TEMPO QUEER 2024
Fridays in July, 8pm.
Pianist and Artistic Director Coady Green presents the third Tempo Queer residency at Tempo Rubato. Four LGBTIQ+ artists or groups curate four recitals on the four Fridays in July, celebrating LGBTIQ+ composers and culture from around the world.
Curators: Coady Green, the Divisi Chamber Singers, Rebecca Lloyd-Jones & Dominic Flynn
TICKETS FULL $30 | CONCESSION $22
FRIDAY 5TH JULY 8PM
CURATED BY COADY GREEN
Coady Green, piano
With special guests:
Helen Morse, narrator
Justin Kenealy, saxophone
Adrian Tamburini, baritone
Boyd Owen, tenor
Pianist and Artistic Director Coady Green opens the festival with a diverse and colourful program, featuring iconic Australian actor Helen Morse narrating a preview of Cheryl Durongpisitkul’s new work on the poetry of Candy Royalle, and with saxophonist Justin Kenealy, baritone Adrian Tamburini and tenor Boyd Owen.
PROGRAM
Nico MUHLY Drones and Piano*
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III (The 8th Tune)
- Part IV
- Part V
Bryn RENARD for Coady Green… My Voice in Shattered Shapes **
James RUSHFORD Twilight Wedge **
Cheryl DURONGPISITKUL A Million Tiny Awakenings, SPECIAL PREVIEW **
For soprano saxophone, piano and narrator, on poetry by Candy Royalle
Featuring Helen Morse (narrator) and Justin Kenealy (saxophone)
Gregory SPEARS Scenes from Fellow Travellers
Librettist: Greg Pierce
Based on the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon
Feturing Boyd Owen (tenor) as Timothy Laughlin
and Adrian Tamburini (baritone) as Hawkins Fuller
Scene 1: Park in Dupont Circle
Scene 4: Tim’s Apartment
Scene 5: St. Peter’s Church
Scene 11: Roof of the Old Post Office
Scene 14: Brick House
Scene 16: Park in Dupont Circle
* Australian premiere
** World Premiere
ABOUT COADY GREEN
One of Australia’s busiest concert pianists, Coady Green is acknowledged as a major talent on the international concert circuit, described as “a virtuoso pianist with sensitivity, intelligence and charm”, “accurate and exhilarating” (Musical Opinion, London), and with “a strong and versatile technique capable of the most delicate coloring and tonal brilliance, rising to the challenges of extreme virtuoso demands with relish” (The Advertiser, South Australia).
FRIDAY 12TH JULY 8PM
THE DIVISI CHAMBER SINGERS
GOD AND GAYS: A TENUOUS RELATIONSHIP
Chamber choir
With special guest Coady Green, piano
Performed by:
Alex Gorbatov
Marjorie Butcher
Bailey Montgomerie
Alexandra Amerides
A unique chamber music concert exploring the intricate bond between spirituality and queer identity through classical compositions. This program highlights how legendary composers like Francis Poulenc and Aaron Copland, belonging to the LGBTQ+ community, crafted deeply religious music amidst their complex personal journeys with faith.
This intriguing dichotomy raises questions:
Why do contemporary queer composers continue to engage with religious themes?
How do composers like Joseph Twist, among other Australian talents, navigate their queer identity while intertwining their work with spiritual motifs?
Alongside Twist, the concert will feature Australian composers Meta Cohen, Moya Henderson and the late Nigel Butterley, adding to this rich tapestry of music that bridges the divine and the queer.
An evening of introspective melodies and poignant reflections, as we explore the tenuous yet profound relationship between God and the gay experience, through the lens of both historical and contemporary composers. The ensemble will also feature a new work by a young composer as a promotion for their upcoming Compose Queer program.
ABOUT DIVISI CHAMBER SINGERS
Divisi Chamber Singers have won swathes of awards for their work championing LGBTIQ+ composers and writers, with their Compose Queer programs and their groundbreaking debut album 'Spectrum' - the first ever Australian album devoted to works by Australian LGBTIQ+ composers. One of the most exciting Chamber Choirs in Australia, here they present a vibrant celebration of LGBTIQ+ music. Music by Meta Cohen, Cameron Lam, James Rushford, Sally Whitwell, Joseph Twist and many more.
FRIDAY 19TH JULY 8PM
REBECCA LLOYD-JONES: THOUGHT SECTORS
Sarah Hennies (b.1979) | Thought Sectors (2020)
Performer: Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, percussion
Composed for solo percussionist, Sarah Hennies’ Thought Sectors (2020) explores the constant tension of divided consciousness. It challenges the listener’s experience of comfort and familiarity through altering one’s sense of space and time, accentuating the extremes of audible and inaudible listening. Thought Sectors leans into agonizingly slow and static repetitions of motific material woven amongst microtonal passages of vibraphones and bells while pivoting to the melancholy sonorities of the stapler, flour sifter, and water pitcher. This spell-bindingly beautiful work will take the listener on a multi-sensory, immersive sonic journey, renegotiating the performer and listener experience.
