Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

The city has always found its way into music through the people who have lived in, imagined, and overheard it. This concert is an ode to urban life as four composers have heard it.

Luigi Boccherini's La musica notturna elle strade di Madrid opens with the city after dark as it passes through morning. Bells, processions, beggars, soldiers, and parishioners pass through a string quintet written from within 1700s Madrid itself, night unfolding scene by scene.

Paweł Mykietyn's La strada shifts into something more fluid and mysterious: harpsichord, saxophone, viola da gamba or cello, old references colliding with sharper, modern tension. The city here is layered, shifting, never quite settled. With this work ANAM's Artistic Director Paavali Jumppanen will be giving his final performance for ANAM.

One of Australia's truly imaginative contemporary voices Kitty Xiao is present with her work A city's pounding heart which brings us fully into the present with flute, violin, cello, percussion, electronics, video, all tuned to sensory overload.

The program closes with George Gershwin's An American in Paris, jazz threaded through French impressionism, Ravel's shadow close by. As Nadia Boulanger is said to have put it: "Why become a second Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?"

Luigi BOCCHERINI String Quintet in C Major, op. 30 no. 6, G. 324 "La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid"
Kitty XIAO A city's pounding heart
Paweł MYKIETYN La Strada
George GERSHWIN arr. TAILLARD An American in Paris

ANAM Musicians

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website

Featured artists

• Music of Kitty Xiao
• Presented by ANAM Musicians