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Tuesday 8 March, 8:00 pm

<p>Good Shepherd Chapel, Abbotsford Convent<br>1 St Heliers Street<br>Abbotsford</p>

Tickets

For tickets call Astra on (03) 9326 5424, or

International Women's Day Choral 2016

International Women’s Day on Tuesday 8 March enjoys a choral celebration in 2016, with the first Astra concert of the season. When male composers are done without in a program for choir, a special vista opens up of very particular times, places and personalities through which women creators of music made their voices heard, even in the epoch of Western music up to the mid twentieth century, when social conventions largely excluded them.

Concert Head: 

3 world premieres:
Marguerite Boland, AVE MARIA! (2015) 10-part choir a cappella
Livia Teodorescu, VESPERS: Prologue To ‘The Lady With The Dog’ (2015) solo baritone and 8-part choir a cappella
Catherine Schieve, VOICES AND SERPENTS (2016) improvising voices, choir, 5 organs and shruti boxes

with works by
Hildegard von Bingen (12th C), Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1642), Louise Reichardt (1823), Fanny Hensel (1846), Alma Mahler (1901), Johanna Beyer (1937), Ruth Crawford (1940), Pauline Oliveros (1961), Elisabeth Lutyens (1971), Cindy John (1989), Maura Capuzzo (1995), Judy Pile (2001), Jennifer Fowler (2002), Maia Ciobanu (2003), Astra Improvisers (2014-16)

From the history-laden environment of the Abbotsford Convent the concert takes two half millennial
steps back to earlier monasteries, to Milan with Chiara Margarita Cozzolani in the 17th century and to the German Rhineland with Hildegard von Bingen in the late Middle Ages – both of them figures who drew international interest to their work. Spanning the Romantic era, Louise Reichardt, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and Alma Mahler demonstrate rich musical characters without being accorded the recognition of their close composer relatives.

More recent works offer a varied display of personalities and themes from Australia, the USA, Romania and Italy. The more ancient origins of the Abbotsford site on the river bushland resonate in Judy Pile’s incorporation of the Woiwurrung words of the Wurundjeri people ‘peace on earth’, among other languages ranging from Tetum to Vietnamese. Three premiered works in the concert build a contemporary sound out of a historical perspective. The exclamation mark of Marguerite Boland’s Ave Maria! prepare the listener for some musical cross-currents in an ancient Latin text. Livia Teodorescu’s Vespers setting of the Slavonic words of the Orthodox liturgy forms the prologue of a just-completed opera on Chekhov’s story “The Lady with the Dog”.

Catherine Schieve in her multi-form spatial work characteristically reflects on a wider external space, transported musically into the environment of the concert. In this case, it is yet another monastery where she has recently worked, New Norcia, the Spanish Benedictine Monastery, in Aboriginal country north of Perth.

Merlyn Quaife (soprano), Catrina Seiffert (soprano),
Louisa Billeter (mezzo-soprano), Dorothy Williams (alto),
Ben Owen (tenor), Lucien Fischer (baritone), Steven Hodgson (bass)
Aaron Barnden (violin), Phoebe Green (viola), Alister Barker (cello)
Kim Bastin, Peter Dumsday, Catherine Schieve, Warren Burt (organ)
The Astra Improvising Choir directed by Joan Pollock
The Astra Choir conducted by John McCaughey