Exploring the intersection of percussion, psychoacoustics, and themes of queer and trans identity, this work rewards persistence, with seemingly simplistic musical motifs presented, that gradually unfurl into intricate sonic layers and phenomena. Inspired by psychologist Ernest Hilgard’s term ‘divided consciousness,’ Thought Sectors explores how the human brain can be divided into distinct components rather than a single unified consciousness, propelling the soloist to the edge of virtuosity while simultaneously occupying the banal, taking the listener on a sonic journey that blends conventional percussion instruments - the vibraphone, the bass drum - with found and obscure objects: a flour sifter, a stapler, a water jug, pebbles. Spanning almost 60 minutes, Thought Sectors pushes the extremes of audibility, timbre, and form, interrogating the connection between physical space, reverberation, extreme dynamics, and the listener’s relationship of listening and time.
ABOUT REBECCA LLOYD-JONES
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones is a Meanjin based creative, whose practice is centred in feminist experimental/sonic traditions. Rebecca holds a Doctorate from UC San Diego, is the Artistic Director of Synergy Percussion and is currently lecturer/percussion co-ordinator at Griffith University Queensland Conservatorium.
FRIDAY 26TH JULY 8PM
Ensemble Mania: LINE TRACING
Ensemble Mania’s Line Tracing concerts consist of an unbroken evening of music, featuring live performances of several works composed for solo instruments, each of which is followed by a musical response from a guest artist.
This year's concert (Line Tracing 4) features Naarm/Melbourne-based sound and film artist Mish Szekelyhidi (they/them), who will remix each piece in real-time, transitioning between the live performances and creating a cohesive unbroken listening experience.
Line Tracing 4 celebrates some of the queer friends of the ensemble with a program featuring all LGBTQIA+ composers both from Australia and overseas performed by some of Nipaluna/Hobart's and Naarm/Melbourne's most exciting queer and ally performers.
PROGRAM
Michael Finnissy: Tasmania II (2020)
Mish Szekelyhidi: Remix #1
Dominic Flynn: Leg (2020)
Mish Szekelyhidi: Remix #2
Reuben Jelleyman: Soliloquy for Cello (2019)
Mish Szekelyhidi: Remix #3
David William Murray: nor (2024)
Mish Szekelyhidi: Remix #4
Nigel Butterley: Of Wood (1995)
Mish Szekelyhidi: Remix #5
Jassy Robertson: NEW WORK (2024)
Mish Szekelyhidi: Remix #6
ABOUT Ensemble Mania
Ensemble Mania is a new music collective based between nipaluna/Hobart and naarm/Melbourne and was formed with the goal of providing unique listening experiences for Tasmanian and Victorian audiences. The ensemble’s efforts are focussed on showcasing music that would otherwise not be heard in Australia, from exciting current composers to recently uncovered pieces and local gems.
Since forming in 2020, Ensemble Mania has established itself as an exciting musical enterprise, having partnered with the likes of the Melbourne and Hobart City Councils, The Salamanca Arts Centre, and the Mona Foma Festival. They have presented premieres by Australian composers such as Don Kay, Hellgart Mahler, David William Murray, and Jassy Robertson, and international composers Michael Finnissy, Shiori Usui, Máté Szigeti, Andrew Toovey, and have featured performances by the likes of Peter Tanfield, Alexander Meagher, and Kyla Matsuura-Miller.
Mish Szekelyhidi
Mish Szekelyhidi (they/them, b.1993) is an ambitious artist researching radically accessible and expansive ways for disabled artists such as themself to compose, perform, learn and teach music in ways relating to, entangled with, promotive of disabilities and how this can be integrated into community-based and pedagogical settings. Examples of this are graphic, tactile, braille, audio descriptive, collaborative and computer-aided/digitally mediated scores. Their instrumental specialisation is improvisation and composition for drum set. Under this project umbrella they are working on a short collaborative book, a series of radio shows, graphic scores commissions, and community workshops. This will be a lifelong work of engaging, exploring, and integrating practical and theoretical work, or practice-as-research, to develop new autistic/disabled practices and phenomenological/ intuitive/sensorial modes and approaches to writing, playing, researching, collaborating, curating and uses of music, film and associated media/technology - all for the continuation of, inclusivity in and expansion of worldwide music culture.
Their sound work for commercials, documentary and fiction film has played around the world, including in the prestigious Venice Biennale, Locarno Film Festival, FIDMarseille, Cannes, and for films which have won awards in Torino and Monterrey. Their musical performance highlight is playing the main stage at Mona Foma January 2021 with the UTAS Experimental Music Ensemble.
Mish is currently freelancing as a sound engineer, photographer and videographer. They specialise in the continuously growing music technology sphere and its many contiguous and tangential fields, such as recording, mixing, mastering for music, film and theatre; sound design and composition; building physical and digital instruments; acoustics; the philosophical discipline of phenomenology/speculative realism of sound; and the accessibility and decolonisation of sound studies and performance.
They lived in Europe from 2014-18 studying film in Sarajevo under the mentorship of personal film heroes Tanja Vrvilo, Bela Tarr, Pedro Costa, Nicole Brenez and James Benning, among many others. Their activities overseas included cinematography, sound and assistant work for films, assisting curation for film festivals, leading documentary photography workshops for high school students, audiovisual installations for the theatre, and designing and copy-editing work for festival publications.