Art Song Canberra presents Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?

Susan Ellis and Dianna Nixon are friends who have worked together many times. When Ellis was asked to perform a program needing not only a soprano but also an accompanist who was required to speak as she played, she thought that Nixon would be the perfect choice.

"Dianna is a great pianist and she's very into hybrid arts," Ellis says. "The speaker plays many different characters. We both believe that the text is so important and we both like off-beat things. This is a text-driven recital."

The program, through words and music, looks at the work and lives of two strong women, continents apart, but both striving to have their work and ideas heard. Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven? takes its name from a poem by the 19th-century American writer Emily Dickinson and this work, set to music by Aaron Copland, will begin the program.

The Plaint of Mary Gilmore was written in 1984 by Vincent Plush and relates to three separate parts of Mary Gilmore's life. It was commissioned by singer Elizabeth Campbell and pianist Anthony Fogg to end a series of concerts called Nation to Now.

"Phase one," Plush explains, "was when Gilmore was a schoolmistress in Paraguay. Phase two was a period as a bored housewife and in phase three she had become the grande dame of literature in Sydney. I wanted to explore the dilemma of women who have to sacrifice their careers to [those] of their husbands."

Each of the 12 movements of the piece has a different key base, "they vary from almost Elgarian to post-modernism techniques. At one point the page turner plays a piece at the top of the piano while the pianist plays and speaks. The work hasn't been done in its entirety since November 11, 1988."

Peter Sculthorpe's Fragments, which will end this concert, is a collection of pieces written over several years. They are settings of Patrick White's Voss texts. Plush says: "It's difficult to write music to Patrick's texts which had to be converted into something suitable for a composer." Plush calls the relationship between Sculthorpe and White "a testy and somewhat brief relationship-ride". The first performance of Fragments was given during The Voss Journey at the National Library in May 2009. Ellis and Nixon both love this Sculthorpe piece. Ellis says, "We have the two big cycles and then the Sculthorpe, because we love it," and Nixon talks of "the gorgeous harmonics and rhythms – a lovely piece to finish with".

Nixon has been appearing at The Street Theatre in Melissa Bubnic's all-female play with music, Boys Will Be Boys, playing four different boys in what she describes as "a technically demanding" performance. Who better then to now play Mary Gilmore through the phases of her life in another piece that presents women's fight for equality in a male-dominated society?

Dickinson's Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven? described as "a poem that explores the emotions attached to exclusion", and ends with the angry, "Why do they shut Me out of Heaven? Did I sing too loud?" will also offer Nixon the opportunity to showcase her command of a panoply of emotions. Copland set all of the 12 linked Dickinson poems and Ellis says that she and Nixon felt that they must perform all of them, each dedicated to a different composer, further extending Nixon's dramatic skills. "Each poem has its own specific characteristics and its own mood as dictated by the text," Nixon says. "They're really beautiful and have Copland's own particular flavour, tonalities and chords."

She describes the piano part in the Plush piece as underscoring rather than accompanying the words in a rich reinforcement of the text.

"We'll be doing our best to interpret the pieces and we wanted to find a program that suited both our skills. Susan has a lot of faith in me."

Ellis says: "This kind of recital is really all kinds of things but everything ties in with Vincent's work and interests."

Plush adds: "The story of Mary Gilmore really needs to be told."