CONCERTS 2019 Musical Director: John McCaughey

Astra concerts bring together voices and instruments in the crosswinds of contemporary music-making – among the varied faces of the present and the past, in the front and backwaters of the familiar and the little-known.

The 2019 concert season resounds with impulses from all directions, of differing geographies and histories, from choral polyphony to instrumental improvisation and from meditative compositions to early electronics. New works from Australia and other countries are heard in their premiere performances, with a rich context of sonic resources surrounding the work of the Astra Choir.

PresidentJohn Terrell

ManagerGabrielle Baker

Musical DirectorJohn McCaughey

PO Box 365 North Melbourne, VIC 3051 Tel: 03 9326 5424 Email: info@astramusic.org.au Website: www.astramusic.org.au

Concert ManagerMargaret Lloyd

Sound engineerMichael Hewes

Astra PublicationsKim Bastin, Allan Walker

AccompanistKim Bastin

Vocal soloists includingCatrina Seiffert, Leonie Thomson, Louisa Billeter, Spencer Chapman, Ben Owen, Lucien Fischer, Steven Hodgson, Tim Matthews Staindl

The Astra Improvising ChoirDirector Joan Pollock

The Astra ChoirConductor John McCaughey

The Astra Chamber Music Society is assisted by private donors, Creative Victoria, the Robert Salzer Foundation, The William Angliss Charitable Fund and Diana Gibson.

Donations to Astra Chamber Music Society over $2 are tax deductible.

Program details are correct at the time of printing.

Graphic Design & Illustration Stephen Horsley | Propellant

Astra MembershipYou can become a member of the Society on payment of FULL $50 (incl gst), CONC. $25 (incl gst). This entitles you to vote at the Annual General Meeting.

Concert PricesSingle ticket prices: FULL $35, CONC. $20. Concession includes students, pensioners, arts workers and health care cardholders.

BookingsTickets can be purchased online at trybooking.com or at the Astra office on 03 9326 5424

Subscription (20% discount)7 concert package: FULL $195, CONC. $110

4 concert package:FULL $110, CONC. $65

Book subscription tickets online:https://www.trybooking.com/BALQU

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Subscription tickets are transferable.

Astra Chamber Music Society Inc.Astra Concerts – The Astra Choir – Astra PublicationsABN 41 255 197 577

Five of Australia’s fine instrumental players come together for an excursion to the extra-ordinary. Contemporary improvisation in two striking duo formations meets the new world of around 1600 with violin and harpsichord – the era of “extravagant consonances”, when the theatre of virtuosity and spontaneous expression entered Western music. Composers include Girolamo Frescobaldi, Carlo Farina, Louis Couperin. The concert concludes with a sequence of solo improvisations, radiating from the dramatic extemporising of the young J.S. Bach in his Fantasia in A Minor BWV 922.

CONCERT 1 5PM SUNDAY 31 MARCHChurch of All Nations cnr. Palmerston and Drummond Streets Carlton

Duetti stravaganti: playing in the moment and from the 17th centuryErkki Veltheim & Anthony Pateras(viola & celesta)

Ann Morgan & Lizzy Welsh(harpsichord & baroque violin)

Simone de Haan & Erkki Veltheim(trombone & electric violin)

21st century realtime composition with instrumental fantasies between Renaissance and Baroque.

>BOOK CONCERT 1

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Polyphony from the USA, Spain and BrazilMilton Babbitt, Music for the Mass (1941)

Tomás Luis de Victoria, Tenebrae Responsories (1585)

with works by Francisco de Peñalosa, Heitor Villa Lobos, Hildegard and Pauline Oliveros

The Astra Choir and soloists conducted by John McCaughey

CONCERT 25PM SUNDAY14 APRIL St Peter and Paul’s Churchcnr. Dorcas and Montague Streets South Melbourne

In a little-known polyphonic monument of American choral music, Milton Babbitt – celebrated pioneer of electronic and serial composition – explores a wide palette of traditional choral writing in original ways. His wartime Mass setting, heard for the first time in Australia, is set among expressive pre-Easter polyphony from Renaissance Spain and 20th-century Brazil.

>BOOK CONCERT 2

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New from Romania George Balint, Angel-Cloud (2014-18)Concert poem for solo violin and choir with solo voices FIRST PERFORMANCE

Dan Dediu, Lux aeterna (1996)Concerto for solo mezzo-soprano and 8-part choir

Livia Teodorescu, Prayer of Queen Marie for the dead (2019)solo mezzo-soprano, solo violin and choir FIRST PERFORMANCE

with works by Radu Paladi and Sebastian Androne

Elizabeth Campbell (mezzo soprano) and Erkki Veltheim (violin)

The Astra Choir with soloists conducted by John McCaughey

CONCERT 3 5PM SUNDAY2 JUNE Carmelite Church cnr. Richardsonand Wright StreetsMiddle Park

Astra’s long standing link with Romanian composers continues with works from three generations, including world premieres from George Balint and Livia Teodorescu.

