Category Archives: CD

Jail Birds

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Voices from Inside

Jonathon Welch, director

ABC Classics 476 3689

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Knowing the circumstances under which this recording was made, it is very difficult to listen to it without being moved. Here is a ‘good news’ story about a choral director with a vision and the determination to make it a reality.

All the singers in this ensemble are convicted criminals who are – or have been – serving sentences. Welch has done wonders with his choristers, not all of whom would have been trained musicians.

There are precedents for this ie in relation to obtaining vocal excellence from singers who might be musically illiterate eg the Eoan Group Opera Company in Cape Town. Through the vision and staying power of Joseph Manca, so called “coloured’ folk, who by virtue of their skin colour were declared non-white (an odious term of the apartheid government then in power) and so barred from entry to the city’s fine opera house, had their day in the sun.

Manca, with a near-saintly dedication to the job (for which he never drew a salary of any kind)  taught each vocal part parrot fashion – in the original Italian – and the results, after scores of piano rehearsals, were astonishingly professional. I can testify to the success of this initiative as I was the piano repetiteur as a very young man. The end result, drawing capacity audiences and adulatory reviews, was extraordinary and the most eloquent of rebuffs to the apartheid czars. In the most moving sense, this was a triumph over adversity.

Much the same could be said of this recording, another instance of a leader with vision and determination – and the whole-hearted co-operation of the singers proving the sceptics wrong. Performances like this don’t fall from the sky. The project would have been a non-starter without the determination and staying power of all concerned, including a co-operative officialdom.

These tracks are impressive; they deserve to be heard by the widest possible audience. It’s a thoroughly commendable offering. Listen to it; it’s heartwarming stuff – and for all the right reasons.

A percentage of royalties from the sale of this recording goes to the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne.

Cello Diva – Bed of Roses

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Sally Maer, cello

Sinfonia Australis

William Motzing, conductor

ABC  476 6291

TPT: 56’ 51”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

This is ideal material to relax to after a tough day at the office. It’s a charm laden compilation that provides unpretentious, laid back interpretations of music from Bach to the present day.

Unruffled calm informs an account of the Sinfonia (Arioso) from Bach’s Cantata BWV156. Deft, delightful pizzicato makes a gem of the Cantilena from Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No 5. Britney Spears’ Everytime is gently lulling material.

Genevieve Lang: step forward and take a well deserved bow for splendid harp playing in O mio babbino caro from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi in an arrangement by Lang and Maer. And in Motzing’s arrangement of Jon Bon Jovi’s Bed of Roses, the backing has a most agreeable yearning, lilting quality. There’s more delight in Handel’s Lascia ch’io pianga from Rinaldo, informed, as the playing is, by a mood of restrained melancholy.

Recorded sound is uniformly fine. And there are eye-catching illustrations as well as an eminently readable essay on the soloist by Martin Buzacott.

Sally Mae spent some time in the cello section of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra as well as playing part time in the cello sections of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra – and she enjoys busking.

Southern Star

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Choir of Trinity College, University of Melbourne

Michael Leighton Jones, director

Marshall McGuire, harp

ABC Classics 476 6349

TPT: 63’ 11”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

The gem of this compilation is Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. The finesse that informs every moment of this exquisite work makes this one of the most satisfying recordings of the work I can recall. It’s a compendium of musical marvels. Whether in evoking the ecstatic interior mood of As Dew in Aprille, the emphatically stated This Little Babe or the rippling note streams that Marshall McGuire coaxes from his harp, this is a performance to cherish.

Britten’s delightful work is often performed, yet there’s nothing here that sounds dull or routine. On the contrary, it comes across with a newly minted freshness which is quite delightful.

