21st Century Conductor

New Zealand in Antarctica

2008-07-06T21:51:58+02:00

ANOTHER COMPOSER IN ANTARCTICA

What do you get if you cross a penguin with a drag queen?

Answer: A world premiere from the New Zealand Artists in Antarctica Scheme.

Nations across the world have found the perfect solution to the surplus of composers. Sweden, UK and Canada are already joining New Zealand in extraditing composers to the frozen north or south, and those that survive, have to come back and write a piece of music. Of course, when you send a drag queen like Lilith la Croix, aka New Zealand Composer Gareth Farr (pictured above), there’s no question of her NOT surviving. “First I was afraid, I was petrified....I will survive, I will not lay down and Die”, we have all learned from Gloria Gaynor.

"Terra Incognita" is Gareth’s response to 2 weeks in the Scott base in Antarctica. This 25 minute work is a symphonic cantata involving Paul Horan on text, Paul Whelan as solo bass-baritone, the Orpheus Choir directed by Michael Fulcher, a new video installation by Mike Newman and myself with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, one of the best orchestras in the southern hemisphere.

Paul Horan drew on many sources, including Scott’s own diary and Paul Whelan’s desire to sing about the Larson B ice shelf, which he and I had both read about in Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth”. The full text can be found under the blog entry – Terra Incognita.

How does one write music about the Antarctic, where there is pure silence? Even one’s own sounds are absorbed by the snow. Gareth rose to this challenge by forming a journey of the spirit, as Captain Scott travels out from New Zealand to a journey of challenge and eventually despair, drawing on his own language through Gamelan , rock and romantic influences.

You can find out more about Artists to Antarctica here:

http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/research/1025

Other Artists to Antarctica can be found at:

http://www.art-newzealand.com/Issue117/southbound.htm

http://www.nzartmonthly.co.nz/trezise_006.html

And Gareth Farr:

www.garethfarr.com

www.drumdrag.com

Orpheus choir:

http://www.orpheuschoir.org.nz/About.html

Paul Whelan:

http://www.paulwhelan.co.uk/

Terra Incognita:

http://www.promethean-editions.co.nz/php/WorkDetail.php?WorkID=332&Composer=Gareth%20Farr&ComposerID=1

Suite from Vaughan Williams’ “Scott in the Antarctic”

The NZSO requested that I put together an opener for the concert, based on the film music from Vaughan Williams’s firm “Scott of the Antarctic”. Only the manuscript for the entire music exists in the British library, but Chandos Music had published it as score and parts for the BBC Philharmonic CD of Vaughan Williams’ film music, so I was able, with the CD and kind permission from the Vaughan Williams Trust, to put my own suite together.

The suite is 11 minutes long, and makes a great concert opener for Youth, Amateur and professional orchestras alike, particularly if there’s a choir & orchestra piece programmed.

Scoring is 2+1,2+1,2+1,2+1:4,3,3,1: 2 perc (inc. wind machine), timp, cel, pno, hp, (opt.org) str. Choir (SSAA)

1. Climbing the Glacier

2. Aurora

3. Doom

4. Blizzard

5. Penguin Dance

6. Scott on the Glacier

During the performance, images of Sir Edmund Hillary, who had died a few months before, were projected in tribute to this great New Zealander.

For more enquiries about this suite, contact Chandos Music:

http://www.mpaonline.org.uk/About/members/Chandos_Music_Ltd.html

for the BBC Phil CD:

http://www.amazon.com/Film-Music-Vaughan-Williams-1/dp/B00006JK96/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1213533956&sr=8-3

The Concert on 18^th April, 2008

Another musical highlight, hot on the heels of my Carnegie Hall debut. What began as a cold call to the NZSO turned into one of the most innovative concerts I’ve ever conducted.

The genius of the NZSO team, led by Rachel Hyde, Manager of Artistic Planning, put together:

A world premiere by New Zealand composer Gareth Farr, with Paul Whelan as bass-baritone
A new suite of Vaughan Williams’ film music
An NZ premiere of Maxwell Davies Antarctic Symphony
Video art for the Farr and Maxwell Davies by Mike Newman
An education program for schools
A week-long festival reviewing the years of artistic output from New Zealand Artists in Antarctica
A live video conference between Peter Walls, CEO of the NZSO and the New Zealand scientists at Scott base, directly after the Vaughan Williams, in which the scientists, who were receiving the whole concert live from a sold-out Wellington Town hall, performed their own “live” cardboard cut-out orchestra version of Beethoven 5, to everyone’s great hilarity.
A fundraiser to help restore and maintain the Scott base
A broadcast from New Zealand Radio

This is what orchestral music can be; meaningful to the whole community, high tech with traditional, challenging, connecting the past with the present, connecting people outside the concert hall in remote communities with communal music making.

