Using photographs by various photographers, including some we took ourselves in East Timor in 2002, this piece was premiered in Manchester on our 2003 tour of the UK and Hong Kong. David Morris described it, in Clarinet & Saxophone, Spring 2003, as a "portrayal of post-independence East Timor, full of smiling people and beautiful landscapes". Ros recently performed it in the presence of Dr. Mari Alkatiri, Chief Minister of East Timor.

Like all of Wesley-Smith's recent multimedia pieces, it requires a Macintosh computer (which we will bring with us), a data projector of some kind (readily available these days, but we will bring one of those, too), some sort of screen, and a stereo sound system.

top

e-mail him

images by various photographers

"Tekee Tokee Tomak" means, in a rough translation from the Tetum, "Let's get together and enjoy ourselves". This is what the East Timorese people are now trying to do in order to re-build their shattered lives and country.

photo by Ros Dunlop
click to see full-size (244K)

... they went mad - they cried, and cheered (four times back to the stage, and I was beginning to get emotional too), and were spellbound. A couple of times - like in the cadenza, and right at the end before the 'Welcome to the Hotel T' comes back), it was SO quiet - it freaked me out ... I had complete strangers coming up, with tear-stained faces (saying) how powerful it was ...

cellist Rachel Scott after a 2002 performance of Turismo in London

top

e-mail him

images by various photographers

David Vance in The Sydney Morning Herald, August 13 1998, writing about Wesley-Smith's Timor piece Quito:
"(His) music has never been far removed from political or social comment, and his gift for pastiche has served him well in adopting familiar styles, often (but not always) drawn from popular music, to ironic or satiric purposes."

from a Timorese listener in Darwin to the ABC broadcast of Quito, May 6 1997:
"It is a masterpiece of music. I cried my eyes out until no tears were left. I felt the tragedy of East Timor perforating my bones as I never felt before. I'm going to buy the CD."

Commissioned by American clarinetist F. Gerard Errante, this piece has been performed, by him and by Ros, many times in the USA. It was composed in 1999 as the Indonesian military-promoted militia carnage was raging across East Timor. At the time, resistance leader Xanana Gusmão (the "X" of the title) was in Cipinang Prison, Jakarta.

see reviews of a performance of "X" in London, Feb 6 2003

see, also, separate web page

top

e-mail him

with guest cellist or bass clarinetist
or in its solo version

about Afghanistan & Afghan refugees, commissioned by Charisma with financial support from the Music Board of the Australia Council

David Morris: "... the evening was brought to a close with Merry-Go-Round, (Wesley-Smith's) treatment of contemporary Afghanistan. More scenes passed rapidly before us, including children and men having naive fun aboard a small home-made merry-go-round. This, we were told, was an allegory for the repeated invasions suffered by the people of Afghanistan, but it worked most powerfully as a striking reinforcement of common humanity."

top

Written in response to the events connected with the Los Angeles riots in 1992, this work served as a necessary outlet for the tension and confusion felt by the composer at the time. Many forces can be heard in the piece, hierarchial levels in the community, violent outbursts, as well as meditative reflection which must accompany any such collective action.

The 1969 UN-sanctioned "Act of Free Choice" that handed the Dutch colony West Papua to Indonesia was a sham, an act of no choice for the West Papuan people. Since then, Indonesia has treated the territory as it did East Timor, with rampant human rights abuse as well as exploitation, in collusion with America and others, of West Papua's rich natural resources.