Three works form a kind of solo concerto with choral accompaniment. George Balint’s wordless Angel-Cloud is ‘ideatically’ based on a poem by the composer, a rhapsody for solo violin with choir. It is dedicated to the Astra Choir and its conductor. Dan Dediu’s Lux aeterna from the 1990s, premiered by Astra in 2012, is subtitled Concerto for solo mezzo-soprano and choir. Livia Teodorescu combines the two soloists in her adapted movement from a recent oratorio, made specially for this concert.

The Astra Choir is joined by two outstanding guest performers, Elizabeth Campbell (mezzo-soprano) and Erkki Veltheim (violin).

>BOOK CONCERT 3

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New from Holland, Georgia and AustraliaThe Axes Quartet with Niels Bijl (Amsterdam)

Ronald Moelke, L’infinito (2018) poem by Leopardi for choir and saxophone quartet

Gija Kancheli, Amao omi (2005)

with ensemble music by Johan Ockeghem and Alexander Agricola (15th C.)

and new works for choir and saxophones (2019) by Marguerite Boland and Allan Walker

Axes Saxophone Quartet, Niels Bijl, Carmen Nieves, Simon Brew, Jay Byrnes

The Astra Choir with soloists conducted by John McCaughey

CONCERT 4 5PM SUNDAY18 AUGUSTCarmelite Church cnr. Richardson and Wright StreetsMiddle Park

R E S I D E N C Y I

Saxophones & Choir

In the first of two concerts with guest ensembles, Astra welcomes the prominent Dutch saxophonist Niels Bijl, a frequent visitor to Australia for concerts and teaching, joined by his Axes saxophone quartet of leading performers from Australia and New Zealand.

Recent Dutch and Georgian works are set among early music from the Low Countries and new pieces for the occasion from Melbourne composers Marguerite Boland, who grew up in the Netherlands, and Allan Walker.

>BOOK CONCERT 4

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ASTRA + INLAND + L’ARSENALE (Venice)new solo, duo and ensemble works from Venice and Melbourne from

ENSEMBLE L’ARSENALE: Livia Rado (soprano), Ilario Morciano (saxophone), Igor Zorbin (accordion), Lorenzo Tomio (electric guitar), Roberto Durante (keyboards), Filippo Perocco (conductor and organ)

INLAND: performer-composers from the Australian diaspora, including Jon Heilbron (contrabass, Berlin) and James Rushford (keyboards and electronics, USA)

ASTRA: Kim Bastin and Joy Lee (pianos), voices and instruments

CONCERT 5 5PM SUNDAY15 SEPTEMBER Church of All Nations cnr. Palmerston and Drummond StreetsCarlton

R E S I D E N C Y I I

AGON: The contest!

Astra joins forces with Melbourne’s contemporary concert group INLAND (artistic directors Rohan Drape and Alexander Garsden) to host the Venice-based group L’ARSENALE (artistic director Filippo Perocco), whose associated composers and performers have collaborated with Astra over many years, including Astra Choir concerts in Treviso and Venice in 2014.

Stravinsky’s late balletic work Agon (1957) for two pianos provides a context and metaphor for the event: a choreography, a contest, a display of contrasting musics from the performers and composers of the three groups.

>BOOK CONCERT 5

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In a lively montage of the familiar, the forgotten and the newly-formed, pieces from the six decades of the Astra Choir’s life are placed alongside solo piano works of diverse origins. A procession of Australian and other materials, historical and recent. Program details to be announced.

ASTRA OMNIBUS– A resumé of short pieces for voices and keyboardsJoy Lee, Kim Bastin, Peter Dumsday (keyboards) The Astra Choir with soloists conducted by John McCaughey

CONCERT 6 5PM SUNDAY27 OCTOBER Church of All Nations cnr. Palmerston and Drummond StreetsCarlton

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Unsettled choir scores– A terrain of spoken and sung music 1930–2011Ernst Toch, Charles Seeger, John J. Becker, Stefan Wolpe, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Johanna Beyer, Robert Erickson, Kenneth Gaburo, Pauline Oliveros, Milton Babbitt

The Astra Choir with soloists, electronics and instrumental ensemble conducted by John McCaughey

CONCERT 7 5PM SUNDAY8 DECEMBER Good Shepherd ChapelAbbotsford ConventSt Heliers StreetAbbotsford

This concert of unusual and adventurous American choral works from nine decades initiates the Astra Choir’s third project of first-recordings with the New York label New World Records. Starting from Ernst Toch’s recently rediscovered speech choruses with pioneering electronic manipulation from 1930, the program sets out a landscape of heterogeneous materials - secular, religious, experimental, tonal, meditative, political – that have lain mostly neglected in the 20th-century artistic terrain.

