The Sydney Chamber Music Festival 2015 presents
‘Where The Word Ends……?’
Actor – John Bell from the Bell Shakespeare Company
Narrator – ABC presenter Guy Noble
British pianist Andrew West
Australian-Swiss flautist Bridget Bolliger
The New Sydney Wind Quintet
and Brass from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Three unique concerts
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Coffee Concert 1 – ‘FUN BRASS!’
Sat 26th September – 11am
Featuring distinguished musicians from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. Classic Australian Children’s stories will be narrated and set to exquisite classical music by Francis Poulenc. This is an introductory concert followed by tea, scones and chatter…. Children of all ages are most welcome.
FUN BRASS
Brass players from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Anthony Heinrichs – Trumpet
Marnie Sebire – Horn
Colin Burrows – Trombone
Sonata for Brass Francis Poulenc alongside Classic Australian Poetry for children.
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Concert 2 – ‘DANCING SHADOWS’
Sat 26th September – 7pm
the music for flute and piano by the Australian composer Miriam Hyde. As a mother, musician, poet and music educator Miriam Hyde has left her own individual mark in Australian music history. Many composers have been inspired by the written word and Hyde’s music is indeed as descriptive as Lieder, a poetic reflection of her life, extremely detailed, expressive and masterfully crafted. I’m proud to bring to light this astonishingly beautiful music alongside one of the UK’s finest pianists Andrew West. Complementing this program will also be music by JS Bach, Aaron Copland, and Franz Schubert for solo piano.
DANCING SHADOWS
The Music for Flute and Piano by Miriam Hyde
Bridget Bolliger – Flute | Andrew West – Piano
Dancing Shadows – Miriam Hyde
‘Licorice versus Aniseed’ – poem by Miriam Hyde, read by Christine Edwards
Five Solos for Flute and Piano – Miriam Hyde
1. Beside the Stream
2. Wedding Morn
3. The Little Juggler
4. Marsh Birds
5. Evening Under the Hill
Sonata in G minor for Flute and Piano – Miriam Hyde
i. Allegro giocoso
ii. Andante pastorale
iii. Allegro con spirito
Brief history on Miriam Hyde and ‘A New Voice in the Garden’ – poem by Miriam Hyde, read by Christine Edwards
Impromptu Nr. 3 in G Flat Major for solo piano – Franz Schubert
Impromptu Nr. 4 in A Flat Major for solo piano – Franz Schubert
INTERVAL
Sonata in B minor, BWV 1030 – J.S Bach
i. Andante
ii. Largo e dolce
iii. Presto
Duo For Flute and Piano – Aaron Copland
i. Flowing
ii. Poetic, somewhat mournful
iii. Lively, with bounce
‘Winter Willow Music’ – poem by Miriam Hyde, read by Christine Edwards
Fireside Images – Miriam Hyde
Dryad’s Dance – Miriam Hyde
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Concert 3 – ‘MUSIC FOR JOHN BELL’
Sun 27th September – 11am
Iconic Australian actor John Bell in celebration of his 75th birthday and to whom the Townsville born composer Robert Keane has dedicated his new work “Music for John Bell” – Five Shakespearian Portraits for Wind Quintet and Actor. This world première will feature John Bell himself alongside the New Sydney Wind Quintet. This concert will also include Mozart’s piano quintet in E flat Major K. 452 featuring Andrew West once again at the piano, as well as Sergei Prokofiev’s much loved masterpiece “Peter and the Wolf Suite” performed by the New Sydney Wind Quintet with a new updated script written by ABC personality and narrator Guy Noble.
MUSIC FOR JOHN BELL
A Celebration for the 75th anniversary of John Bell.
Actor: John Bell
Narrator: Guy Noble
Piano: Andrew West
New Sydney Wind Quintet: Bridget Bolliger – flute, Matthew Tigue – Oboe, Peter Jenkin – clarinet, Robert Johnson – Horn, Matthew Ockenden – Bassoon
Peter and The Wolf – Sergei Prokofiev
Arranged for wind quintet and narrator by Joachim Linckelmann
INTERVAL
Quintet in E flat major for Piano and Winds, K. 452 – W.A. Mozart
Largo – Allegro moderato
Larghetto
Allegretto
Music for John Bell – Robert Keane
Five Shakespearean Miniatures for Wind Quintet and Actor
I Malvolio (Twelfth Night)
II Prospero (The Tempest)
III Romeo (Romeo and Juliet)
IV Shylock (The Merchant of Venice)
V Petruchio (The Taming of the Shrew)
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Artist Director’s message
Planning a chamber music festival is like doing a jig-saw puzzle as any Artistic Director might tell you. The Sydney Chamber Music Festival prides itself on being in the boutique style – Small and Fine, and presents three unique concerts.
