The Song Company presents Song Co & Co. Sunday, July 7 at 4pm. Llewellyn Hall. Tickets: $50.75, concession $40.75, family and student rates also available. See ticketek.com.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Song Company is certainly mixing it up with its next Canberra program: Song Co & Co - old songs, new songs, shared songs. In a first for the Song Company, the ensemble will collaborate with a different community choir in each of the concert venues: in Wollongong with con voci; in Newcastle with the University of Newcastle Chamber Choir; in Sydney with Leichhardt Espresso Choir; and here in Canberra with Oriana Chorale.
The pinball politics of the national capital will feature in a specially commissioned 20-minute cantata by Canberra pair Hal Judge and Tim Hansen titled Howls of the House.
The work was conceived, according to Judge, as ''an entertaining, amusing and sometimes satirical musical snapshot of life in Parliament House, both chambers as well as the corridors, the estimate rooms and the restrooms''.
Pow! Score 500 for a hit on the leader of the opposition. Wham! A direct knock on the principal party power-broker. Score 1000. Is this the sort of thing that'll have us howling?
''Well, I was approached by Roland Peelman to write this piece,'' Judge says. ''He'd read a piece that I'd written previously about Alexander Downer and he came up with a broad concept - something about the sounds that emanate from the political centre of the city.''
Judge reads me a couple of hilarious stanzas. ''I inevitably find the irony when I delve into politics so my writing becomes satirical,'' he says. ''Politics is a ridiculous spectacle. Turn it up. Shrug off all the cynicism about Canberra. What Canberra needs is more pomp and ceremony.''
The working titles of the songs whet the appetite: Question Time, Democracy and The Independents Sextet - which Judge says will star Bob Katter, Craig Thompson and Tony Windsor. Then there's The Press Gallery Song with, naturally, mention of our own Canberra Times, Slippery Dip, inspired by former Speaker Peter Slipper, Swinging Voters and, finally, Mr Commissioner, Please Allow Me to Explain.
The collaboration between Judge and Hansen, who was still working in the US at the time, was interesting. ''I'd start with the lyrics,'' Judge says, ''and email them off to Tim in New York. He'd iron out the wrinkles, write the music and we'd ping-pong back and forth … I'd talk in stanzas and metre; he'd use musical terms. It worked beautifully.''
Hansen says that working with Judge and Peelman felt like the most natural thing in the world. ''I love the bizarre world of Australian politics,'' he says, ''and my first foray into music composition was writing songs for music theatre … but I tried to resist moving too much into the music theatre world, mostly because I felt I had this great opportunity to work with some of the most amazing singers in Australia. I mean, they can sing pretty much anything.''
He worried about writing something that was too silly for the Song Company. ''But Hal's lyrics are perfectly suited to the jolly show tunes that Gilbert and Sullivan are famous for and I love big chords, modulations, big fat sweeps up and down the piano. I couldn't get away from writing songs with cheerfully boppy melodies all wrapped up with a perfect cadence.'' After assurances from Peelman that this was exactly what he wanted, Hansen relaxed. ''After having that annoying little prickle of professional angst removed, the music just flowed.''
The program will begin with entirely different music, a variety of works designed to show the versatility of the ensemble in concord with the singers of the Oriana Chorale. As Anna Fraser, a core member of the Song Company, says, ''We want to display the diversity of a cappella music and to showcase what's accessible and possible with community choirs.''
The ensemble will sing J.S. Bach's Air on a G string, Benjamin Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia and what Fraser describes as ''three airy madrigals''.
The Oriana Chorale will sing a bracket of their own choice and then join with the Song Company in three rollicking Australian songs: Moreton Bay, Click go the Shears and Waltzing Matilda.
After interval, Tobias Cole will join the Song Company ensemble in three Australian barbershop quartets and three other songs by Martin Wesley Smith.
''It's a nice mix of repertoire,'' Fraser says, ''and good to feature some Australian works. You can still do some complicated music together. It's all about the creative process.'' She says Peelman is a perfectionist who believes everyone should strive for the best. ''It's important we take into consideration all the capabilities of the singers.''
Howls of the House will be the final offering.
Judge says that there is nothing more exciting than hearing his ''solitary scribbles'' turned into magic by the brilliance of Hansen's composition.
''And I regard the elite singers of the Song Company as super-human,'' he says. ''What they can do with the human voice through the vocal scale, with command of such complexity.''