Shorelines
Premiere: 27 October 2001, Iwaki Auditorium, Melbourne, Australia as part of the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts
Composers: Howard Shore, Paul Grabowsky, Alister Spence
Shorelines Program
- 'Green Phoenix on Yellow Ground', Alister Spence (17 minutes)
- 'Orbit', Howard Shore (10 minutes)
- 'concerto', Paul Grabowsky (20 minutes)
- 'Five Questions', Paul Grabowsky (15 minutes)
Program Notes
When Paul Grabowsky set out in 1993 to form a new orchestra, he had a vision to unite the creative vitality of improvising musicians with the skilled technique of composed music. Now the Australian Art Orchestra, with its personnel of Australia’s elite jazz musicians, is realising that vision, receiving high praise with its performances most recently throughout Europe in 2000.
For the 2001 Melbourne Festival, Grabowsky teamed up with the eminent American composer, Howard Shore. One of the most successful contemporary film composers, Shore’s credits include a long-standing collaboration with David Cronenberg producing the scores to The Fly, Naked Lunch and eXistenZ as well as scores for Philadelphia and Silence of the Lambs. Shore's most recent work includes the multi-award winning Lord of the Rings trilogy and more recently Gangs of New York and The Aviator.
Shore’s work 'Orbit' was composed especially for the Australian Art Orchestra and commissioned by the Melboune International Festival of the Arts 2001 (Artistic Director, Jonathan Mills), sharing the program with three works from the orchestra’s repertoire: 'Green Phoenix on Yellow Ground' by Australian jazz pianist and composer Alister Spence, Paul Grabowsky’s own blazing composition, 'concerto', featuring guest pianist Michael Kieran Harvey and 'Five Questions', also by Grabowsky.
Composers' notes
'Green Phoenix on Yellow Ground'
Commissioned by the AAO with the assistance of the Australia Council for the Arts, 1995. Premiére, Wangaratta Festival of Jazz, 1995
'Green Phoenix on Yellow Ground' has been written by layering cyclic melodies and working with the harmonic framework that is a consequence of this. It starts with an ostinato of clustered tam tam samples and further in provides a showcase for piano and trumpet followed by a slightly funky exchange between samples and guitar. The inspiration for the title came from a piece of Chinese pottery in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, which I saw while on tour with Clarion Fracture Zone in 1995.
– Alister Spence
'concerto'
Commissioned by the Australian Art Orchestra 1994
Premiére, Brisbane Biennial 1995.
Featured soloist, Michael Kieran Harvey, piano.
My 'concerto' is, (a) a 12-number series which governs parameters of rhythm, especially harmonic rhythm (ie, rate of harmonic change) and the subdivision of beats, and (b) two contrasting melodies: one raucously announced by the band over the colliding rhythms of the pianist and his de-tuned alter-ego at the sampler, and one meditatively unveiled by the soloist at the conclusion of the first short 'development'.
Conceptually, it is concerned with the notion of Eb Major as an 'heroic' chord and the idea of the piano as an instrument of fixed pitch, a concept which has dominated world music during the imperialist era. The soloist begins by building up a dense texture in dialogue with tom-toms and marimba, the band then joyously establishing Eb Major as a slogan rather than a tonal centre. The first theme is revealed over an unstable churning of tunings. It is then subjected to a metrical deconstruction in the form of a 'solo' in the jazz sense, with rhythm section.
After a brief return of the Eb idea, the second theme is introduced, then examined. Other instruments provide a commentary, and a slow build-up featuring cross-rhythms, a ghostly de-tuned reminder of the second theme and an improvised trumpet solo lead to the bacchanalian final section, in which all themes and ideas are stacked together, with the improvised tenor saxophone reminding us of the freedom which threatens to destroy all structure, no matter how rigorous. (!)
– Paul Grabowsky
Musicians
- Colin Doley (Trumpet)
- Scott Tinkler (Trumpet)
- Phillip Slater (Trumpet)
- Philip Rex (Tuba, Double Bass)
- Jordan Murray (Trombone)
- Joe O’Callaghan (Bass Trombone)
- Tony Hicks (Reeds)
- Paul Cutlan (Reeds)
- Lachlan Davidson (Reeds)
- Julien Wilson (Reeds)
- Jamie Oehlers (Reeds)
- John Rodgers (Violin)
- Willy Zygier (Guitar)
- Alister Spence (Keyboards)
- Gary Costello (Double Bass)
- Andrew Gander (Drums)
- Timothy Phillips (Percussion)
- Alex Pertout (Percussion)
Press for Shorelines
- "Sound Fusion, or just plain confusing?"
- The Australian (Kevin Ball), 29 October 2001
- "Plain Sailing in Shore's Heavy Weather"
- The Age (Joel Crotty)