In a world of too much, I see the importance of bringing people back to smaller intimate settings where there is a feeling of connecting with each other through chamber music expression. Up close and personal performances by talented Australian musicians alongside international guest musicians who advocate Australian music both new and old is the focus at SCMF, as is curating music programs around a particular theme which will move and inspire the community.
The festival this year is entitled “Where The Word Ends..” carrying the message that where spoken word ends music continues and takes us into another world.
The festival this year begins as always with a family coffee Concert 1 – “Fun Brass” – featuring distinguished musicians from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. Classic Australian Children’s stories will be narrated and set to exquisite classical music by Francis Poulenc. This is an introductory concert followed by tea, scones and chatter…. Children of all ages are most welcome.
Concert 2 is “Dancing Shadows” – the music for flute and piano by the Australian composer Miriam Hyde. As a mother, musician, poet and music educator Miriam Hyde has left her own individual mark in Australian music history. Many composers have been inspired by the written word and Hyde’s music is indeed as descriptive as Lieder, a poetic reflection of her life, extremely detailed, expressive and masterfully crafted. I’m proud to bring to light this astonishingly beautiful music alongside one of the UK’s finest pianists Andrew West. Complementing this program will also be music by JS Bach, Aaron Copland, and Franz Schubert for solo piano.
In Concert 3, I have the great honour this year to present the iconic Australian actor John Bell in celebration of his 75th birthday and to whom the Townsville born composer Robert Keane has dedicated his new work “Music for John Bell” – Five Shakespearian Portraits for Wind Quintet and Actor. This world première will feature John Bell himself alongside the New Sydney Wind Quintet. This concert will also include Mozart’s piano quintet featuring Andrew West once again at the piano, as well as Sergei Prokofiev’s much loved masterpiece “Peter and the Wolf Suite” performed by the New Sydney Wind Quintet with a new updated script written by ABC personality and narrator Guy Noble.
The SCMF would not be possible without the support of the Manly Art Gallery and Museum, and the hard work and dedication of its dedicated committee members, all volunteers working for the greater good! I trust there will be something at SCMF this year to enchant everyone of all ages and from all walks of life. I look forward to meeting and greeting you at these concerts as well as having the great privilege to perform for you in this special community event during the Manly Arts Festival 2015.
Bridget Bolliger
Our Artists
John Bell | Robert Keane | Guy Noble | Andrew West | Bridget Bolliger | NSWQ
John Bell | actor
John Bell is one of the nation’s most illustrious theatre personalities. Award-winning actor, acclaimed director, Bell has been a key figure in shaping the nation’s theatrical identity as we know it over the past 50 years.
After graduating from Sydney University in 1962, Bell worked for the Old Tote Theatre Company, all of Australia’s state theatre companies and was an Associate Artist of Britain’s world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company.
As co-founder of Sydney’s highly influential Nimrod Theatre Company, Bell presented many productions of landmark Australian plays, including David Williamson’s Travelling North, The Club and The Removalists. He also initiated an Australian Shakespeare style with Nimrod productions such as Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth.
In 1990, Bell took on an even greater challenge, founding The Bell Shakespeare Company. Since then, his productions as director have included Hamlet, Romeo And Juliet, The Taming Of The Shrew, Richard 3, Pericles, Henry 4, Henry 5, Julius Caesar, Antony And Cleopatra, The Comedy Of Errors, Wars Of The Roses, Measure For Measure, Macbeth and As You Like It, as well as Goldoni’s The Servant Of Two Masters, Gogol’s TheGovernment Inspector and Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist.
Meanwhile his roles as an actor for Bell Shakespeare have included Hamlet, Shylock, Henry V, Richard III, Macbeth, Malvolio, Berowne, Petruchio, Leontes, Coriolanus, Prospero, King Lear and Titus Andronicus.
Bell also played the title role in two co-productions with Queensland Theatre Company: Richard 3 and Heiner Müller’s Anatomy Titus Fall Of Rome: A Shakespeare Commentary. In addition, he directed Madame Butterfly for an Oz Opera national tour.
Bell’s unique contribution to national culture has been recognised by many bodies. He is an Officer of the Order of Australia and the Order of theBritish Empire; has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the Universities of Sydney, New South Wales and Newcastle; and was recognised in 1997by the National Trust of Australia as one of Australia’s Living Treasures.
In 2003, the Australia Business Arts Foundation also awarded Bell the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Cultural Leadership Award.
