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'... a sonic landscape full of allusions, cross-references, widely differentiated styles ... and suddenly shifting textures - a truly "schizophrenic" narrative, a tour de force of contemporary audio art ... A masterpiece.'
[from The Alberta NEW MUSIC & ARTS REVIEW (Canada), Vol. I No. 2, Summer 1997/Spring 1998, pp.110-112; for the complete review, click here] |
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next performance:
7pm Sunday April 29 2007
most recent performances:
Saturday June 11 2005
Wednesday June 15
for reviews etc, click here previous performance:
Wednesday March 29 2000 |
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Victoria Finlay, South China Morning Post, March 19 2000: Voices for tragic schizophrenic; Australian group on the theme of struggle Two years ago it might have seemed ironic that the Australian Government was sponsoring the Sydney-based a cappella group The Song Company to go on international tour with a show like Quito. After all, the hard-hitting piece of music - about a young East Timorese musician and schizophrenic who hanged himself in jail and a foreign policy that many believed was hard-hearted and mercenary - hardly sings the praises of the Australian administration. But today the piece - which uses the true story of Francisco Baptista Pires as a metaphor for the equally painful true story of East Timor itself - is more in line with Australia's change in foreign policy ... |
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August 16 1999 Panggung Negara, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
August 21 1999 both performances by The Song Company |
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| music recording: |
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| production: | Andrew McLennan |
| research and support: | Rob Wesley-Smith (winner of 1998 ETRA Denis Freney Activist Award!) |
| featuring: |
| "... lacerating honesty and great beauty ..." |
mail order (quote TP111)
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| some reviews: |
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David Vance, Sydney Morning Herald, Aug 13 1998: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND, BUT TIMOR'S HEART BEATS IN QUITO
The Song Company
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A song for Quito
Newtown Theatre, August 6 Review by Rebecca Conroy Quito is a music drama concerned with schizophrenia and the plight of the East Timorese. Composed by Martin Wesley-Smith with lyrics by his brother Peter, it is a moving exploration of the parallels between mental illness and the common suffering of the East Timorese under Indonesian occupation. The story is based on the life and death of Francisco Baptista Pires (nicknamed Quito), who at age 26 was found hanging from his pyjama cord in Royal Darwin Hospital in 1990. Quito was shot in the throat in 1989 by a police officer attending a domestic disturbance at his Darwin home. Despite being diagnosed with schizophrenia, Quito was later charged with the attempted murder of a police officer at the scene. Stress, brought on largely by the charge against him, overwhelmingly contributed to his eventual death. The main narrative deals with Quito's mental condition and the similarities it bears to the overall situation in East Timor: voices in the head, delusions, shattered logic, mental distress and invasion by alien forces. Through Quito, we see his struggle and suffering reflected in the entire psychology of the East Timorese landscape. His life is used as a powerful metaphor, vividly brought forward by the fusion of the two parallel narratives. Various sources were used to identify Quito's state of mind, including recordings of his own songs, a poem he wrote just after he was shot and recordings of his sister Fatima Gusmao. These were paralleled by documentary material on the screen and voice-overs related to the situation in East Timor. Stark contrasts are made between fast tempo songs, dissonant chord patterns and disturbing images of torture victims, gradually distorted by video technology. Quito's voice cuts through songs narrating his own suffering before moving on to eyewitness accounts of the Dili massacre in 1991. The story is in this way composed of interconnected moments, which the audience is left to link together. Identifiable noises establish location before the audience is whisked off again to experience another parallel dimension of the story. The final song left an indelible mark with the audience, a tragic image of the continuing suffering of the Timorese held static on the screen fading into a distorted outline, accompanied by dirge-like music. The six singers from the Song Company, who presented Quito as part of the Modern Art Series, performed the piece in Newtown Theatre with just a piano offstage and a screen for projected images. Overall, it was an effective exercise in linking a documentary narrative with the personal tragedy of an individual. Executed brilliantly, it left the audience very much affected by both its stark imagery and its accurate portrayal of a country that, like Quito, has suffered, resisted, loved, despaired and hoped. As the saying goes in East Timor, "Only those with open eyes can see". But as they say in Quito, "The dumb can hear the thunder, the deaf can see the rain, the blind can speak and understand, and all can know the pain of a body torn asunder, of a devastated land". |
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Diederik De Jong, American Record Guide, May 1 1998: CD: Quito Like the musical-theatre work Boojum, reviewed most favorably in Nov/Dec 1993, the 52-minute Quito is a joint effort by Australian composer Martin Wesley-Smith (b.1945) and his twin brother Peter, who wrote the book and lyrics. Quito is called "a documentary music drama about schizophrenia and East Timor" and is summarized as follows: Quito concerns the life and death of Francisco Baptista Pires, a young East Timor-born Darwin man who suffered from schizophrenia. He was nicknamed Quito (pronounced Keetoh). In 1987 he was shot through the throat by police in a domestic disturbance. Three years later he was found hanging from his pajama cord in Royal Darwin Hospital. Pires was accused of shooting a policeman and, ironically, died on the day prosecutors were filing for an acquittal. The authors have used the Quito character to expose widespread human rights violations after Indonesian troops invaded East Timor in 1975, unleashing an unspeakable 23-year reign of terror and brutality that has caused much suffering in East Timor, especially of the "emotionally and mentally disturbed people" of the former Dutch colony. These human rights violations were almost ignored by the western world, including the government of nearby Australia, which soft-pedaled the Indonesian invasion, turned a deaf ear to pleas for help by the East Timorese people, and all but ignored their plight. The texts and lyrics of Quito were taken from a multitude of sources, including newspaper articles, interviews with East Timorese exiles, eyewitness reports, radio and television news broadcasts, Timorese poetry, books on schizophrenia, and Quito's own words and writings. A speech by President Clinton, in his own voice, about taking quick, decisive action in 1994 in Haiti, serves as a contrast to speeches by Australian prime ministers who took little action and talked out of both corners of their mouths. The music is a mixture of solo songs, some with a rock beat, electronic sounds, guitar and piano accompaniments, and ensemble singing by the six-member Song Company, with frequent voice-over or solo narration by male and female narrators. One song is based on the music and Latin words of Orlando di Lasso's 1566 motet Timor et Tremor. Background sounds include forest sounds, children laughing, young men playing soccer, people shouting, and a Timorese song, all recorded in East Timor. Tracks 20-25 contain six separate songs from Quito. This is a disturbing, chilling, spine-shivering work to listen to. The spoken words and lyrics carry all the weight here, the sometimes dissonant singing by the Song Company is effective and dramatic, but not much of the music sticks in the mind. But then, I don't believe it was Wesley-Smith's intention to write "pretty", lyrical tunes. The sonics are clear and detailed, the performance expert. This release was of interest to me, a Dutch 1953 graduate in tropical agriculture who was slated to go to Indonesia as a coffee planter, but it may be too specialized for most readers. |
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