The bass clarinet is a gentle giant capable of enveloping the listener in a glowing aura of sound. It is this quality of the instrument that Australia’s most versatile clarinettist, Aviva Endean, explored in the resonant Norla Dome.
Real Time Arts, Matthew Lorenzon
In the Half Light invites the audience into an immersive listening space, combining contemporary clarinet repertoire and original compositions with an exquisite use of light, shadow play, and silhouette. Aviva Endean worked in collaboration with theatre and lighting designers Danny Pettingill and Romanie Harper to create an intimate, dream-like setting in which to experience this exploratory and ethereal music.
Aviva Endean– clarinet, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet.
Romanie Harper– set design
Danny Pettingill-lighting design
Margaret Cameron– mentor
Presented by ASTRA Chamber Music Society
Supported by Arts Victoria and and The Faculty of VCA and MCM at The University of Melbourne and JUMP Mentoring grants (Australia Council)
With works by some of the great composers of the late 20th century, In The Half Light presents music that engages with the substance and power of sound and carries the audience through an exploration of how sound can sculpt space. In a piece for clarinet and sine wave oscillator, poet of acoustic phenomena Alvin Lucier causes ripples of sound to spin around the space. Spectralist composer Gerard Grisey meditates on the harmonics of the contrabass clarinet in a tribute to Claude Vivier. And Italian masters of illusion, Salvatore Sciarrino and Claudio Ambrosini, evoke other worlds with their sensitive use of the fragile, hidden sounds of the clarinet.
Program:
Salvatore Sciarrino Let me die before I wake (1982)
Claudio Ambrosini Capriccio, detto ‘l’Ermafrodita’ (1983)
Aviva Endean For Viv (2011), In the Half Light (2014)
Gerard Grisey Nout (1983-1990)
Alvin Lucier Still and Moving lines in families of Hyperbolas (1972)
Listen to all the music from the show here
Click here to read a review in Real time magazine.
You can listen to an interview with Andrew Ford on Radio National ‘The Music show’ http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/musicshow/aviva-endean/5734288
and with Ian Parsons on ‘The Sound Barrier’ PBS FM. http://www.pbsfm.org.au/node/