This piece is about the West Papuan people and their thirst for freedom. Almost all the sources I've used in creating it were begged, borrowed or stolen from others. They include Agence France Presse, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 2JJJ, Penny Beaumont, Sheila Draper, Don Bennetts, Gerry Errante, Steven Feld, Lynne Hamilton (of Prowling Tiger Press in Melbourne, who published "West Papua: Follow the Morning Star" by Ben Bohane, Jim Elmslie and Liz Thompson, an inspiring book of superb texts and photographs), David Kirkland, Jonny Lewis, Robert Lowry ("Shall We Gather at the River?"), Jonathon Mustard, SBS News, Edward Smith and Alice Wesley-Smith - my thanks to all these plus to all those whose names I don't know or contact addresses I can't find. Apologies to those whose names have been inadvertently omitted. Thanks, too, to David Bridie, Louise Byrne, Andrew Kilvert and Rob Wesley-Smith. Two other books provided valuable information: Jim Elmslie's "Irian Jaya Under the Gun" (Crawford House Publishing (Australia) Pty Ltd) and Peter King's "West Papua Since Suharto" (University of New South Wales Press). I used the beautiful West Papuan anthem Hai Tanah Ku Papua. Flags, used with permission, came from http://www.theodora.com/flags. Most of the bird of paradise paintings were by Rowan Ellis (1848-1922). Finally, thanks to Ros Dunlop for commissioning the piece. And, for funding assistance, to the Music Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body.

photography by many photographers far and wide, including some whom I haven't been able to contact

West Papua Niugini/Irian Jaya Homepage: www.converge.org.nz/wpapua/opm.html Papua Press Agency: www.westpapua.net/index.php the assassination of Ondofolo Dortheys Hiyo Eluay, Hero of West Papua: www.westpapua.net/about/heroes/theys/ petition seeking justice for West Papua from Joe Collins, Secretary, Australia West Papua Association, Sydney, October 2005 (see Islands Business): "Since last year's Pacific Islands Forum meeting, human rights abuses have continued to occur in West Papua. One major example is the military operation undertaken by the Indonesian military in the Puncak Jaya district in West Papua's central highlands. "During this military operation, a large number of villages were destroyed, including livestock and food gardens. More than 6000 people have fled to the bush in fear of their lives. The President of the West Papuan Baptist Church, Reverend Yoman, reported that twenty-three people have died of starvation, although he believes this figure could be higher as church and aid groups are prevented from moving freely in the area by the military and are therefore unable to make complete assessments. In May this year, two West Papuan men, Philep Karma and Yusak Pakage, received jail terms of 15 and 10 years respectively, for so-called "treason against the state". Their crime? Simply organising a peaceful demonstration where the West Papuan national flag, The Morning Star, was raised ..."

This was written for American clarinetist Gerard Errante on one of his visits to Australia.

Bailey:

"In this work, the juxtaposition of intervals creates a whole world of harmony for solo instrument. A lot of careful work went into the actual pitch of the notes which followed one another. It is 'careful' for reasons of ease to facilitate a linear harmonic structure. The performer uses this to be free with the way s/he takes it ..."

Trio is scored for bass clarinet, Moog synthesiser and Fender piano with a part for pre-recorded bass clarinet. Although I knew of the existence of this work, the score was difficult to track down: Banks' publisher Schott had sent all his manuscripts back to Don's widow Val in Canberra. It was only after considerable time and numerous phone calls that I was able to locate the manuscript in the achives of Australia's National Library.

Trio was written as a prelude to a much larger work, Benedictus, for which there is no written score. Don was fond of putting on spectacular events employing many different devices semi-improvised with a cast of thousands and a very basic score outline. Benedictus was such a work. Due to the precarious nature of Moog synthesisers from the seventies, I decided to pre-record the Moog and Fender piano parts, creating the current bass clarinet-and-CD version. The CD part was realised by Greg White.

Ros Dunlop

repertoire

top

Don Banks (1923-1980) was one of the most important and distinctive Australian composers of his time. He composed a wide range of music, from chamber and symphonic works to music for film (e.g. for Hammer horror films: Hysteria, The Reptiles and Rasputin, The Mad Monk). He was an early exponent of electronic music, and for a time was a professional jazz pianist and trombonist. Active in music education in both Australia and England, he was also a great supporter of younger composers.

For a full biography, courtesy of the Australian Music Centre, click here.

