Above: Members of Quart-Ed. Performers, educators, composers, musical collaborators and concert producers. They performed and narrated ‘Cosmos: Beyond and Within’ alongside Keyna Wilkins and Diego Indarraga Duarte. (l to r: Sarah Qiu -violin, Connor Malanos-viola, Karen Cortez-cello and Caitlin Sandiford-violin.) Featured image: Phyllis Photography and Yoko Kuroda.
What better way to be more inspired global and galactic citzens than through a shared exposure to new music that delves into all our true surroundings. That explores aspect of the cosmos as well as the earth, converting its layers to new soundscapes, which are ably performed and engagingly described.
This event at the Seymour Centre Sound Lounge last Saturday saw the area at capacity, awash with stars and buoyed with stellar enthusiasm from composers, performers and audience.
Humans and creatives have for a long time resonated well with landscapes, environments both new and familiar as well as the beyond. They have enjoyed describing them as best they could in image and sound.
Curation of this substantial project and programme brought Quart-Ed, Keyna Wilkins and Diego Indarraga Duarte together with new, current knowledge of the cosmos, including imagery and sonic translations. This knowledge and curiosity spanned across several compositional styles and through scored as well as improvised performance approaches.
In this way a very new and enviably cohesive string quartet voice from Quart-Ed was on call to give life to exciting new gestures in works by Duarte and Wilkins. These were works that referred to specific discovered nebulae or the nature of black holes. The music with such programmatic structure and apart from it had pleasing intensity. It enhanced our modern curiosity for celestial events, entities as well as the way we imagine them, reach out to them or follow their movement.
Above: Diego Idarraga Duarte: composer, pianis and guitarist at this event.
A sense of space voyage, adventure and wonder was touched on in the engaging introductions by Quart-ed cellist Karen Cortez. A huge take-home from this event was the diversity of results composers brought back after responding to the cosmos, layers of microcosmos and terrestial ecosystems or disasters. This two-act concert supplied us with sonic events for a range of instrumentation. These were either established works revisited or included to explode in bold premiere across the Sound Lounge stage, within our sensitivities and beyond.
New works from Quart-Ed members brought us back down to earth and concerns within our immediate environment. Connor Malanos switched his playing of acoustic viola for beatboxing, in an innovative soundscape for overlapping recorded sound, himself live beatboxing and cello. A.L.A.N (Artificial Light at Night) was written with fellow Quart-Ed member Karen Cortez.
This meaningful work both educated us about the impact on nocturnal wildlife and encouraged audience participation via phones and QR code links to sounds from nature. As contributor-performers, the audience provided ambient animal sounds from full volume phone playback, over which the beatboxing and Karen Cortez’ cello built textures. This modern experience enabled us to contribute to and rocket ahead of the more passive concert listening experience.
David Tocknell’s ‘The Elements : Earth’ provided more modernist minutiae, challenging the expressive stamina and blend of the host string quartet. Quart-Ed found effective layering in this new music microcosm, as it did with Caitlin Sandiford’s Renewal : Hope From Embers for electronics, video and strings. This close-to home piece investigated the microcosm of survival activity. It provided strong contrast within the programme. Its clever tribute detailed in sparse voice the tragedy, emptiness and effort needed following the black hole left after the 2020 bushfires.
Rising from earthly ashes to take on the absolute stratosphere with her inimitable invention and playing was Keyna Wilkins. Here the composer, instrumentalist and secure improviser was securely wearing her composer-performer spacesuit and shiny helmet.
These moments by Wilkins to end both halves of the event were supersonic tributes to the nature of innovation. Her creative curiosity for the layers above us were activated. The svelte reckoning and direction of her unique brand of earth-meets-space-sound made each work a spellbinding success.
Above: composer, flautist, pianist and improviser, Keyna Wilkins. Image credit: George Xenikis-Photine.
Wilkins’ works for flute with NASA space sound backing plus imagery remain unequalled in this country. Audience members were obviously mesmerised on this occasion looking out of their event-spaceship windows at them. Keen breath and wind effect control and great momentum to the flute playing aside, the contouring and lines put into the sound-sight space created unforgettable atmospheres for the works Floating in Space and Full Moon.
Such out-of-this-world creative and performance effort by Wilkins was elaborately magnified, as was her musicianship, when she played piano for the intricate and supernova-inspring Titan Tango The combo of flute and piano improvisation in modern new-earthly-mission mode for Solar Flare – with NASA sound material and images from the sun in D major ended the event with and asteroid storm of applause.
Diego Idarraga Duarte also gifted us works saluting the ponderance of the expanse. His performance of some himself also showed impressive multi-instrumental talent. His opening, multifacented song-without-words had elaborate gestures on piano and Gabriele Jung’s exploration of calmly inquisitive and intimate shapes on the violin.
Following this movement was a string quartet played with great nuance, tight but flexible voice and considerable colour by Quart-Ed. This was an offering to us with a plethora of new shapes and combinations. As described by the composer, this work traced aspects shapes and colours we now know about for three popular nebulae.
We then saw this musician switch to be a guitarist in a trio with Manuel Diewald and Grant Sambells. For this brief but lush moment, Blue Friday, more intimacies and atmospheres emerged and resonated, urging us to gaze upwards and all around us at the exquisite detail.
The entire new music expedition ended with a warm, cosy, group improvisation. This moment reinforced the happy mission vibe that proceeded it. As always, the collective faced with careful awe the modern micrososmos, the challenges of the greater cosmos and the soundscapes beyond still to be discovered. Hopefully a future exploration update will be due in the same ship by the same talented, joyous, sound-scientists.
