Bundanon Day 1

Try and guess what this is management speak for:

Meaningful interaction with the environment and dialogue with the local/indigenous surroundings in order to facilitate enhanced artistic expression.....

We will give you a hint...see above!!


We didn't spend all day at the beach however, we have practiced, Lisa has been doing some work on her picture book, and Daniel is going to explain his research project to us.

We went to Riversdale today to meet the other artists in residence, who are multimedia artists working as a group called the 'Thinking through the body lab'. They have an interesting blog.

Bundanon Residency 2009

G'day everyone. Ironwood is off on their (almost) annual excursion to Bundanon, artist Arthur Boyd's magic gift to all Australians, and artists of all stripes (and spots;)

We will be in residence there from February 3 - 22, working on lots of different things. We plan on a couple of sessions a day including rehearsing programs for the rest of 09, trying out some exciting new works with composers Kevin March and Damian Barbeler, reading our way through lots of chamber music, and planning lots more concerts, workshops and adventures in between.

You can find out more about Bundanon at www.bundanon.com (follow the link down the side of this blog). Bundanon was one of the homes of the Boyd family,and is where Arthur Boyd painted many of his most famous works - things like Pulpit Rock, and the flametrees, and the rocks by the riverside are all things you can see as you walk around Bundanon.As well as being an artist-in-residence complex, Bundanon is also a working beef cattle farm, with a prizewinning herd of Brangus cattle..that's a cross of Brahman and Black Angus cattle breeds, for all those city dwellers out there;)

For anyone interested in reading more about Arthur Boyd and the amazing Boyd family, Darleen Bungey's new biography about Arthur Boyd is great reading, and Brenda Niall's comprehensive family biography 'The Boyds' is fabulous to get an overview of the Boyd family and how they influenced each other artistically.

We'll try to update our blog regularly during the residency so you can read and see more of what we get up to....Hope you can visit our blog often!
Until next week,
Best summer residency wishes from Nicole & Ironwood(with their Akubra hats and RM Williams boots on!)

Peninsula Summer Music Festival

It is almost that time of the year again, and the 2009 Peninsula Summer Music festival is going to be even bigger and better!
Ironwood features in a big way this year, with two concerts of very different repertoire.
Ironwoods first festival concert, called Viennese Soirée at 5pm on the 31st of December at Main Ridge Estate celebrates the new year with a fun filled program of works ranging from Mozart to Strauss Jnr to welcome the new year Viennese style. This is an interesting program for Ironwood, along side regular repertoire such as works by Mozart and Haydn, we will be exploring the vast amount of Viennese repertoire written in the early to mid 19th Century including works by Johann Strauss Jnr and Senior, Joseph Lanner, and Johann Schrammel.

Here is an excerpt from the program notes explaining these Viennese gems:
The early nineteenth century saw Viennese dance music gaining enormous popularity. Despite what we are used to hearing today, the first compositions were intended for small chamber groups in intimate settings. Joseph Lanner, along with Johann Strauss Sr were known as the original ‘Waltz Kings’ of Vienna. They began their careers as violinists in a string quartet playing in cafés, restaurants and parties. Lanner found much success as a composer, as did Strauss, and their friendship unfortunately transformed into rivalry. Lanner was equally as popular as Strauss in Vienna, and his Steyrische Tänze of 1841, based on folk melodies from the Austrian province of Steyermark (Styria), are amongst his best loved compositions.
Strauss Sr’s Bajaderen waltzes were composed in the peak of his popularity in 1832 and were dedicated to the crown prince of Spain. The melodies are based on Auber’s opera The God Brahma and the Bayaderes.
Johann Schrammel and Johann Strauss Jr represented the next generation of Viennese composer/performers. The former founded the famous Schrammel Quartet with his brother Josef. Their music, based on the folk melodies of old Vienna, became known as ‘Schrammelmusik’ and became famous throughout Europe. Johannes Brahms held Schrammel’s music in the highest regard and was often found in the audience at their public concerts. Kunst und Natur is based on ‘Wien bliebt Wien’ (Vienna is always Vienna) and was one of his most famous marches.
Johann Strauss Jr. was of course the most successful and celebrated composer of mid 18th Century Vienna. He started his career like his father as a chamber musician and before he had reached the peak of his fame, in 1852 when the Annen Polka was composed, he was writing for a relatively small group of instrumentalists. It was first performed in a bandstand in the Prater in Vienna during the festival of St Anne on the 26th of July 1852.

It has been fun putting a quirky program like this together and we know we are going to have a ball playing it!
If you would like a sneak preview, we will be playing some of these works during the ABC live broadcast this Sunday afternoon the 28th of December at 3pm in the Iwaki Auditorium, Melbourne. Please feel free to join us as entry is free, and or tune in your radio to 105.9 ABC Classic FM.

