Brisbane Music Festival – ‘When We Speak’
Sunday 30 Oct , 2022, Fortitude Valley
Poetry and chamber music collided in Brisbane Music Festival’s When We Speak on Saturday afternoon. Held in the Holy Trinity Hall in Fortitude Valley, this was a refreshing and stimulating concert.
Presented in collaboration with Brisbane Writer’s Festival, this concert featured three new chamber music compositions, inspired by poetry by Brisbane authors. The concert explored the resonances between written and spoken word and music.
The Brisbane Music Festival, directed by Alex Raineri, features 44 events, 52 creatives, and 17 world premieres, held across 16 venues in 2022. This year, the theme of the festival is ‘old meets new’. It presents fresh and contemporary works alongside the well-loved classical works of the past.
The concert began with Lisa Cheney’s When We Speak. Featuring Katherine Philp, this piece blended live cello and recorded vocal tracks to create an atmospheric soundscape. Many voices interwove to comment on issues of gender inequality.
Next, we heard Samuel Smith’s Ghosts and Voices. Written for his friend Jodie Rottle, this piece explores memory, nostalgia and breath. Jodie performed this haunting piece, her flute echoing through the hall.
Peter Ablinger’s Voices & Piano is an extensive cycle of pieces, for recorded voice and piano. It uses recordings of celebrities from speeches, interviews or readings. Alex performed three of these pieces, to the voices of Billie Holiday, Mother Theresa and Nine Simone. I found this was a little hard to follow, as the piano was in competition with the vocals.
In the second half of the program, we heard three world premieres. Jodie, Katherine and Alex performed their new compositions, inspired by poetry. The poets were all in the audience which added a special touch.
Jodie’s New Work was inspired by a poem called Live and Direct, by Ethan Enoch-Barlow. Ethan is a Quandamooka performer of poetry, hip hop and theatre. Jodie’s music explored rhythmic flow and tempo, imitating the beat of Ethan’s poem.
Ella Jeffery’s poem A history of blue speaks of the colour in everyday life, from brain scans, bruises and plastic to the Pacific, Stradbroke Island, birds, blue-tongues, swimming pools, and the sky. Taking this as its inspiration, Alex’s New Work used the piano to represent blue on a micro and macro scale. Alex also used percussive techniques on the piano to make different sounds.
Katherine’s New Work was influenced by Anna Jacobson’s poem Orbit. This poem examines the feeling of being trapped in grief, like an orbit. Katherine and her cello became one, moving in their own orbit.
When We Speak was an unusual and dynamic concert, bringing together writing, poetry, and music. It was a welcome escape from the summer afternoon heat.