As an actor and director, his many awards include a Helpmann Award for Best Actor (Richard 3, 2002), a Producers and Directors Guild Award for Lifetime Achievement and the JC Williamson Award (2009) for extraordinary contribution to Australia’s live entertainment industry.
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Robert Keane | composer
Robert Keane, pianist, composer and conductor, was born in Townsville and completed his schooling in Sydney where, in 1965, he took second place in New South Wales for piano and theory. He won a scholarship to study piano with Alexander Sverjensky at the NSW Conservatorium, and later with Nancy Weir at the Queensland Conservatorium, where he graduated in both piano and composition.
He studied, as a postgraduate student, at the Guildhall School of Music, London and the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki and completed a Masters Degree in composition at University of London. His composition teachers include Edmund Rubbra, Einojuhani Rautavaarra, and Benjamin Britten. He was awarded a PhD from the University of London for his thesis about the complete solo-songs of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
Keane has written many scores for the theatre, including Dance North’s A Moon of Our Own, and Tropic Line’s Lucky Me!, based on the life of Gladys Moncrieff. He was the first Musical Director of both the Queensland Theatre Company and the Queensland Theatre Orchestra. He has toured regularly in UK, Europe, Australia & USA as accompanist and associate artist. Australian Artists he has worked with include Johnny O’Keefe, Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush, Geraldine Turner, Judi Connelli, Barry Otto, Julie Anthony, Graeme Connors, Jill Perryman, Bille Brown, Carol Burns and others.
In 1994 he established the music publishing company, Wits’ End Music. Many of his new “Popular”- style works are on the ANZCA and AMEB syllabuses, and are recorded on CD. In 1995, Keane wrote the official music for the Waltzing Matilda Centenary Celebrations and in 2005 was appointed the writer of Aural Studies for the AMEB’s new MusicCraft syllabus.
Guy Noble | narrator
Guy Noble knew he wanted to be a musician from the age of 8. As a boy, he sang as a soloist with the Sydney Symphony and with the Australian Opera. He studied the piano in Sydney and toured with the Australian Youth Orchestra to the BBC Proms in London, playing in Stravinsky’s Petrouchka.
He has talked about music (as host of ABC Classic FM’s Breakfast Show), recorded it (9 CDs for ABC Classics), and conducted it all over the country and abroad (Sydney Symphony, West Australian Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, Queensland Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony, Auckland Philharmonic and Malaysian Philharmonic).
Noble has been able to work with such wonderful performers as Harry Connick Jr, Dianne Reeves, Ben Folds, Clive James, the Beach Boys, the Pointer Sisters, and in great musical theatre shows such as The Phantom of the Opera, South Pacific, Sunset Boulevard and Gypsy.
Andrew West | piano
Andrew West has developed partnerships with many of Britain’s leading singers and instrumentalists. He appears with Emma Bell, Florian Boesch, Lesley Garrett, James Gilchrist, Emma Johnson, Robert Murray, Mark Padmore, Christopher Purves, Hilary Summers and Roderick Williams.
His longstanding partnership with flautist Emily Beynon has led to recordings for Hyperion and the BBC, and recitals at Wigmore Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Edinburgh International Festival.
Recent performances include the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s Songs from the Same Earth at the Aldeburgh Festival, contemporary recitals at the Vienna Konzerthaus and Nuremberg Festival (of which he is one of the artistic directors) and staged performances of Schubert’s Winterreise at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Lincoln Center, New York.
Mr West has worked with violinist Sarah Chang in Britain and Ireland, and performed with cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras throughout Europe. A CD released by his piano quartet, Touchwood, of music by Chausson and Saint-Saëns, was selected as Recording of the Month by the Daily Telegraph.
As a duo pianist he has appeared at the City of London and Cheltenham Festivals with pianist Cedric Tiberghien. For the Michael Clark Dance Company he performed the two-piano version of The Rite of Spring with Philip Moore, firstly at the Barbican and then on tour in Paris, Seoul and Lincoln Center, New York.
Andrew West won second prize at the Geneva International Piano Competition in 1990. He has made solo tours of South Africa, South America and the United States, and given numerous solo recitals at the Purcell Room and Wigmore Hall. He performed the solo part in Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques under Mark Wigglesworth at Snape Maltings.
Andrew West read English at Clare College, Cambridge before studying at the Royal Academy of Music under Christopher Elton and John Streets. He is Professor of Accompaniment and Chamber Music at the Royal Academy of Music.
