Download Astra's 2010 colour brochure (PDF, 1.5 MB).
Join our email or mailing list to receive updates or the printed brochure.
topConcert 1
6 pm Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 May, late-show: 8.15 pm Saturday 1 May (to be confirmed) (3 performances)
ELEVENTH HOUR THEATRE, 117 Leicester Street, Fitzroy
GRAEME LEAK – Retrospect and Prospect 2010
with Neil Thomas, associate performer
Instruments, installations, video: compositions, performance, theatre
Graeme Leak (composer, constructor and
percussionist)
Neil Thomas (vocalist)
Michael Hewes (sound /visual realisation)
Australia’s seminal composer/performer/inventor Graeme Leak returns to the Astra series after several years, with a new program of his own work, bridging fields of instrument invention, environment art, solo percussion and theatre.
Concert 2
5 pm Saturday 5 June, 5 pm Sunday 6 June, (2 performances)
GASWORKS THEATRE, 21 Graham Street. Middle Park
in collaboration with ‘SEASON DANCE, CHOIR, VOICE’ directed by Russell Dumas (Dance Exchange) and James McCaughey
LACRIMAE RERUM – Actor, choir, solo voices and dance at Gasworks
Helen Gifford, THE TEARS OF THINGS (2009)
cantata for actor/singer, solo speakers and choir. Texts from May Tilton’s
memoir and Virgil’s Aeneid first
performance
Heinrich Schütz, MUSIKALISCHE EXEQUIEN – A GERMAN REQUIEM (1636) choir, solo voices, viola da gamba and organ
Claude Le Jeune, Darius Milhaud, Philippe Hersant, CHORAL PSALMS (1600 / 1954 / 1995)
Dance Exchange / director Russell Dumas
Jane Nolan (actor)
Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba)
Kim Bastin (organ)
The Astra Choir with solo singers and speakers, conducted by John McCaughey
Helen Gifford’s chronicle from the First World War was composed for actor Jane Nolan with solo speakers and the Astra Choir. It relates the story of Sister May Tilton, set against choral texts drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid. The new piece is framed by French and German music from times of conflict. Schütz’s powerful funeral composition from the Thirty Years War opens into the further field of dance – part of an exploratory season at Gasworks Theatre with the celebrated group Dance Exchange.
Bookings through Gasworks on 9663-3253 ($3 booking
fee) or
Online at www.gasworks.org.au (no booking fee)
Concert 3
6 pm Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 June (2 performances)
ELEVENTH HOUR THEATRE, 117 Leicester Street, Fitzroy
NEW SONG CYCLES – Jerzy Kozlowski & Michael Kieran Harvey
Michael Bertram, UNDERGROUND SONGS (2008)
first performance
cycle on poems by Siegried Sassoon, Anne Finch, WB Yeats and anon (17th
cent.)
Lawrence Whiffin, TIME STEALS SOFTER (2009)
first performance
cycle on poems by George Genovese
Lawrence Whiffin, PIANO SONATA No. 1 (1961)
This concert brings together as a duo for the first time two frequent and admired contributors to Astra concerts, in a program that celebrates milestones of two of Melbourne’s senior composers.
Solo bass Jerzy Kozlowski gives his third Astra recital, following highly successful earlier recitals of Shostakovich’s two late song cycles, which inspired the two composers to write these new song cycles specifically for his voice. Michael Bertram has chosen a sequence of poems printed in the London Underground. Lawrence Whiffin continued a long association with local poet George Genovese to generate the poems for his cycle, extending across a broad range of style and expression.
Pianist Michael Kieran Harvey extends the 80th year celebration of Lawrence Whiffin with the composer’s Piano Sonata No.1, written almost a half-century earlier in an explosion of energy as a young musician in Paris.
SEATING IS LIMITED AND BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL
Concert 4
5 pm Sunday 10 October
FITZROY TOWN HALL, corner of George and Moor Streets, Fitzroy
MINDS AT PLAY – Scientific cantata, string games, choral experiment
Martin Friedel, CITIES OF THE MIND (2002/2010) cantata for soloists, choir, string quartet, winds, percussion and keyboards revised version, first performance
with Dan Dediu, HARMONIC LABYRINTH AND FUGUE (1999) choir a cappella
Neil Kelly, FLUSH (FOR FOUR PLAYERS) (2005) string quartet/ card game
choral works by Hildegard, Bach, Philip Corner and Pauline Oliveros
The Astra Choir with soloists and instrumental players, conducted by John McCaughey
Martin Friedel’s cantata about the brain, psychology and cybernetics, the nature of thought and consciousness, was first performed by Astra in 2002, and is heard in a revised version, among a colourful procession of choral works and Neil Kelly’s new mind-game for string quartet.
Concert 5
6 pm Sunday 5 December
NORTHCOTE TOWN HALL, 189 High Street, Northcote
SYMPHONIC TO CHAMBER – perspectives from Beethoven and Yeats
Ludwig Van Beethoven, MISSA SOLEMNIS OP.123 (1819-23) arrangement for soloists, choir and chamber ensemble
with music by Webern, Keith Humble and Rohan Drape
The Astra Choir, soloists and chamber ensemble conducted by John McCaughey
Beethoven’s great multi-form reading of the Mass offers faces of both singularity and collective grandeur. In the chamber dimensions of this new arrangement it resonates in other instrumental music, and meets another famous late work, Yeats’ glittering Byzantium poem, in a new spatialized setting.
top