HOME
HOME is a project that brings the sound of the baroque viola to audiences all over Australia. It combines three of my great passions - playing chamber music across ages and genres, storytelling through music, and helping to connect people to their communities and landscapes. HOME helped to bring me to the finals of the Freedman Fellowship, and it is an ambitious project that I'll be spending the next few years realising.
There are three stages of HOME:
1) The commission of a new piece for baroque string trio by Melbourne-based composer Matt Laing
2) An Australian tour through cities and country, collaborating with local musicians, artists and speakers
3) A studio recording to release as an album
I created this project to use my voice as a musician to help provide a solution to a problem, and to tell a story of connection. I believe that climate change is a problem of catastrophic proportions, that will affect everyone eventually: but also that it is an issue that has been surrounded by highly polarised and polarising rhetoric. It is huge, but it is not insurmountable if we work together. With HOME, I want to use music's particular ability to bring disparate groups of people together and create connections. I want to connect people with the baroque viola's beautiful, imperfect sound. I want to connect old and new music. I want to help connect people more deeply with their communities, their landscapes, and their idea of home. This is how I'll do that:
HOME is a concert made up of works spanning almost 1,000 years and reaching across genres from classical to traditional folk. In all these different styles there is a different idea of home that imbues the music with meaning and relevance: the religious home of Hildegard von Bingen, Palestrina and Bach searches for meaning beyond life; the complicated relationship between composers like Handel, Boccherini and Krishna Nagaraja and their homes as they travelled; the community-based homes of folk music; and the sun-scoured, wind-swept home of Paul Stanhope, Natalie Williams and Matt Laing. Through all of this, there is an inevitable pull to reflect inwards: what is my home? What's yours? What safety, comfort, value do we receive from our home and what responsibility do we owe it back?
Matt Laing is an emerging composer of extraordinary quality. Drawing on his experience as a professional violist, his unique way of listening, and his fascination with the expressive and evocative possibilities of sounds, his music is thought-provoking and unexpectedly beautiful. He will be writing a piece for baroque string trio based on the place he considers home: the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. From the inconceivably ancient granite of the cliffs to the fluttering of a young bird's wings, he will explore the history and future of this place through the sounds of gut strings and arched bows.
HOME will be touring the east coast of Australia in September - October 2020, and into the future. If you are interested in bringing this concert to your home, please contact me.
There are three stages of HOME:
1) The commission of a new piece for baroque string trio by Melbourne-based composer Matt Laing
2) An Australian tour through cities and country, collaborating with local musicians, artists and speakers
3) A studio recording to release as an album
I created this project to use my voice as a musician to help provide a solution to a problem, and to tell a story of connection. I believe that climate change is a problem of catastrophic proportions, that will affect everyone eventually: but also that it is an issue that has been surrounded by highly polarised and polarising rhetoric. It is huge, but it is not insurmountable if we work together. With HOME, I want to use music's particular ability to bring disparate groups of people together and create connections. I want to connect people with the baroque viola's beautiful, imperfect sound. I want to connect old and new music. I want to help connect people more deeply with their communities, their landscapes, and their idea of home. This is how I'll do that:
HOME is a concert made up of works spanning almost 1,000 years and reaching across genres from classical to traditional folk. In all these different styles there is a different idea of home that imbues the music with meaning and relevance: the religious home of Hildegard von Bingen, Palestrina and Bach searches for meaning beyond life; the complicated relationship between composers like Handel, Boccherini and Krishna Nagaraja and their homes as they travelled; the community-based homes of folk music; and the sun-scoured, wind-swept home of Paul Stanhope, Natalie Williams and Matt Laing. Through all of this, there is an inevitable pull to reflect inwards: what is my home? What's yours? What safety, comfort, value do we receive from our home and what responsibility do we owe it back?
Matt Laing is an emerging composer of extraordinary quality. Drawing on his experience as a professional violist, his unique way of listening, and his fascination with the expressive and evocative possibilities of sounds, his music is thought-provoking and unexpectedly beautiful. He will be writing a piece for baroque string trio based on the place he considers home: the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. From the inconceivably ancient granite of the cliffs to the fluttering of a young bird's wings, he will explore the history and future of this place through the sounds of gut strings and arched bows.
HOME will be touring the east coast of Australia in September - October 2020, and into the future. If you are interested in bringing this concert to your home, please contact me.