>BOOK CONCERT 7

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Astra scores and recordings can be purchased at www.astramusic.org.au/publications or by contacting the Astra office

Astra PublicationsTranscribed and edited by Kim Bastin and Allan Walker

Frédéric Chopin arr. Keith HumbleEtude Opus 25 No. 7, violoncello and piano

Helen GiffordCarol — As dew in Aprille, voice and pianoDesperation, viola soloShiva; the auspicious one, piano soloParvati; Celebrations of the Apsaras, clarinet soloUndertones of War, piano soloAncestress, viola and piano

William HendersonMurchitt — a daydream, performance text

Keith Humble Eight Bagatelles piano soloEight Cabaret Songs voice and pianoSonata No. 3, piano soloSonata No. 4, piano soloThree Nocturnes, choir and pianoThree Folios for Piano 1953–1967Sonata in C minor for violin and pianoFive Pieces in Two Parts violoncello and pianoEarliest Piano Works 1947–1952Trio No. 2, violin, clarinet and piano

Franz Liszt arr. Keith Humble (Trio No.4)Symphonic Poem No. 4 (Orpheus), violin, cello and piano

Lawrence WhiffinCat Pieces piano soloMots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames, soprano and pianoFour Études, piano soloSonatina, piano solo

Astra Discography

New World Records, USAJohanna Beyer: Sticky Melodies. Choral and Chamber Music 1932–43 (DOUBLE-CD)

Merlyn Quaife (soprano), Craig Hill (clarinet)Miwako Abe, Aaron Barnden, Erkki Veltheim, Rosanne Hunt (string quartet) Nicholas Synot (double bass), Kim Bastin (piano), Peter Dumsday (piano).

The Astra Choir conducted by John McCaughey.

“We, like Salangan Swallows…”A Choral Gallery of Morton Feldman and Contemporaries

Morton Feldman, Will Ogdon, Earle Brown, Pauline Oliveros, Warren Burt, Robert Carl.

The Astra Choir with soloists and instrumental ensembles, conducted by John McCaughey.

Move Records, MelbourneAstra 60 Michael Kieran Harvey, piano

Australian piano music of seven decades: Keith Humble (1959), Helen Gifford (1966),Warren Burt (1971), Mark Pollard (1983), Marguerite Boland (1994), Tom Henry (2006), Lawrence Whiffin (2011).

Astra CDs, MelbourneThrenodyMichael Kieran Harvey, piano

Australian piano compositions by James Anderson, Andrew Byrne, Stuart Campbell,Michael Kieran Harvey, Keith Humble, John McCaughey, Carl Vine.

BagatellesKeith Humble, piano

Liszt, Bartok and Humble, recorded at Humble’s last public recital, at La Trobe University in 1993.

murchitt a daydream (CD AND BOOK)

Lawrence Whiffin & William Henderson,

Merlyn Quaife (soprano), Tyrone Landau (tenor), William Henderson (reciter), The Astra Choir and instrumental ensemble conducted by John McCaughey.

White and BlackKim Bastin and Joan Pollock, pianos

Schoenberg, Second Chamber Symphony and works for two pianos by Schumann, Ravel and Debussy.

“Achilles falls…”ASTRA CONCERT ARCHIVE I.

Choruses, song, melodrama, instrumental solo and chamber music: Stefan Wolpe, Webern, Beethoven, Brahms.

Soloists including Miwako Abe (violin), Tristram Williams (trumpet), The Astra Choir and instrumental ensembles conducted by John McCaughey.

“first and last things…”ASTRA CONCERT ARCHIVE II.

Bach, Lechner, Busoni, Kagel, Hindemith, Martin Friedel, Wolfgang Hufschmidt, Paul Celan.

Kim Bastin & Joan Pollock (piano duo); Margaret Ricketts and William Henderson (speakers), The Astra Choir and instrumental ensembles conducted by John McCaughey.

Choral Scenes. The Western Front, World War I (1999)

Helen Gifford

Poems by René Arcos, August Stramm, Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, Frederic Manning, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilhelm Klemm, Charles Vildrac, Edmund Blunden, Laurence Binyon, Apollinaire, Vance Palmer.

The Astra Choir with solo soprano, speakers and instruments, conducted by John McCaughey.

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