More soon about the other exciting concert Ironwood is playing in the Festival!

Ironwood Live and Unplugged!

Sunday 28 December 2008
3.00pm Sunday Live
With Colin Fox




LIVE BROADCAST
Direct broadcast from the Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank Centre, Melbourne
Ironwood Chamber Ensemble
Rachael Beesley, violin
Julia Fredersdorff, violin
Nicole Forsyth, viola
Deirdre Dowling, viola
Nils Wieboldt, cello
Program includes:
Mozart String Quintet in C minor and a selection of shorter pieces anticipating celebration of the New Year!
Concert-goers in Melbourne are welcome. Please be seated by 2.50pm as the performance begins promptly at 3pm. Entry is free.
Producer: Haig Burnell

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

Musica Viva Tour

Ironwood are pleased to announce a tour with Miriam Allen in March next year presented by Musica Viva. The dates are as follows:

Miriam Allan, soprano with Ironwood

-Canberra March 12 7pm Llewellyn Hall, ANU
-Sydney March 14 8pm City Recital Hall, Angel Place
-Sydney March 30 7pm City Recital Hall, Angel Place
-Brisbane March 18 7pm Conservatorium Theatre, Southbank
-Newcastle March 21 7.30pm Concert Hall, Newcastle University Conservatorium
-Perth March 24 7.30pm Perth Concert Hall
-Adelaide March 26 8pm Adelaide Town Hall
-Melbourne March 28 8pm Elisabeth Murdoch hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
-Melbourne March 31 7pm Elisabeth Murdoch hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

For more information click here

Les Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roy

I have recently been playing in a very interesting project in France. It is a reconstruction of the 24 violins of Louis XIV, in which 12 instruments have been specially constructed to play the three inner parts, those of Haute Contre (slightly bigger than a violin), Taille (slightly bigger than a viola), and Quinte (a very big viola comparable to a viola da spalla, supported by a tie around the neck). These instruments all have the same tuning as a viola (ADGC). See the three types of instruments pictured below.


The upper (dessus) part was played on violins, and the bass line on Basses de Violons. In the second half of the 17th Century, the modern violin string family had not yet been standardised and the shape and form of instruments was still highly experimental all over Europe. The title of 24 violins, therefore, does not refer to violins as we know them in modern times, but to the violin family to which all of these instruments belong.

The orginal configuration of the 24 violins was 6 dessus de violons (violins as we know them), 6 Basses de violons (which are like big cellos tuned a tone lower) , and 4 of each of the inner parts which are varying sizes of 'viola like instruments'. This was then complimented by recorders, oboes, traverso flutes, and bassoons as well as theorbos and harpsichord to complement the Basso Continuo group.

The orchestra in the above mentioned form existed in Versailles for no more than 80 years during the middle baroque period, mostly during the reign of Louis XIV. The result of the influence of Jean Baptise Lully, the court composer and musical director from the early 1650s until his death in 1687, the orchestra was created specifically to perform the operas, ballets, and comédie- ballets that Lully wrote. He sometimes performed as a violinist, and, like the King, also as a dancer, but mostly directed the orchestra beating time with his long staff (the famous one that ended up causing his death when he stabbed himself in the foot with it, and it became gangrenous).

The music that Lully wrote during this period revolutionised composition in France, and was to be of considerable influence elsewhere in Europe. Not only was his exploration and expansion of dance forms highly inventive, but his ability to apply the French language to music in such a sensitive way had a massive impact on operatic style, resulting notably in a new style of recitative, closer to recitative accompagnato, rhythmically guided by the language itself.
The instrumentation of the 24 'violins' permitted Lully to write music which was incredibly rich in harmony, therefore creating a full, resonant and extremely powerful texture.

BUT to get back to the subject Julia!.....The interesting point of this project is that in recreating instruments which are designed for the exact tessitura of the parts they are required to play, the resulting sound is so powerful and balanced, that there is absolutely no comparison with the modern day viola (no matter how beautiful their playing is!!). The inner parts are harmonically the most interesting parts in any of Lully's works, and hearing them so clearly is pure joy! Of course, I am not saying that these instruments are BETTER than the viola (that would be asking for trouble), but just more suited to this repertoire. Nevertheless, the problem is that these instruments are unsuitable for playing any other types of music, therefore not really the type of instrument that most people could afford to invest in for such a limited repertoire. Buying a bow for a specific repertoire such as early italian playing, or classical playing is one thing, buying an instrument for 80 years worth of repertoire is ANOTHER!!!

It is fortunate that the French are so proud of their culture, and that the government funded Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles can see the benefit of an endeavour such as this. I feel very lucky to be part of it.