Ensemble Offspring’s exhilarating brand of living new music up close

Ensemble Offspring | Avant Gardens 1

Sunday February 26, 2023,  A home in Alexandria

Back in 2020 Ensemble Offspring got creative, rather than just sitting around waiting for venues to get back to normal they created a series of outdoor events starting with ‘Ah Tempe!’, a musical walking tour of an inner Sydney suburb, and in 2022 ‘Avant Gardens’ was brought to life. The series continues into 2023 with concerts presented in the homes and backyards of the Ensemble’s trusty supporters.

Avant Gardens concerts are designed to be an intimate musical exchange of quite personal performances of high quality and original new music. This is true ‘chamber music’, which was traditionally written for a small group of musicians playing in a modest and intimate setting. The chamber for Sunday’s Avant Gardens recital was the light and art filled lounge room of a stunning Alexandria home, the address of which was only shared with ticket holders (like a secret meeting, how exciting) and the music was provided by a trio of extremely accomplished Australian musicians – soprano Jane Sheldon, percussionist Claire Edwardes and flautist Lamorna Nightingale. This was chamber music for the real world, up so close that you could touch it.

In various combinations of the three musical voices we first heard works from First Nations composer Brenda Gifford and a world premiere by emerging Sydney composer Courtney Cousins.

Gifford’s ‘Mungala’ (Clouds) was pure nature, with alto flute gusting and swirling against plaintive percussive click sticks and seed pods (such beautiful instruments). Bells chimed in as the sound of cockatiels and trees swishing in the wind outside added to the atmosphere. What I love about these performances is that I always see something unique and with this piece it was the use of the bells, rims rubbed together, to create an electric frisson akin, in my mind at least, to the electricity hiding inside the clouds of this work’s title.

Courtney Cousins is a composition student who has recently completed her honours at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. It was delightful to be at the world premiere of ‘Daphne’, her retelling of the myth of Daphne and Apollo, which is part of a larger project, her response to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Taken from the female perspective Cousins’ own text is set to music that makes you sit up as though it has said,’let me tell you a story’. This musical story takes us from fear to flight and then peace as Daphne flees her pursuer and is almost grateful to be turned into a laurel tree. The song then rears into violent staccato descending lines as Apollo cuts her down to be used for arrows. Lovely word painting and maturity in this piece that ends sadly and leaves the listener with a sense of nostalgia for what has been lost. I hope to hear more from this promising composer and commend Ensemble Offspring for its unflagging support of emerging artists.

The rest of the program was dedicated to international giants including two self confessed guilty pleasures of Edwardes’

These were ‘Towards the Sea’ for flute and marimba by Tōru Takemitsu and the marimba solo ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’ by Jacob Druckman. The marimba is an incredibly physical instrument and both sheer concentration and glee come through in Edwardes’ playing, a joy to watch from the delicate expression of a peaceful meditation on water, to the relentlessness of a stormy deluge.

While all the works in the program required incredible musical mastery, a stand out for me was Nightingale and Sheldon’s performance of Beat Furrer’s ‘auf tönernen Füssen’ for voice and flute, a true avant-garde piece. With an obscure theme likened to catching the fragments of a dream I was grateful for Sheldon’s intriguing translation of this work which helped understand what the composer what trying to do as he explored the timbrel proximity of flute and voice. This was not, as I was expecting, in the melodic or traditional sense, but in the making of similar soundscapes – the expression of consonants, muttering and whispers, breath, clicks, spits, squeaks… The opportunity to chat to the trio after the concert (a wonderful feature of the Avant Gardens series) to delve into the technical aspects of playing a flute with hardly any melodic lines was fascinating. Voice and flute also complimented each other in a more melodic piece for all three instruments by Frank Nuyts ‘Une fille comme Anne’ where it was often hard to tell where one instrument ended and another began.

The final work was three short movements from George Crumb’s ‘Madrigals, Book II’, works set to texts by Federico García Lorca, whose poetry Crumb described as ‘primitive and stark’. With these sorts of descriptions from the composers themselves one could be forgiven for finding this music style challenging, and it sometimes is. I will admit that this is not music that I enjoy listening to in recordings, but live? I love it! …and the intimate setting serves to personalise the experience. The visual, often quite physical performances add a real sense of theatre which is exhilarating to watch.

I encourage you to experience Ensemble Offspring’s unique brand of living new music up close for yourself, and don’t forget to stay and chat! Avant Gardens 2 will be held on March 25 and 26 in Glebe and Woollahra.

Photo credit: Jared Underwood