Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

The first Bourbaki Ensemble concert for 2018 continues our traditions of supporting Australian composers, and of presenting innovative programmes of music you (probably) haven't heard before. We begin with a concert of varied moods, light and dark, to be presented on Sunday 22 April, commencing at 2:45 pm, at our "home" venue of St. Stephen's Anglican Church, Newtown.

Joan Trimble was an Irish composer whose teachers at the Royal College of Music, London, included Ralph Vaughan Williams. In her Suite for Strings, the slow movement displays clear influences from her teacher, while the finale is purely Irish! Australian composer Graeme Koehne contributes to the long tradition of light and entertaining works under the title "divertissement" or "divertimento", though the last of the three movements is dominated by more serious moods. By contrast we offer three works of darker hues. The great film composer Bernard Herrmann showed the originality of his thinking in providing Hitchcock's notorious horror movie with music for strings alone, disdaining the tumult of brass, percussion and electronics which might be thought obligatory for such a theme. Lutosławski's tribute to his great Hungarian predecessor opens sombrely before rising to a cathartic climax. "Coronach" is a Scots Gaelic word for a funeral dirge, and Michael Berkeley's piece under this title includes allusions to the ballad "The Bonny Earl of Moray".

We are delighted to welcome back leading Sydney trombonist Greg van der Struik for his third appearance as soloist and composer with Bourbaki. Greg's Bass Trombone Concerto highlights both the bass instrument's surprising agility and its lyrical potentialities.

Tickets for this concert are available at the door, or through Eventbrite.

Greg van der Struik Concerto for Bass Trombone and String Orchestra (Greg van der Struik, trombone).
Witold Lutosławski Musique Funèbre, in memory of Béla Bartók.
Bernard Herrmann Prelude from Psycho.
Graeme Koehne Divertissement: Trois Pièces Bourgeoises.
Joan Trimble Suite for Strings.
Michael Berkeley Coronach, for strings.

Featured non-Australian music: Lutosławski, Herrmann, Trimble, Michael Berkeley

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website or by phone on 0433 074 322 or by email to david.355.113@gmail.com

Featured Australian Works

Featured artists

• Music of Greg Van der Struik
• Performer Greg Van der Struik
• Performer Bourbaki Ensemble
• Conductor David Angell