50 years of minimalism

A four-concert series throughout 2022, celebrating the many faces of minimalist music.

Curated by Natasha Conrau, Luke Carbon, Georgina Lewis and Renee Heron/Alta Collective.

The word ‘minimal’ was first used as a musical classification in 1972 by Tom Johnson, with a piece entitled ‘The Minimal Slow-Motion Approach’, written for New York arts and cultural publication The Village Voice. The concert experiences he was writing about featured few musical elements and lots of text and visual images, and emphasised how easily minimal ideas move between the aural, the visual, and the verbal.

Since 1972, the minimalist music movement has diversified, evolved and expanded to sub-categories, with the common thread being the reduction of materials to a minimum, the simplification of procedures and an immediate apparentness to listeners. We are returned to our roots, to the basic elements of melody, modality, and rhythm.

In 1990, Tom Johnson expanded his definition of minimal music:

The idea of minimalism is much larger than most people realize. It includes, by definition, any music that works with limited or minimal materials: pieces that use only a few notes, or pieces that use only a few words of text, or pieces written for very limited instruments, such as antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whisky glasses. It includes pieces that sustain one basic electronic rumble for a long time. It includes pieces made exclusively from recordings of rivers and streams. It includes pieces that move in endless circles. It includes pieces that set up an unmoving wall of saxophone sound. It includes pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another kind. It includes pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D. It includes pieces that slow the tempo down to two or three notes per minute.

The four concerts in the MINIMAL series open with Steve Reich’s Clapping Music.
The programs focus on repertoire through the past half century for STRINGS, PIANO, WOODWIND or VOICE. And hands x4.

8PM SUNDAY 27TH MARCH
MINIMAL: STRINGS

Curated by Natasha Conrau
Tickets $22

Natasha Conrau | violin Suying Aw | viola
Lucy Warren | violin Ely Streatfield | cello

PROGRAM

Steve REICH Clapping Music (hands x4)
Caroline SHAW Entr’acte
Caroline SHAW Valencia
Philip GLASS String Quartet no. 5
Arvo PÄRT Summa
Christopher CERRONE How to Breathe Underwater

8pm friday 24th june
MINIMAL: PIANO +

Curated by Georgina Lewis
With special guest Kyla Matsuura-Miller, violin
Tickets $28 (adult) / $22 (concession)

PROGRAM
Missy MAZZOLI Orizzonte
John ADAMS China Gates
Kate MOORE Spin Bird
Hania RANI F Major
Caroline SHAW Gustave le Gray
Max RICHTER Spring from Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons. With guest artist Kyla Matsuura-Miller
Ann SOUTHAM Remembering Schubert

8pm saturday 3rd september
MINIMAL: WOODWIND

Curated by Luke Carbon
Tickets $22

Luke Carbon, alto saxophone + bass clarinet
Ryan Lynch, soprano saxophone + bass clarinet
Grace Trebley, tenor saxophone + bass clarinet
Jason Xanthoudakis, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet + contrabass clarinet

PROGRAM

Steve REICH Clapping Music (hands x4)
Robert DAVIDSON Brightest Threads (bass clarinet quartet)
Daniel RHODES Pledge Drive (saxophone quartet)
Philip GLASS Saxophone quartet (sax quartet)
Michael GORDON Low quartet (bass clarinet x3, contrabass clarinet)
David LANG press release (solo bass clarinet)
Julia WOLFE Cha(sax quartet)

ABOUT LUKE CARBON

Luke Carbon is a woodwind multi-instrumentalist and educator based in Melbourne. An orchestral musician, chamber player, and fluent improviser, he attended the Australian National Academy of Music during 2015-2016 and was awarded a Master of Music Research, the Musica Viva Chamber Music Prize, and a programming award for his exploration of third stream music. Luke is a guest musician on both clarinet and saxophone with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Victoria, a guest clarinetist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Victorian Opera, and has performed with ELISION, Ensemble Offspring, and Rubiks Collective.

Recent festival appearances include the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, Metropolis, Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music, Dots+Loops, and the Brisbane Music Festival. Luke has performed numerous national and international premieres by composers including Yitzhak Yedid, Gunther Schuller, William Russo, Christine McCombe, and Kate Moore, amongst many others.

His woodwind/percussion ensemble Enyato Duo, with Thea Rossen, has additionally commissioned works by Paul Dean, Samantha Wolf, and Tim Hansen. As a doubler on clarinet, saxophone, flute, oboe, and bassoon, Luke has played close to a dozen professional musical theatre productions, including West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Evita. He is a current member of the Musica Viva in Schools group Water, Water, Everywhere, which reached its 200th performance in 2019. Luke teaches clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon at Wesley College.

8pm saturday 5th november
MINIMAL: VOICES

Curated by Renee Heron and Alta Collective
Tickets $28

PROGRAM
Steve REICH Clapping Music (hands & voice)
Nico MUHLY Advice to a Young Woman (featuring Georgina Lewis)
David LANG Morning, Evening, Day
Elena Kats Chernin Un-Labelled
Pauline OLIVEROS Tuning Meditation
Meredith MONK Panda Chant II
Juliana KAY Bush Chant I
Meredith MONK Calling from 'The Politics of Quiet'
Philip GLASS Knee Play 5 (featuring Natasha Conrau)
Shruthi RAJASEKAR Numbers

ABOUT ALTA COLLECTIVE

The Alta Collective is a Melbourne-based treble vocal ensemble. Formed during the Great Melbourne Lockdown of 2020, they are a group of friends and skilled musicians looking to experience and share the joy and beauty of music for upper voices. A flexible group in membership and genre, they perform music from a wide variety of styles, looking to bring a fresh and engaging experience to their audience. The group’s vision is to reimagine the choir as a collective through collaboration, development in both singing and artistic direction, and promoting inclusive, diverse and innovative programming.

Alta Collective’s Artistic Director Renee Heron brings a wealth of experience as a dynamic music educator and choral conductor. She is currently a primary music teacher and choral director at Caulfield Grammar, Malvern Campus and has enjoyed stints working with the Australian Boys Choir as Teacher-in-Charge of the Probationer training group, Xavier College and Methodist Ladies College. Renee is one of Melbourne’s leading practitioners of the Kodály music education philosophy and in 2016-17 had the privilege of attending Kodály Institute of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Kecskemét, Hungary. She is a musicianship and methodology course lecturer for the Kodály Music Education Institute of Australia, where she serves as President of the Victorian Branch and acts as a regular adjudicator and workshop presenter. Renee is a talented musician in her own right, holding a Bachelor of Music from the University of Queensland, and an AMusA in Violin. She also holds a Master of Teaching from the University of Melbourne. Renee is a member of Melbourne based chamber choir, Polyphonic Voices.