Brockman:

Shortly before embarking on this piece, I read a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges titled The Circular Ruins. In it, a wizard paddles upstream to an overgrown abandoned ritual site in the forest, the sacred circle of the god of fire. There he begins the arduous task of dreaming a man. Yes, through his dreams, after untold torment and numerous false starts over several years, he did indeed produce a son.

The wizard spent years instructing his son in the mysteries of the universe and the cult of fire. When he was ready, the young man was sent downstream many miles away, but, first, the wizard destroyed in the boy's memory all recollection of knowing he was merely a phantom. Later, the wizard heard talk of a charmed young man, at a temple in the North, who was able to walk on fire. "Of all the creatures that people the earth, Fire was the only one who knew his son to be a phantom".

As the story ends, with fire engulfing his circle in the forest, the old wizard must come to terms with his own death. Prepared to walk into the flames, "with relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him." Like the story, the music is about circles with circles.

repertoire

top

e-mail her

was the first woman to earn a doctorate in music composition at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After twelve years of university teching, she relocated to Southern California, where she writes music for concerts and film. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, her work is widely recorded. It is published by Arsis Press and Diaphanous Music.

1. Reflected ... from a far off world ... and vanished!
2. wept by the mad cadence of the storm
3. [not being performed on this tour]
4. Where Roads are made, I lose my way

Brockman:

The Inspiration for this piece came from Bill Powell, one of its dedicatees, whose knowledge and deep love of Indian music caused me to explore it as a source of alternative resources. Rather than produce a faux imitation, I sought to use the influence simply as a filter for my own devices. In India, a young performer learns his instrument by studying with a singer - so the music will always have a vocal foundation. I1ve tried to emulate this, and the improvisatory spirit of the music, although the piece is fully notated. The movement titles are fragments from writings of Bengali poet, philosopher, mystic, painter and musician Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), whose work, revisited recently, holds even more power for me than it did twenty years ago.

repertoire

top

e-mail her

for info, see above

for more details, visit her web-site, on which the following appears:

consists of a sequence of 4 x 4 phrases, of which each group of four concentrates on change in one or a combination of the following attributes: pitch, dynamics, linear density, and vertical density. Each phrase is constructed out of the same exhaustive sequence of the following kinds of change: increasing (rising) static - decreasing (falling). Selective use of the delayed playback makes the construction of further combinations possible, depending upon how many layers are employed and the length of the delay.

repertoire

top

e-mail him

is a composer, musician, digital artist, teacher, humanist, and inventor of SOUND=SPACE. Born in Germany, he moved to the USA in 1953, aged 10. After studying science, philosophy and music at Yale, he began graduate studies in music at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1967 he became personal assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Germany, later becoming a member of the Stockhausen Ensemble. In 1970 an enlarged version of this ensemble, directed by Gehlhaar, resided at the German Pavilion at EXPO '70 in Osaka for six months, presenting a series of daily concerts of Stockhausen's instrumental and live electronic music. Upon his return to Cologne, he began to concentrate on composition and the performance of his own works. He co-founded the Feedback Studio, the Feedback Ensemble, specialising in the performance of the live electronic music of its members, and the Feedback Studio Verlag, Germany's first composer's publishing company. The Feedback Studio, a small private electronic music studio and development workshop specialising in live electronic music for performance, pioneered cybernetic musical installations and interactive musical environments. The Ensemble, touring extensively in Europe, concentrated on the performance of the instrumental and live electronic music of its members and their colleagues ...

read Rolf's complete biography here

commissioned by English saxophonist Kyle Horch, Steve arranged, in 2000, the saxophone part for bass clarinet; with the format of a jazz medley, the piece whizzes through many different styles very quickly with a zaniness reminiscent of Frank Zappa

In 2001 Steve was a guest composer at the fifth Forum for Contemporary Piano Music in Heilbronn, Germany; in 2002 he was a guest professor in composition at the Musikhogskolan in Piteå, Sweden.

top

e-mail him

Lowenstern:

