Dream Fragments

Dream Fragments

Auckland Chamber Orchestra

Price: Free Admission
Dates:

Sunday, 12 August 5pm

SUNDAY August 12 @ 5pm

FREE ADMISSION!  see below for instructions to reserve seats. We recommend this concert for audience members aged 13 years and over.

Raye Freedman Arts Centre
[
corner of Gillies Ave and Silver Rd, Epsom, Auckland, NZ]

Easy and free parking! Great sight lines – intimate venue.

Peter Scholes conductor/clarinet
Morag Atchison soprano
Claire Scholes mezzo-soprano

Sarah Watkins piano
Eddie Giffney accordion

Miranda Adams violin
James Yoo cello
Andrew Uren bass clarinet
Donald Nicholls clarinet
Kevin Kim recorder
Jenni Mori flute

  • Passacaglia (1984)
  • Dream Fragments (1980)
  • A-twining (1998)
  • Ascend (2008)
  • Three Songs (2016)
  • Microtungwhorl (2015)
  • Lullaby

The ACO presents “Dream Fragments” – the music of John Elmsly.

Auckland born John Elmsly, known for music of delicacy, sensitivity, richness…his output has spanned orchestral, solo, chamber, choral, vocal and electroacoustic media, with notable works in many of these.

 

 

IMPORTANT – include your email address to get confirmation and e-tickets

You will receive a confirmation email. Seat numbers will be allocated 7 days before the concert.  If for any reason you can’t come please let us know. Our concerts are usually full so get in quick!

Please *forward* to your friends.

Also, a big thank you to all the people who have generously donated to the ACO. It is very helpful and ensures the ACO’s continued presentation of amazing music. Please go to the ACO support page if you can help us!

http://www.aco.co.nz/Donations.html

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[in case you missed it, click here for the review of July’s THE FRIVOLOUS CAKE – music by Helen Bowater]

 

John Elmsly

A childhood which included a dozen or so primary schools in Auckland, Melbourne, Blenheim, and the Hutt Valley managed to include music study on the piano, but his serious composing began at secondary school, with much encouragement from Laughton Pattrick (then HOD Music at Upper Hutt College). The major part of this was five years of participation in the creation of school musicals and other works for school orchestras and choirs. Later theatrical work included incidental music for a production of ‘The Royal Pardon’ performed by the Heretaunga Players and later Unity Theatre in Wellington.

At Victoria University study in science (with a major in mathematics) was gradually replaced by music study, including piano performance study with Barry Margan who was then touring the country with Music Players 70 and similar groups, and composition study with David Farquhar. Significant performances took place at the summer schools of Cambridge and Kerikeri. First work with electronic music was undertaken with Douglas Lilburn in 1975. The same year he took up a Belgian postgraduate scholarship and began study at the Muziekconservatorium van Brussel, taking a First Prize in Composition in 1977, and undertaking further study with Frederic Rzewski, Henri Pousseur and Philippe Boesmans in Liège. Throughout the period in Belgium he was also carrying out electroacoustic composition at the studios of IPEM in Ghent, under the mentorship of Lucien Goethals.

Part-time teaching and composing in London was to follow, including classroom teaching in various inner city schools and a year running the music department at Queens College. In 1981 he was Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago, in 1983 undertook a film music summer course with Richard Rodney Bennett, and in 1984 returned to NZ to take up a teaching position at the University of Auckland.

An early Auckland performance was the ‘Passacaglia’ of which William Dart wrote in ‘The Listener’:
‘to appreciate the calligraphic neatness and precision of Elmsly’s written score is to understand the nature of the music itself. The lucidity never wavers: all contours are perfectly gauged. There is a wealth of characteristic ideas that register vividly on first hearing, from the trills and glissandi of the first bars through the ‘alla chitarra’ section of pizzicato strings to a persistent repeated note motive for the pianist….in the central Fugue,…one is easily beguiled by the stealth and subtlety with which the cool four-part texture is built up and sustained’

Thus began a long association with Auckland based performers, who commissioned the Dialogue series of five works (Uwe Grodd, Peter Scholes and David Guerin, David Jenkins and Christine Cuming, Nicola Averill and Jonathan Baker, Miranda Adams and Ingrid Wahlberg). The Auckland Philharmonia publicly performed or recorded on CD  Neither From Nor Towards, ‘Cello Symphony (Ribbonwood CD), Pacific Hockets (ODE CD), Intoit, Resound (Atoll CD), Metamorphoses and White Feathers, as well as workshop readings of Sinfonietta, and Champs de Cloches. Bridget Douglas of the NZSO premiered Response for flute and orchestra, and in 2017 Gisborne competition winner  Singaporean violinist Jun Hong Loh premiered the Concerto for violin and orchestra with Orchestra Wellington.

