Ensemble Offspring | Avant Gardens: Songbirds
Saturday March 8, 2025, Glebe, NSW
Performers:
Claire Edwardes – Artistic Director, percussion
Lamorna Nightingale – flutes
Jason Noble – clarinet, bass clarinet
Songbirds is the first concert of Ensemble Offspring’s 30 th birthday season, ‘back by popular demand to enliven Sydney backyards’ and presented this time in Glebe at the house of John Wynter and Rafi Qasabian.
Discretion or mystery? Audience members receive the concert address only days before the performance date. This seems to add to the allure as we are greeted at the gate and quietly file along the hallway of the grand Victorian house to an elegant modern room that opens out onto an extended patio beside a glistening lap pool. The scene for Songbirds is set by a large and lovely painting of a natural bush scene of water, rock, trees and greenery, side-lit by two curving standard lamps, almost bird-like in form.
Claire Edwardes, artistic director of Ensemble Offspring, introduced the Songbirds concert by telling us that EO first started collecting and commissioning pieces about birds seven years ago, and has added works every year since. EO has toured versions of the program throughout Australia and overseas to Helsinki and Berlin. Tonight’s concert included works that EO have previously performed and recorded, and also featured the premiere of their latest commission: A Tawny Tale, by the award-winning Sydney composer Caitlin Yeo.
Claire’s animated introductions to each piece delight the audience, who then sit spellbound throughout, only to break into enthusiastic applause at the end of each performance, delighted by the virtuosity of the players and the flawless synchronicity of the instruments. It is not often that one gets to observe so closely the extended techniques used in contemporary music – particularly the different ways of playing the vibraphone and Claire graciously explained some of them to the audience. Songbirds presented the music of eight Australian composers, with seven of the pieces influenced by bird song and some even incorporating recorded birdsong.
Sydney composer Fiona Loader’s Lorikeet Corroboree (2015) was an effective opening for the concert, with the flute and clarinet in dialogue with each other, much as birds might answer each other’s calls, with the vibes providing a supporting framework of ostinati. The composer had spent many hours transcribing bird calls and some of the melodic fragments in the piece certainly sounded like lorikeets, magpies and butcher birds, though there were also a few fragments borrowed from classical composers, (e.g. the Queen of the Night Aria [ from Mozart’s The Magic Flute]) which were deftly woven into the fabric of the piece. The magpies would approve!
Brenda Gifford’s Mungala [Clouds] (2018) takes us to the sky but with clouds rather than birds. Gifford has the alto flute (Lamorna Nightingale) and some discreet hand-held percussion (Claire Edwardes) to represent clouds building across the sea in Yuin country (the South Coast of NSW), bringing thunder and then gentle rain, with Nightingale ably negotiating some complex extended flute techniques.
Jason Noble then rejoined for a performance of Nardi Simpson’s Of Stars and Birds (2020), which was inspired by a beautiful Yuwaalaraay (North West NSW) creation story of a black cockatoo and wedge-tailed eagle flying up into the sky and then merging to create the Southern Cross. After a gentle opening from the vibes, the flute and clarinet engaged in some precisely articulated call and response dialogue and repeated riffs, with the trio ending on a glowing major chord.
Brisbane composer Robert Davidson uses recorded bird sounds and a discreet percussion track in his three movement piece Bird Riffs (2024). The kookaburras start, in Kookaburra Riff, along with a discreet percussion track to set the tempo, and the musicians then join in with solos and repeated riffs. The kookaburras continue their song through the piece, and even have a short ‘solo’ in the middle. A very cleverly constructed piece! The second movement, Raven Riff, was one of the high points of this concert for me. The composer says that he treated the raven’s call as something of a lament, and this worked exceptionally well in the piece with the bass clarinet of Jason Noble joining the raven, and then the vibes and flute slipping into the texture to create an eerie effect. I was reminded of the Gavin Bryars piece: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which also uses a mournful, and strangely affecting recorded element. The third movement: Magpie Riff was played to finish the concert.
Caitlin Yeo – ‘being’ the Tawny Frogmouth…
The next piece was the newly commissioned piece by Caitlin Yeo, A Tawny Tale, and she introduced the piece herself by telling us that it was inspired by a tawny frogmouth that makes night visits to her garden in Marrickville. Yeo is one of Australia’s most eminent (and most awarded) screen composers, so she knows how to use music narratively. The piece is built on a simple motive that is then transformed to capture the stillness of the bird, along with the sudden, darting movements as it catches insects. There was a lot of variety in the piece and exploration of different instrumental colours. The audience was very appreciative!
Jason Noble then presented the solo clarinet piece Dawn Searching (2014) by the Sydney-based saxophonist Nicholas Russoniello (adapted for clarinet by Lloyd Van’t Hoff). Some gorgeous clarinet tone, and an interesting extended technique of using the clarinet key noises percussively.
Claire Edwardes joined Jason Noble for the next piece: Wintersun 2014 (2022) by Jon Rose (Alice Springs) and Hollis Taylor (Sydney), which is one movement from Nightsongs – ‘for clarinet, vibraphone and pied butcher birds’. The composers describe this as ‘an interspecies engagement between the ancient music of a uniquely Australian songbird… and contemporary human musicians.’ The butcher bird becomes the third member of the group in this moving piece.
As the concert drew to a close two movements of Gerard Brophy’s trio (written for Ensemble Offspring in 2019, Beautiful Birds). Brophy is one of Australia’s finest and most respected composers and has a special relationship with EO which has premiered many works by him. The second movement of Beautiful Birds: Flamingos began with some slow quintal vibraphone chords before establishing a gently syncopated ostinato, over which flute and clarinet entered with flurries of notes, perhaps suggesting the flamingos resting in stately poses with occasional wing flutters.
The technically challenging third movement Hummingbirds allowed the three musicians to further demonstrate their virtuosity and to show why Ensemble Offspring has been at the forefront of contemporary music ensembles for thirty years. Brophy uses the structure of a six-beat bar alternating with a nine-beat bar in a fast tempo, with similar melodic ostinati in all three parts – often in canon and sometimes coming together in unison. The musical effect is mesmerising and the final flourish of the piece, with the flute rising to a climax and the bass clarinet plummeting, was greeted with sustained applause.
The final piece was Davidson’s Magpie Riff, using a looped magpie song and clapsticks rhythm which fitted neatly into two bars of 4/4. The flute joined in with the magpies, playing a catchy riff, and then the musicians accompanied the liquid, burbling magpie sounds with more riffs, before slowing to a stop in the middle of the piece, allowing the magpies to take a ‘solo’. The trio returned with solos for the three players, and then finished the piece with a unison playing of the very first flute riff. A highly successful interspecies collaboration!
The concert concluded with a delicious supper provided by our hosts along with a selection of wines from EO sponsor Rowlee Wines of Orange. A much-appreciated opportunity to mingle, share enjoyment of the performance, and to congratulate and chat with the performers and Caitlin Yeo.