Explore the NZSO Antarctic spectacular at:

http://www.nzso.co.nz/the_concerts/special_concerts/antarctic

Here are the full reviews below:

http://www.salient.org.nz/arts/music/classical-music-2

http://www.captimes.co.nz/rev/27/n/1786/Icecold.boss

From the bay in Wellington

Terra Incognita

2008-06-17T20:37:14+02:00

Terra Incognita

Music by Gareth Farr

Text edited and written by Paul Horan

1. "This world was never ours"

(Choir)

2. “Come my Friends” (soloist)

The last section of Ulysees by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Come my friends

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows;

for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset,

and the baths

Of all the western stars,

until I die.

Tho' much is taken, much abides;

and tho'

We are not now that strength

which in the old days

Moved earth and heaven;

that which we are, we are;

One equal-temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate,

but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find,

and not to yield.

3. In Discovery's Slang (choir)

by Paul Horan

In discovery's slang, I am last

So of course you will claim me

As if I am a god that forgot you

But no, I never knew you.

In discovery's songs, I will rise

But till you can make the word

That will run out to the horizon

None will be heard 'bove the wind.

4. "Night light" (soloist)

Scott, 1905

... As the red glow slowly travels around

and is lost behind the western hills,

our white world is left alone

with the moon and the stars.



The cold, white light falls

on the colder, whiter snow.



The eye travels on and on

Over the gleaming plain

till it meets with the white misty horizon.

and above and beyond,

the soft, silvery outlines of the mountains.



Did one not know them of old,

it would sometimes be difficult

to think them real,

so deep a spell of enchantment

seems to rest on the scene.



And indeed it is not a spell

that rests o a man alone,

for it is on such night

that the dogs lift up their voices

and ´join in a chant

which disturbs even the most restful sleepers.

5. From "The Quiet Land" by Frank Debenham

(soloist and choir)

Men are not old here

Only the rocks are old,

and the sheathing ice:

Only the restless sea,

chafing trhe frozen land,

Ever moving,

matched by the ceaselessly-circling sun.



Wild birds go wandering

over the face of the snow;

Bright, swift, harsh-crying,

strange adnd heedless.

Transient in time over the mountains,

As we are transient,

strangers in an old land.



Choir enters: (This earth was never ours)



Man is not old here

Creeping upon the white,

brilliant brow of the world.

Less than the birds,

impeded and muffled by the snow,

Unheeded by the sun,

rejected by the sea,

And stunned and stunted by the silence.



And above all,

the dream is here.

The dream of this that is above all else.

Braveness and light and space,

and the everlasting morning.

For this time there will be no awakening,

and no journey back.

Serenity is made whole and lucid;

This time the dream will never end.

6. "Eternal Silence" (soloist)

from Scott's impressions on the march

The eternal silence

of the great white desert

Cloudy columns of snow

drift advancing from the south,

pale yellow wraiths,

heralding the coming storm,

blotting out one by one

the sharp cut lines of the land.

7. "Great God" (soloist with choir)

Scott journal

Great God!

this is an awful place

and terrible enough

for us to have laboured to it

without the reward

of priority.

8. "Goodbye Larsen B"

by Paul Horan

A shift

A maw

A gulch of icy water

So goodbye Larsen B

Farewwell and good luck.



Were you a ship

A fleet

A great, white fleet

Striking otu for the North

Show our continent's might.



Were you a gift

A Prize

A glit'ring prize

Sacrificed to secure

The Antarctic silence.



But you are just

A baulk

A shapeless arbitary baulk

Bobbing: heaving and snapped

Green-silver in remaining light.



Goodbye Larsen B

Farewell and good luck

Were still an edge

The lip

Like the unmoving lip

An eternal border

Between the deep and the vast.



But you are just

A scrap

The palin testament

To our new talent

The once unthinkable



Here

Where

It seems

to fail

I step backwards again

As the ice softens:

Terrac incognita

A sliding hill of snow



Goodbye Larsen B

Farewell

Now go.





For enquiries about Terra Incognita:



http://www.promethean-editions.co.nz/php/WorkDetail.php?WorkID=332&Composer=Gareth%20Farr&ComposerID=1