"(This) is in response to an episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman was the guest and the two of them were at Joe Negre's music shop. Watching this episode unfold, I figured this was going to be ripe with possibilities so I immediately popped in a video cassette. Stoltzman was describing the members of the clarinet family when Mr. Rogers asked, 'What's that big one?' Stoltzman answered, 'Oh that's a bass clarinet. It's found mostly in bands. It's pretty obscure and hard to play. There isn't really much call for it.' I was livid. Since both King Friday and Mr. Stoltzman were living in the land of make-believe, I was inspired to write this piece."

repertoire

top

e-mail him

Smith:

"At the time this piece was created, I was in the middle of a Canadian winter. I wanted to create the feeling of huge space, the continual shift of focus suggesting the flickering lights of the Aurora Borealis."

repertoire

top

Margery is an accomplished clarinetist as well as composer. Her solo engagements have included appearances with the Sydney Symph as soloist on clarinet and saxophone. Her latest work, T(F)ree Radicals for 3 Bass Clarinets, was composed for Touchbass.

This, and its version for marimba, is the most-performed piece of Australian chamber music of all time. CD recording by Peter Jenkin (A Day in the Life of a Clarinet, Tall Poppies TP086).

For Marimba & Tape has been recorded by Alison Eddington, Daniella Ganeva, Rebecca Lagos, Graeme Leak (order his new book on-line here), William Moersch and Tom O'Kelly.

repertoire

top

e-mail him

repertoire

top

e-mail him

The latest recording of this piece, played by Charisma (Ros Dunlop, clarinet, and Julia Ryder, cello), is included on the CD Charisma (Greatwhitenoise GWN002)

for information about Wesley-Smith's major Carroll piece Boojum!, for choir, piano & percussion, click here

Westlake:

"(this piece) was written following an intensive study of the contemporary bass clarinet repertoire with Dutch exponent Harry Spaarnay; it represents a release from the rigours and discipline that surround much twentieth-century repertoire into a more relaxed improvisational style. A unique sound world is established by remaining for much of the piece in the little used upper register of the instrument and incorporating techniques such as circular breathing, multiphonics, slap tongue and flutter tongue."

"a breath of fresh air with its bright colours, lively rhythms & brilliant ideas" (The Australian)

repertoire

top

e-mail him

repertoire

top e-mail him

Born in Sydney in 1953, Gerard Brophy began his studies in the classical guitar at the age of 22. In 1976 he undertook four months of masterclasses with the Brazilian guitarist Turibio Santos and the next year he attended a composition seminar directed by Mauricio Kagel in Basle. He studied composition with Don Banks, Anthony Gilbert and Richard Toop at the NSW Conservatorium of Music and graduated as Student of the Year in 1982.

Gerard Brophy has been awarded numerous composition prizes including the inaugural NSW Premiers Composers Award, the 1985 Premio Casella, the 1988 Budapest Composers Award and the 1988 Barlow International Orchestral Award. His Linia for 12 instruments, Exu for amplified violin and orchestra, Orfeo for string orchestra and Shiver for mezzo-soprano and ensemble were selected for performance at the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World Music Days of 1981, 1984, 1986 and 1991 respectively. His music has been performed at all the major festivals including the Asian Music Festival, Gaudeamus Music Week, Warsaw Autumn, Nuova Consonanza, Nuovi Spazi Musicali, Sonorities and the Zagreb Biennale ... (more, courtesy of the Australian Music Centre, here)

Réflexions, Os and Sinfin are works for woodwind and vibraphone reflecting aspects of the three great Rose windows of Chartres Cathedral. Worldwhorls, which completes the tetralogy, has its origins in the Labyrinth beneath the West Rose, which itself has strong connections with that window. The Labyrinth seems to me to be a metaphor for life itself. Commencing in the womb-like middle, one makes one's way via 34 sharp angles (corresponding to the 34 verses of the Dies Irae) and 35 passes, to emerge facing this brilliant judgement-day window. Worldwhorls bases its structure and wayward energy on the experience of walking the Labyrinth with this metaphor in mind.

repertoire

top

is an English composer who has visited Australia many times ... [full bio coming]

