Rehearsals for Laura Kaminsky’s gorgeous “Twilight Settings” end in a cheesy photo shoot, and Laila Engle puts a microphone on the loudest instrument available. #newmusicnerds
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Christina Green is a Melbourne-based composer, songwriter, performer, music therapist and teacher. Green works as a composer-performer and as a composer for other ensembles/soloists, as well as maintaining activities as a performing songwriter in the acoustic/folk scene in Melbourne and beyond. She has recorded both as a pianist and singer-songwriter, and is active with the Melbourne Composers’ League, performing regularly at the Elbow Room and other concerts curated by the group.
Green met Palestinian-Lebanese, Australian lesbian performance poet Candy Royalle while they were both on residency at the Bundanon Arts Trust in 2012, and is delighted to have been able to create a new work setting Royalle’s Edge Sky Self, from A Trillion Tiny Awakenings (2018), for Homophonic 2020.
christinagreen.net
Maria Zajkowski is an award-winning poet, lyricist and librettist based in Melbourne. A regular collaborator with composer Wally Gunn, her first collection The Ascendant features on the Grammy nominated album Render by Roomful of Teeth. In 2019, her first libretto, Moonlite, a true crime queer love story based on Captain Moonlite and his lover James Nesbitt, premiered in the US. Her next collection, What we have except when we are lost, was written with MTC Cronin and is published through Spuyten Duyvil in New York. www.mariazajkowski.com
Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts producer and community radio broadcaster. Author of A Leaving (Vagabond Press), her live album, One Night Wonders, is produced by Going Down Swinging.
Thanks to ArtsHub for listing Homophonic! as one of the unmissable events on the Australian musical calendar!
Check out all the amazing works on this list. What august company!
Homophonic! is back for it’s 9th fabulous year!
Join us at the La Mama Carlton Courthouse for an evening of fabulous new music by amazing queer composers.
Jan 30th, 31st, 730pm.
Feb 1st, 1pm “relaxed” matinee, 60 minute duration, (all tickets $20) Jan 31st, 730 pm. Audio Description provided by Description Victoria.
Tickets available here and here! Tickets almost sold out on the Midsumma website, but check the La Mama website for availability!
Program:
Twilight Settings, Laura Kaminsky.
Quintet, Sean Shepherd.
*^Star Picc, Stephen de Filippo. (Winner of the Homophonic! Pride Prize)
*The Ascendent No. 1 The beginning and, Wally Gunn and Maria Zajkowski.
*^Edge Sky Self, Christina Green. Words by Candy Royalle.
(With thanks to the Estate of Candy Royalle and University of Western Australia Publishing)
*^Stonemaker, Naima Fine Fine
*Australian composer
^World Premiere
Performed by:
Musicians: Natasha Conrau, Zachary Johnston, Phoebe Green, Katherine Philp, Laila Engle, Robin Henry, Karen Heath, Ben Opie, Miranda Hill, Dan Richardson, Thea Rossen, Judith Dodsworth, and the Consort of Melbourne, led by Steven Hodgson.
Poet: Eleanor Jackson.
Homophonic! is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program, and assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, it’s arts funding and advisory body.
We are thrilled to announce that Stephen de Filippo is the inaugural winner of the Homophonic! pride prize!
Stephen de Filippo is a new music composer from the regional South West of Western Australia. Now based in California, Stephen is currently undertaking graduate studies at The University of California – San Diego.
Stephen’s research explores the ideas of control and density in time-banned notation forms — exploring these interactions though a variety of chamber works that focus on unique instrumental pairings, contemporary performance practice as a central device.
“I am very excited to be accepted as the recipient of the inaugural Homophonic! Pride Prize, and to be working with Laila Engle to create a new work that will be premiered at the Midsumma Festival 2020.
In the past, I have had some difficulty reconciling what it means to be a queer artist. The movement itself is so multi-faceted, diverse, and intersectional. So, I am aware that perhaps I present a limited scope, directly related to my lived experience. Nonetheless, I hope that through this commission that I can create a work that explores some themes of ‘queerness’ in an art music context.
Most recently, I have been tutoring a course in punk music history at UC San Diego, in California – discussing punk’s influence on the queer and feminist movements, and vice versa. Not only has this given me a historical appreciation of the wider queer movement, but it has also helped me in honing in on aspects of queerness that I find personally important. Notably, its transgressive qualities, and the sense of otherness, which is diminishing with the mainstreaming of queer culture (a double-edge sword of awareness, but also appropriation and assimilation).
This prize provides me with the opportunity to explore identity through creative practice, to which I am so thankful for, and am very proud to be part of this opportunity.”
Stephen de Filippo, 2019.
What a season! 3 shows sold out before opening night, and a rapturous crowd every night. Thanks again to all the amazing performers, our phenomenal tech team, and the always supportive and acoustically fabulous La Mama Courthouse Theatre.
All photos below taken on opening night by Agatha Yim at Polyphonic Pictures.
Stay tuned for news of Homophonic! 2020! We have big plans!
Please find my
Team “Neon” getting into the spirit of this “urban and muscular” music by Tansy Davies!
Zac Johnston, Robin Henry, Emily Clarke, Thea Rossen, Jacob Abela, Katherine Philp, and Miranda Hill braving the heat, while raising the temperature in the rehearsal room!