McGuire is no less persuasive in Christopher Willcock’s Southern Star. The texts of this song cycle are by cartoonist extraordinaire Michael Leunig. The Trinity College choristers are in fine fettle here, sombre in the introductory Love is Born, intense and ecstatic in Christmas and, in Gul Gul Dja Mardji, the presentation is informed by an emphatically atavistic quality. I liked the bustle which informs What did you get? (a rather delightful piece about Xmas presents) – and in Real and Right and True, McGuire again comes up trumps.

William Kirkpatrick’s Away in a Manger was a joy and Andrew Carter’s Mary’s Magnificat is beautifully essayed.

A thoroughly recommend compilation.

FROCK – THE FATHER, SON AND HOLY GHOST

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A tribute to Don Walker, Neil Finn and Nick Cave

Performed by:

Craig Beard, Anthony Schulz, Adam Starr, Daniel Farrugia and Simon Starr

ABC jazz 271 0972                  Total playing time: 60.37mins.

reviewed by Mort AllenFrock

The development of western art music owes a debt to the development of jazz.  Improvisation and sound colour (timbre) are the two areas which immediately come to mind.  Working ‘against’ the beat or ‘syncopation’ is probably more reciprocity than influence.  However, timbral variety is the parameter that one most looks for, in both stylistic endeavours, these days.

In this respect, the disc only contains one track which could be called truly effective: ‘The Mercy Seat’ (an apparent collaborative effort between Nick Cave and Mick Harvey).  I use the word ‘apparent’ because there is no mention of the piece in the leaflet details.  In fact, the CD insert prefers to more pedestrian matters and isn’t particularly illuminative.  The original song of ‘The Mercy Seat’ is about the thoughts of an innocent man about to be executed so, by extension, one assumes the title to refers to ‘The Throne of God’.  The group give their take on the original and do so with sensitivity and style.  While the piece itself becomes (one might suggest inevitably so) harmonically icebound, it has an intriguing combination of colours – highlighting an ‘otherworldliness’ – nicely evoked by the performers.  Nick Cave, I notice, appears to be the ‘Holy Ghost’ in this trilogy of tributes.  The spectral quality of ‘The Mercy Seat’ would make his position very plausible.

Neil Finn equates, if one is meant to make direct connections between the disc’s title and three composers, to The Son.  He’s certainly a very obedient son; so to speak, because his melodic writing has textbook simplicity – statement/climax/dénouement – and his use of rhythm doesn’t set foot into unfamiliar territory.  There were some, only some, interesting harmonic shifts in the four tracks that bear his name (one of which was written in synergy with Tim Finn) but, for the most part, the harmonies were fairly straightforward.  His ‘History Never Repeats’ should not have been included on this or any other disc.  This is a most disappointing addition.  The listener is left wondering where the opening material is going to lead the ear. History (perhaps) doesn’t repeat but it does develop – one event leading to another – but this music doesn’t.  True, it does have a cute vibraphone sequence and a well-judged climax but the musical line hops from one idea, one gesture, to the next without providing a sense of growth or evolution.

God (Don Walker) has no trouble finding interesting formation material but appears troubled by what to do with it.  His ‘Khe Sanh’ and ‘Saturday Night’ both meandered, not to the extent of Finn’s ‘History Never Repeats’, through no fault of the performers.  There simply wasn’t enough really good substance with which to work.  In other words: what substance was there, was good…but it was spread too thinly.

While one could make heavy weather of the original compositions’ contextures, it needs to be emphasised that the disc, as a whole, is not and wasn’t intended to be, confronting.  Its material is stylistically and dramatically well balanced, although the actual quality of some of that material is questionable.  It is an easy listen: relaxing and pleasing.  It would suit a quiet night.

The performers combine with fluid interaction, as good jazz players do, and they’re always listening carefully to each other, ready to pick up and develop small gestures.  Perhaps some areas of improvisation could have been ‘tighter’, and perhaps the vibraphone could have been less dominated by the usual ‘dead’ (i.e. no pedal, motor off) sound, but the disc, taken incorporatively, forms a cool-ish oasis and is recommended to those of less analytical inclination.

Mort Allen 2009.