Alleluia

F I O R E Chamber, a brilliant young vocal ensemble from Melbourne premiered at a concert in Camberwell on Sunday (19 November) three of the secular carols (and my “Advent/ure”) composed by Alan Holley from my Nine Carols. Along with the audience in St Johns and many others online, I was hearing for the first time my words sung in Alan’s playful and complex, lyrical compositions. And I was astonished.

As Pepe Newton notes in this astute and attentive review in Classikon, the carols were the spine of an exciting program every one of whose pieces was a brand new commission (works by Daniel Riley, Lily Flynn, Lydia Gardiner, Juliana Kay, Joshua Adams). Pepe does more justice to the compositions and the performance than I could, but I thank her for her observations about my poems, in particular the lines from “Carol of the Living,” that she was left with, almost the last words of the concert: “None of us will last, but something will: Let’s be that from now on… Alleluia.”

https://www.classikon.com/fiore-enriching-the-genre-of-australian-vocal-chamber-music/

Fiore is Alex Ritter, Anish Nair, Lachlan McDonald, and Monika Harris. I thank them for their imagination and courage, the beauty of their voices and the accomplishment of their performance of very sophisticated music. I thank my friend Alan Holley for the love and elan and musical intelligence of his writing in response to my words, indeed for his invitation to write the poems. And for the generosity of his words about the carols.

For more on the carols and how you write one, listen in to my interview with David Astle on ABC Radio Victoria last Thursday (16 November). I start at about 1 hour 40 seconds (after Goana’s “Sacred Ground”, aptly enough): https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-evenings/evenings/103093502

Nine Carols, by the way, is now published, beautifully designed by Gerhard Bachfischer. The first book from the reborn 5 Islands Press.