"All the uproarious pipes we played! Frenzy and folly, fire and joy!". The quote is from Australian poet John Shaw Neilson, whose poems have inspired several of the composer's works. This one is in 'ballad' form with nine 'verses'. The characteristic feature is that, despite a recurring 'rhyme-scheme' and unifying ideas from verse to verse, each one shakes a new narrative 'twist' out of its sleeve to produce something mid-way between strophic and 'through-composed' form, as well as mid-way between tonal and atonal styles.

repertoire

top

e-mail him

Australian composer Graham Hair has been Professor of Music at Glasgow University since 1990. For ten years before that he was head of composition at the Sydney Conservatorium. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Monash University, and has been a Visiting Professor at Princeton and Composer in Residence at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. His works include many for women's voices (e.g. Serenissima, Songs of the Sibyls), pieces based on popular music, and a Choral Symphony, The Great Circle.

written for Australian clarinetist Peter Jenkin, this piece is short, succinct, quirky and lighthearted

repertoire

top

e-mail her

was born in Tashkent, in the former USSR, in 1957. In 1975 she migrated with her family to Australia, where she studied at the NSW Conservatorium. After studying with Helmut Lachenmann in West Germany, she remained in Europe for over a decade, writing incidental music for State theatres in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, and Bochum. She returned to Australia in 1994 and is now resident in Sydney where she is frequently commissioned and performed.

program notes on their way ....

composer/performer (clarinet); professor of music at the University of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, teaching clarinet; prolific composer for clarinet and bass clarinet; his mentor has been William O Smith; he has recorded and performed extensively throughout the USA with a wide variety of musicians

This piece ("Where the Winds Rest") was written as a response in sound to a visit to the rugged island of Little Barrier (Hauturu), a bird sanctuary in the Hauraki gulf. John marvelled at the largely unspoilt grandeur of this fascinating environment with its extremely rough beeches, huge trees amid thick jungle, and the many varieties of indigenous birds.

repertoire

top

recently retired from Auckland University where he held the position of Chair of the School of Music. One of New Zealand's leading composers, he now divides his time between composing and conducting.

Satterwhite:

KP: a girl I used to know who stopped her strident bitching only to be vacuous. This movement is one of four. Basically all movements describe various women in my life.

repertoire

top

Marc Satterwhite is a composer and bass player. In his performance capacity he has played in the Mexico City Philharmonic. His experiences in Latin America have had a profound influence on his composition. He has taught at the University of Western Michigan, University of Indiana and Lamar University; he is currently on the faculty at the University of Louisville. He has written for a variety of genres, and his music has been performed all over the USA, South America, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and South Africa.

Smith:

This piece was composed during a holiday on the Greek Island of Symi in August 1998 in response to Ian Mitchell's request for a solo bass clarinet piece. It is a recomposition of Off-peak practices (1998), a solo piano piece commissioned by Mick Reake. In the same way, Percy Grainger's Arrive Platform Humlet, say, is equally effective as a piece for either orchestra or solo piano or solo viola. It is envisaged that further arrangements would be possible - most obviously, perhaps, for wind ensemble. The first performance was at Goldsmiths College, London, on 7 October 1998.

repertoire

top

no bio or photo of Dave Smith yet available

the title refers to early vaudeville routines when the vaudeville artist, upon realising that the audience is not responding or something has gone wrong on stage, "cuts to the chase" when he or she is chased around to close the act ...

repertoire

top

e-mail him

Australian composer. At one time Professor of Music at the now-defunct Music Department at the University of Latrobe, Richard now lives in Queensland.

a highly virtuosic work for bass clarinet, Scream explores both ends of the instrument's range, delivering at lightning speed; it was first performed in the USA by bass clarinetist Henri Bok at the International Clarinet Festival in Oklahoma

repertoire

top

e-mail him

Born in 1973, Australian composer Paul Witney studied with Nigel Butterley. His works have been performed in the Ukraine, Canada, USA, Holland, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.