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ABOUT THE MUSIC

Jakob Bragg (b. 1990)
Concordia Temporum (2022)
WORLD PREMIERE

Vortex – whirling, spiral, activity, drawing in

Temporum – of time

Concordia – harmony, union, concurrence, closeness

Composed as a companion piece for Gérard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum, concordia [temporum] is an exploration of microtonal beating, the layering of materials, abrupt transitions, and the building of towering vertical sonorities. Using the same four detuned pitches of Grisey’s original, these function as an axis in which musical line and harmony are built, from the stacking of triads around these pitch points to the meandering of melodic lines, flirting and accentuating each. Through quite distinct sonic panels, there is a gradual building of intensity, culminating with unearthly screams from the bass clarinet in protest of strident austere unisons.

Program Note © Jakob Bragg

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Gerard Grisey (1946-1998)
Vortex Temporum (1996)

Since his death in 1998, Gérard Grisey has become recognised as the most important French composer since Pierre Boulez and more broadly is celebrated as one of the most influential figures in late 20th-century music. Grisey is one of the composers credited with founding the spectralist school of composition.

Vortex Temporum is a modernist masterpiece - a 40-minute, three-movement work for piano, strings and winds. Throughout the work the players oscillate between using their instruments traditionally and navigating extended techniques that give the impression of bringing both player and instrument to breaking point.

Completed two years before his sudden death, Vortex Temporum borrows a motif from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé as the starting point for an exploration of musical time that, despite its complex and rigorous technical background, packs a visceral impact.

Whether in the tangled first movement, which eventually discharges its energy in an explosive piano solo, the slowly unwinding chorale-like progression of the second, or the extended ever-ramifying third, the expressive power of this music is unquestionably striking and visceral.

Program Note © Alex Raineri

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Jakob Bragg is an Australian composer currently based in Huddersfield (UK). Creating highly detailed works exploring ornamentation, distortion, notation materials, and instrumental parameters, Jakob has worked primarily with new music specialists. Close collaboration and the nurturing of artistic relationships have fostered a practice that seeks unconventional approaches to acoustic instruments, a highly personalised virtuosity, and a musical landscape that elicit descriptors such as weird, organic, brash, and imposing.

For Jakob, music and sound exist in a multitude of settings, from the political in “At least so far…” for voice + harnessing the use and misuse of language by politicians, to the exploratory in Subdue for solo clarinet; an intense exploration of timbre through instrumental technique. Working with acoustic sound has led to collaborations with a broad spectrum of instruments including the Uilleann Pipes and Recorders (Between giants), Double-bell trombone and Ondomo (Displaced bodies, weapons of action), and use of unusual items including bearing balls, saucepans, and vibrators.

In creating these sounds, Jakob has been fortunate to closely work with artists including ELISION (AU), Arditti Quartet (UK), International Contemporary Ensemble (US), Cikada (NO), Quatuor Tana (FR), Meitar Ensemble (IL), BRON (NL), panSonus (US), Australia’s Alex Raineri, Amber Evans, Phoebe Green, Callum G’Froerer, Rubiks Collective, Ossicle Duo, Kupka’s Piano, Syzygy Ensemble, Kurilpa String Quartet, The Song Company, Horsley & Williams Duo, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Australian Youth Orchestra, and Queensland Philharmonia. His works have been featured across the world including China (Shanghai New Music Week), Turkey, Thailand, Vietnam, France (Festival de Royaymont), Austria (Impuls), Germany (Darmstadt), Italy, Netherlands, United States, and throughout Australia (Metropolis New Music Week, Brisbane Music Festival). Jakob is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Huddersfield, having previously studied at the University of Melbourne, and Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.

Curiosity, fearlessness and versatility carry Lina Andonovska’s artistry around the globe. Andonovska is a rare breed in the flute world; a name that you’ll discover on both the pages of Rolling Stone and the Australian Chamber Orchestra roster, she has not only cultivated partnerships with leading artists including Louis Andriessen, Donnacha Dennehy and Claire Chase, but also deep community ties from Timor-Leste to Tokyo’s Wonder Site.

She has recently been appointed as flautist of multiple Grammy Award-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird. A sought-after collaborator, this season she appears as guest musician with Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Recherche, and stargaze. Equally at home with improvisation and the written page, she is critically acclaimed for her interpretation of new music with Rolling Stone Magazine hailing her performance at Bang On A Can Summer Festival as “superbly played…”

With her performances noted as “re-defining the act of going solo” (The Age), Lina recently released her debut album on Diatribe Records, which was described as “brimming with energy and bold textures, though marked throughout by nuance. A name to watch out for” (All About Jazz).

Luke Carbon is a woodwind multi-instrumentalist and educator based in Melbourne. An orchestral musician, chamber player, and fluent improviser, he attended the Australian National Academy of Music during 2015-2016 and was awarded a Master of Music Research, the Musica Viva Chamber Music Prize, and a programming award for his exploration of third stream music.

Luke is a guest musician on both clarinet and saxophone with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Victoria, a guest clarinetist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Victorian Opera, and has performed with ELISION, Ensemble Offspring, and Rubiks Collective.

Recent festival appearances include the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, Metropolis, Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music, Dots+Loops, and the Brisbane Music Festival. Luke has performed numerous national and international premieres by composers including Yitzhak Yedid, Gunther Schuller, William Russo, Christine McCombe, and Kate Moore, amongst many others.