Bridget Bolliger | flute
Australian-Swiss flautist Bridget Bolliger was born in Sydney, where she distinguished herself early, studying under Jenny Andrews, Jane Rutter and Vernon Hill and performing the Ibert Flute Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of 15. She graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium High School and was awarded the ASCM with Merit by New South Wales Conservatorium of Music.
At 18 Ms Bolliger travelled to Switzerland to study with Peter-Lukas Graf at the Basel Music Academy. For four consecutive years she was awarded the coveted Study Grant of the Migros/Ernst-Göhner Stiftung, while also winning the UBS Flute Competition in Zürich, the Kiefer Hablitzel Award in Bern and a prize at the Swiss Woodwind Competition in St Gallen. She attended masterclasses with Alain Marion, Jean-Pierre Rampal and William Bennett, and played Principal Flute with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Claudio Abbado and Vaclav Neumann, the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach and the
European Community Youth Chamber Orchestra under James Judd.
After graduating with the prestigious Soloistʼs Diploma, Ms Bolliger was appointed Principal Flute with the St Gallen Symphony Orchestra. She also appeared as Guest Principal Flute with the Basel Symphony Orchestra, Zürich Opera Orchestra and Zürich Chamber Orchestra, under conductors such as Nello Santi, Horst Stein, Franz Welser-Möst and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.
Ms Bolliger spent three years in Brazil as Principal Flute of the Sinfonica de São Paulo, before returning to Australia where she has played with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Queensland Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, under conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy and Patrick Summers.
Bridget Bolliger has appeared as concerto soloist with the St Gallen Symphony Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Basel Radio Orchestra, Collegium Musicum Basel, Gruppo Concertistico della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano), Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar al Teatro Massimo (Palermo), Orquestra Sinfonica do Norte (Porto, Portugal) and the Sinfonica de São Paulo. She has performed the Mozart Flute and Harp Concerto with harpists Elena Zaniboni, Marielle Nordmann and Sarah O’Brien.
As a chamber musician, Ms Bolliger has appeared at the Ainey International Music Festival in Burgundy, the Curitiba International Music Festival in Brazil, the Huntington Estate Music Festival in New South Wales and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Queensland. She has collaborated with many distinguished Australian and British musicians, and with members of the Chicago and Montreal Symphony Orchestras.
Ms Bolliger is founder of the New Sydney Wind Quintet, which has become one of Australia’s leading chamber ensembles, releasing two CDs, commissioning a work from Ross Edwards and giving numerous world premieres. Ms Bolliger is also founder and Artistic Director of the annual Sydney Chamber Music Festival.
As a flute teacher and chamber music coach, Bridget Bolliger has tutored and given masterclasses in Switzerland, Brazil and Australia. She has taught at the Jugend Musik Schule (Rorschach) and was assistant to Michel Debost at the Oficina de Música de Curitiba. She has taught at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of New South Wales and the Sydney Conservatorium High School, and given masterclasses for the New England Conservatorium of Music, the Sydney Flute Society and the Australian Flute Festival.
New Sydney Wind Quintet (NSWQ) | ensemble
This year the New Sydney Wind Quintet celebrates it’s 10th anniversary. Established in 2004 by five Australian wind players of international acclaim and now recognised as the country’s leading wind quintet, NSWQ performs throughout Australia and Asia, making regular appearances for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Musica Viva Australia.
The players teach at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and are members of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra among others, and have held major positions in European and American orchestras.
In 2010, the NSWQ took up a residency for one year at the New England Conservatorium of Music in Armidale, providing concerts, masterclasses and workshops in five towns in the New England region and continues touring around the country to inspire and enchant it’s audience both young and old.
The NSWQ is committed to advocating Australian music for wind quintet: it made the first commercially-available recording of Ross Edwards’ Incantations (Maninyas III), released on CD as well as available for digital download through iTunes.
In 2011 the NSWQ released it’s second CD recording – QUINTOPIA – with works by Ravel, Nielsen and Australian composers Percy Grainger and Lyle Chan also now available on iTunes.
Most recently, in 2013, the NSWQ gave the world premiere of the newly commissioned ‘The Laughing Moon’ – 5 Bagatelles for wind quintet by Ross Edwards.
All concerts will be performed at Manly Art Gallery and Museum, West Esplanade, Manly (next to Ocean World Aquarium).
‘Dancing Shadows’
Available for purchase on CD
Flute Bridget Bolliger
Piano Andrew West
Recording engineer and producer Philip Rowlands for CALA RECORDS
| Price including shipping |
The Manly Daily: ‘Bold Dreams For Classics’
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Limelight Magazine – review
‘The Evolution and Recording of Dancing Shadows’ – read the review HERE.
