 - just 2 Commonwealth lower house MPs although representing the two largest electorates in the country - but it's got five universities and draws APS and defence staff from around the country and private sector to provide for it, and, despite all the cynicism, these are capable and pretty corruption-free. Australia is generally well governed (by both sides of politics with the support of a professional public service, although some annoyance is due at present) and Canberra plays a large part in that. A corny but self-confident happy birthday salute is fitting.

It followed the premiere of Andrew Schultz's Symphony no.3, Century. This is a work of ~45 minutes, composed for orchestra and youth and adult choirs. It's actually two interleaved works (a capella choir and orchestra) each of three sections with each paired section comprising a choral exposition and an instrumental movement on the theme. The theme is Canberra and its architectural design, with the choirs singing three passages from architects Burnham, Sullivan and Burley-Griffin about architecture and democracy from the time of the Canberra design competition of 1913. I enjoyed the work immensely: the choral counterpoint; the sweeping and passionate instrumental passages; the swells of pride. I’m not sure I really heard Canberra in it, but music is the most abstract of the arts. I’ll sound like a wine taster here, but I heard mostly drama and thunder and awe, spots of Scandinavia and even Wagner, especially in the first movement, and later English gardens and worthy explorers. This later was perhaps most in tune with the round roads and rolling hills and sheep plains of Canberra’s environment. Regardless of that, I loved it with its vibrancy and modern harmonies and lush and swelling presence. What a great work to honour the centenary and what a great decision to honour it with a symphony. Acclamations all round!

We didn't do the whole hog on the day. There were five or more stages, lots of food and events and migrating minstrels, even boating displays and Brass Knuckle Blues Band and others slouching on boats. We missed several other stages with worthies including The Church, The Gadflys, The Falling Joys, Paul McDermott, Mirramu Dance Company and William Barton - several of whom were from Canberra. Again, this was a homely affair. The big bubbly bar was on everyone's lips. We searched for Michelle Nicolle with no luck. But we did catch two modem classical outfits.

Firstly, Topology. They were my band to catch for the day and they were fabulous! I’d seen them before and had been mightily impressed. This was more than I’d expected or remembered. They are perfectly described on the Net as "Pulse driven contemporary Australian chamber music with cinematic energy. A quintet of violin, viola, double bass, saxophone, piano. Genre: Classical: Contemporary”. I’d add that they are relevant. There's a popular sensibility here, in rhythmic strength and in references to the Round roads of Canberra and to political events. Gough Whitlam was a piece that featured samples and loops of the voices of Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating and John Kerr that were cut and spliced to a waltz and interpreted as music. How apt, given that the performance was only metres from the steps of Old Parliament House where Gough spoke those immortal and bitter lines "Well may we say "God Save the Queen", because nothing will save the Governor-General". But it was the words of Keating about the “unprincipled act" that really made the argument. This was stunningly impressive and relevant music from Topology. Topology is led by Canberra's own Robert Davidson, bassist, out of Brisbane.

Secondly, the Griffyn Ensemble performing with astronomer Fred Watson. It seems a strange combination, but they were performing various constellations from a piece called Southern Sky by Estonian astronomer / composer Urmas Sisask. This piece was written by Sisask after a visit to Mt Stromlo and first performed with a dedication to Canberra only a week before the fires that destroyed the observatory and 450 houses around Canberra in 2003. This was less outspoken music than Topology. Again I found the music abstract and hard to relate to the theme (eg, constellation Mensa = table > music with theme of bushfire). There was melody from flutes and clarinets, gentle accompaniment from harp and vibes, some Wagnerian soprano voice (Volans) and some fading glory on mandolin (Dorado). A more interiorised music played mostly with softer tones and classical chops.

Then to finish, the mandatory fireworks and one or two fabulously lit skies, mostly with ruddy hue and overwhelmingly large vistas. It’s public art and entertainment, but this was classy stuff. Well done. The Canberra Symphony Orchestra with the Centenary Choir performed of Andrew Schultz's Symphony no.3, Century. They were conducted by Nicholas Milton. Topology are led by Robert Davidson (bass) with Christa Powell (violin), Bernard Hoey (viola), John Babbage (saxes) and Therese Milanovic (piano). The Griffyn Ensemble was led by Michael Sollis (composer, mandolin, bass) with Kiri Sollis (flute), Matthew O’Keeffe (clarinet), Meriel Owen (harp), Wyana Etherington (percussion) and Susan Ellis (soprano). Fred Watson (astronomer) provided commentary.