His woodwind/percussion ensemble Enyato Duo, with Thea Rossen, has additionally commissioned works by Paul Dean, Samantha Wolf, and Tim Hansen. As a doubler on clarinet, saxophone, flute, oboe, and bassoon, Luke has played close to a dozen professional musical theatre productions, including West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Evita. He is a current member of the Musica Viva in Schools group Water, Water, Everywhere, which reached its 200th performance in 2019. Luke teaches clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon at Wesley College.

Born in Japan, Natsuko Yoshimoto has been in great demand as a soloist, chamber musician and a concertmaster and has held positions as a leader of many of the esteemed chamber groups and orchestras such as the Australian String Quartet, the Grainger Quartet and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated in chamber music with players like Pinchas Zukerman, Heinz Holliger, Anthony Marwood and Stephen Kovacevich and has frequently performed with many of the Australia’s top chamber groups. She lives in Brisbane and is a member of Ensemble Q and teaches at the Queensland Conservatorium and University of Queensland.

Alexina Hawkins is an Australian violist currently living in Berlin, performing, recording and touring as a guest in chamber orchestras and ensembles including Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin, Kammerakademie Potsdam, die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, ensemble interface, Streicherakademie Bozen, Geneva Camerata, amongst others.

In solo/chamber/chamber orchestra mediums, she has performed at festivals including Bang On A Can Summer Festival (USA), Huntington Estate Music Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, Bangalow Festival (Festival Quartet, 2017), Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), Musikfest Goslar, Rheingau Musik Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany), Festival Opera Barga (Italy) and NOMUS Festival (Serbia). In 2019 she performs with Phoenix Trio, newly-formed contemporary music sextet hear now Berlin, and alongside singer-songwriter Teresa Bergman.

Oliver Russell was raised in Queensland and is now based in Melbourne as a freelance cellist. In 2022 he graduated from the Australian National Academy of Music studying with Howard Penny. Oliver is a passionate chamber and orchestral musician, having performed at festivals across Australia and the USA as well as with ensembles such as the Queensland, Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. While studying at ANAM, he won first prize in the ANAM Chamber Music Competition in 2021 and 2022, the Brett Dean prize for best performance of an Australian work and had the privilege of performing in masterclasses with internationally renowned musicians such as Daniel Müller-Schott, Johannes Moser, Guy Johnston and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt. Aside from playing music Oliver enjoys living vicariously through the Western Bulldogs AFL team and attempting to bake french pastries.

Hailed as a “born communicator” (The Australian), a “brilliant young musician” (Otago Times), and a “soloist of superb virtuosic skill and musicality” (Limelight), Alex Raineri (b. 1993) is active Internationally and throughout Australia as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, writer, producer and educator.

International performances include tours throughout America, Southeast Asia, United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany and Austria. Within Australia, Alex has appeared as a feature artist in many major festivals and venues. As a concerto soloist he has appeared with the Queensland, Tasmanian, Darwin and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, Ensemble Q, Southern Cross Soloists, Orchestra Victoria, Four Winds Festival Orchestra, Bangalow Festival Orchestra, Queensland Youth Symphony and the Queensland Pops Orchestra. He has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Radio NZ, California Capital Public Radio, ABC Classic FM and all of the Australian MBS Networks.

Alex is the Artistic Director of the annual Brisbane Music Festival. He is a passionate exponent and commissioner of contemporary music, having given 109 World Premieres + 147 Australian Premieres to date.

Major awards include the Kerikeri International Piano Competition and Australian National Piano Award. He was the recipient of the Queensland Luminary Award in the 2021 APRA/AMCOS Art Music Awards and received a Kranichsteiner Musikpries at the International Summer Courses for New Music (Darmstadt, Germany).

Notable collaborations include Andreas Ottensamer, TwoSet Violin, eighth blackbird, ELISION, Sara Macliver, Natalie Clein, Natsuko Yoshimoto, Karin Schaupp, Greta Bradman, Li Wei Qin, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Jack Liebeck, Kathryn Stott, Slava Grigoryan, Brett Dean, William Barton, Ensemble Offspring, Orava Quartet, and many others.

Additionally to a full-time performative profile, Alex is a radio-presenter on 4MBS Classic FM, a reviewer for The Music Trust’s ‘Loudmouth’, and holds associate artist positions at both the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University + University of Queensland.

Sonia Wilson is a violinist who loves all types of music. As a first violinist in the Queensland Symphony Orchestra she regularly gets her fill of symphonic masterpieces, ballet and opera greats and outside of her job loves to guest with chamber ensembles and explore more contemporary performance. She’s recently dipped her toe into acting with a regional tour of ACO’s “There’s a Sea in my Bedroom” so might aim for Broadway next. When she’s not playing violin she can be found hiking, baking or playing with her dog, Astro.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SUPPORT

The commission of Jakob Bragg's work has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Lina Andonovska's appearance in the 2022 festival is generously supported by Lynne and Graeme Cannell.
Natsuko Yoshimoto's appearance in the 2022 festival is generously supported by Nick Martin and Georgia Chenevix-Trench.

Alex Raineri’s appearance in the 2022 festival is generously supported by Loris Orthwein.

The Brisbane Music Festival is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

With gratitude to the following partner organisations and funding bodies for their support.

With thanks also to Gretel Farm, Simply Classical, The Brunswick Green and the countless individuals who have privately supported the 2022 BMF.