Karl #2 - 1999. Photo by Rebecca Swan

Issue 3 of Polari Journal, edited by D. J. Baker & Sharon Dunne, has just been published online. Click here to read the articles, poems, features and more of Rebecca Swan's photographs.

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Coming up in May

I'll be travelling to Melbourne in May for this not-to-be-missed concert, produced by Elizabeth Drake -

A performance of

Canto Ostinato by Simeon ten Holt

The performers on four concert grand pianos will be

Lisa Moore
Caroline Almonte
Emily Green-Armytage
Elizabeth Drake
(click above on the performers' names for biographical info)

Canto Ostinato was composed by Simeon ten Holt in Amsterdam in 1979.

Simeon ten Holt - “The American influence is undeniable, but the form of minimal music that I created in my work is inconceivable without the arch-typical European tradition.
 …The feeling of hardly having anything to say was never as strong as with Canto Ostinato. At first, I watched the piece unfold with the utmost suspicion. This was not done, really: tonality, this open, this plain, this explicit.”
Canto Ostinato is known as an early minimalist work based on the continual repetition of different cells or bars within the piece. No two performances are ever alike, the players dictating moment to moment how these cells –the musical DNA – will be played.
No categorisation can ever account for the overwhelming emotional power of the work.
It has been performed at the Perth International Arts Festival, in the Adelaide Railway Station for the Australian Performing Arts Market, and at the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music. This is the first time it has been performed in Melbourne.
We invite you to participate in this one opportunity to experience the power and duration of Canto Ostinato.

Review by Neville Cohn, The West Australian, Perth International Arts Festival:
“I cannot recall so harmonious and golden-toned a Festival curtain-raiser as Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato..
How beautifully this extended essay sounded with its mesmerically repetitive, golden-toned extrapolations..

A major factor that made this so compelling was the knowledge that what we heard was unique, an extemporised performance which would have differed from earlier accounts.”

The performance will take place on

Friday 13th May at 8 pm

at the

IWAKI Auditorium
ABC Southbank Centre
120 Southbank Boulevard
Southbank
Melbourne

The duration of the work is ninety minutes, uninterrupted.
As the work is being recorded no latecomers can be admitted.

Adult $45.00
Concession $30.00
Student $25

Tickets available from M-Tix box office at The C.U.B Malthouse
03 9685 5111 m-tix.com.au General Admission
A booking fee of $1.50 - $3 per ticket will apply depending on booking method.

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Opening next week - Coalcliff Days
Click here for details.


A happy avant-garde at Coalcliff. Xmas 1980. Back row L to R: Pam Brown, Erika Callan, Sal Brereton, Micky Allan. Front Row L to R: Kurt Brereton in goose carcass hat, Ken Bolton, Laurie Duggan. Photo- Micky Allan


Xmas Corpses. Silkscreen - Ken Bolton, 1980

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And I'll be reading from recent and not-so-recent work in Newtown, Sydney on April 29th - for details click here

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