In his thirty years at the University of Auckland (1984-2014) performance was also part of John’s work: he conducted the premiere of  Gillian Whitehead’s ‘The Pirate Moon’ and two NZ performances of ‘Out of this Nettle Danger’, and many other NZ composers featured in the regular programmes, often broadcast, of the Karlheinz Company. He has also performed frequently as pianist, harpsichordist, synthesist, flautist, and baroque flautist, and conducted various groups including the Ensemble Philharmonia and St Matthews Chamber Orchestra.

His music has been performed in concerts and festivals in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Philippines, Spain, Thailand, US, UK. Works appear on a number of CDs, some appearing in the Naxos Music Library. Recently Rattle released his ’String Quartet in Three Movements’ performed by the Jade Quartet, and Naxos released his Suite for solo guitar on a CD of NZ guitar music by Gunter Herbig. Other recordings are also publicly available from the Resound website at sounz.org.nz, including videos of the 2016 recording of Paul Mitchell performing the ‘Cello Symphony with the Auckland Chamber Orchestra, and Peter Scholes and Andrew Uren performing ‘Calls from the Ark’.

From 2015 to 2016 he was Jack Richards /Creative New Zealand Composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music.

‘the music had a clean refreshing quality…good melodic lines and nicely contrasted orchestral tone colours…spiced with just the right amount of harmonic dissonance’  P.J.W, Otago Daily Times, July 1981

‘a dazzling virtuoso piece with timbres of flute and percussion to the fore…admirable conciseness and cogency’ W.Dart, NZ Listener, November 1982

‘John Elmsly cuts a more obviously forthcoming stance – warm piano triads and an especially limpid section half way through generate real tension; tempo increase is highlit by the rhythmic play of the piano.’ Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International CD review, 2006

‘John Elmsly’s Dialogue 1 is my personal favourite. His contrasty writing profiles the unusual aggressive power of Bridget Douglas (NZSO principal flutist) in the work’s opening and her softly contoured warmth with the alto flute in the middle part.’ Ian Dando reviewing CD ’Taurangi’ in NZ Listener, 2006.
‘Ibell performed New Zealand composer John Elmsly’s Four Echoes, a haunting work which included a beautifully written movement in memory of Douglas Lilburn. Ibell’s performance showed beautiful cello tone and, again, great sensitivity.’  Stephen Fisher, Manawatu Evening Standard, 28 Mar 2011

‘swirling elegance of assembled and dispersed sounds, painted with a lush brush of duration and pitch, in timbres that shine and glare with all the colors of the rainbow, in the transparency of wings of dragonflies in the shade of leafy branches…The pounding of silver hammers of elves in the dew of a secret meadow chisels the dreams of noble layers of consciousness, where bliss is assured in a good and gentle universe…
A female voice of a human travels through these circumstances in this world of dreams…mysteries come and go like shadows on the water.’ comment on ’Soft Dawn over Whispering Island’ in Sonoloco.com

‘John Elmsly’s Four Echoes, performed on viola by Menzies, returned us to our landscapes, its four parts evoking the still, almost mournful, calm of the night, a sense of isolation and distant horizon, of the rising of the wind and light and hope, and finally brightness, a bustling activity as of dormant or sleeping creatures scurrying on warming rocks and rising on thermals. I scribbled down that imagery before reading the programme notes, which read: “Prelude: From still night air; Voices behind: Lament; Voices ahead: Resurgence; Postlude. For me at least Elmsly got it spot on, Menzies conveyed it perfectly.’ Jay Bennie, Pridenz.com, Feb 2013

‘John Elmsly’s new Violin Concerto (2016-17) was given a spacious, free-spirited reading by the gifted Jun Hong Loh, winner of the 2016 Gisborne International Music Competition. Certain parts of this work I loved unreservedly, practically the whole of the first movement, whose spacious, out-of-doors feeling was mirrored by the soloist, with his leaping and arching phrases, the music in places silky and sensuous (a quality that really appealed to me) and then leavened in other places by some playful vigour. But the music’s “lightness and delicacy” (to quote the programme note) with ambiences given breadth and depth by bell-chime sounds made the listening experience for me at once airborne and profound. The chimes sounded as if they could have been a kind of call to observance, something ritualistic and exotic and resonant.’ Peter Mechen, Middle C, May 2017.

‘Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was an enjoyable light touch from Elmsly. I specifically liked the third movement Chasing the River Sound; it was high paced and revitalising. This was an interesting embodiment of the figurative chase along the bank following the water itself, but also an erratic heartbeat within the chaser led by the percussion……Guest violinist Jun Hong Loh was the highlight of the concert for me. …’ Emily Sharp, ‘Connecting Wellington’, May 2017

For your listening pleasure the ACO has a YouTube Channel. Click here to visit and hear some of our performances.

Schubert “Death and the Maiden”
Rautavaara “Divertimento”
Richard Strauss “Metamorphosen”
Edvard Grieg “Elegiac Melodies”

 

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