Musical Mayhem

Apologies to all our readers for disappearing on you;we all got a bit busy in the last month or two...Here's a selection of what Ironwood have been up to:
Last week, Julia, Rachael & Valmai played with Salut in Sydney and Canberra, doing a program in which Mr Handel himself introduced and spoke about his music.
Julia also did two concerts with Latitude 37 in Melbourne and Flinders.
Danny, Alice, Neal & Nicole played a concert with Romanza at the Art Gallery of NSW which was all about the 'stylus phantasticus' - Biber, Schmelzer, Muffat, Buxtehude & JS Bach.
Lots of the Ironwood Workshop participants have been involved in concerts at Sydney Conservatorium of Music - a project about gesture in the cantatas of Scarlatti, directed by musicologist Allan Maddox, and the Early Music Ensemble's semester 2 concerts, directed by Neal, and tutored by Danny & Nicole - the last one being a big French program with Rameau, Lully,& De Lalande.
Nicole & Danny helped to direct some very succesful baroque & new music concerts with MLC School Burwood, with Genevieve Lacey, recorder, as soloist. The Chamber Orchestra of students aged 10-17 played Telemann, Biber, & JS Bach in one concert; and premiered a new piece by Australian composer Damien Barbeler, along with works by Elena Kats-Chernin, Ives, and student composers in the other www.mlcsyd.nsw.edu.au
Danny & Alice have been touring Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, playing Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, Beethoven 8, and the Brahms Double concerto.
Nicole has been richocheting from one end of the repertoire to the other - a world premiere of Nigel Butterley's latest work with Halcyon....and then to the Elgar Festival with Sydney Symphony conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
In between, she's been jamming in session recordings for new films 'Australia' and 'Mao's Last Dancer'. Mao's Last Dancer is the inspiring autobiography of dancer Li Cuxin, who grew up in rural poverty in China, & became a soloist with the Houston & Australian Ballet Companies.
Danny has been back to the UK to play with John Eliot Gardner's English Baroque Soloists (and got his own standing ovation at the Proms!), Neal has been turning his PhD into a book & Julia has made the big move back to Melbourne. Rachael has been very busy in Australia and Europe; she's about to lead Pinchgut Opera's new production of Charpentier's David & Jonathan (THEIR blog ) and is going to guest lead Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in 2009 as well.
PHEW!! you'd think we'd need a rest now, but next week we all begin work at Pinchgut Opera on David & Jonathan, as well as starting rehearsals for Ironwood & Latitude 37 for the Peninsula Summer Music Festival at the end of the year. Danny disappears back to work with EBS for a little while, and then we all meet in February at Bundanon for our next residency...
We'll keep updating during Pinchgut with more adventures (and hopefully a bit of summer surfing in Sydney between rehearsals...)
Nicole