"Songs for a Distant Land" - Choralworks Incorporated: Lisa enjoys the music in the Adelaide City region of South Australia
There's something very uplifting about hearing a mass choir in full voice and the goose bumps certainly begin to appear as we approach the Marryatville High School music centre. Inside, Head of music, Aldis Sils is putting the senior concert choir through its paces on a major new work, "Songs for a Distant Land".
It's a specially written choral piece about the perils endured by our forefathers as they made the epic journey in tall ships across the seas to Australia. It's the work of one of South Australia's best known composers and musicians, Timothy Sexton.
Timothy Sexton, Composer: "I've always been intrigued by Australian history and pioneering history and think there's an enormous amount of material in there. Its new music doesn't have to be necessarily alienating, new music can be reflections of things that have happened before and music of a different era."
"Songs for a Distant Land" is a powerful piece in 10 movements - a series of musical 'postcards' portraying the perils, pleasures and dreams of the people who came to settle in Australia.
Timothy Sexton: "It's researching our past, researching what happened musically - looking at the Depression, what sort of music was around in the depression, looking at folk styles, looking at stuff that essentially can be sung. When your writing a choral piece you want music that's going to be singable and so you look for the idioms and styles and I'd get ideas. I'd say I like that idea, that from the 30s is good, that thing from the 1860s I like that idea. You'd develop it and work it - so it took a while because it's a 40 minute work - it's a substantial piece of music."
Timothy has Val Kilgour to thank for commissioning the work. Val's the moving force behind Choralworks Incorporated - a not for profit organisation she set up specifically to commission music for choirs.
Val Kilgour, Choralworks Incorporated: "The whole idea of Choralworks came to me after I had a sea change in my life. My husband died and then and just less than a year later I was made redundant from my position at the university."
It was 1995 when her world came crashing down with the loss of her husband Jim. Val was looking for something to fill the void and music was part of the answer.
Val Kilgour: "As a child I was really musical but I wasn't allowed to do that. And so I decided that I'd go to singing lessons and that really started me on this journey…"
Several years later and she's formed Choralworks - the first organisation of its type in Australia which commissions major work and publishes it specifically for choral groups.
Timothy Sexton, Composer: "The beauty of Charolworks is that it's pushing forward major choral works. It's very easy to get small works, 2, 3 minute works out there. To have a 40 minute works out there is really rare and to have the opportunity to do that is tremendous so in that respect what it's doing is something that is really unique."
Choirs can go to the Choralworks website and download music for a fee. Part of the money goes back to the composer as a Royalty while the rest is used to commission new major work and stage public performances. And that's where the Marryatville choir comes in. They'll be premiering Songs for a Distant Land at a concert on September the 13th.
Val Kilgour: "It's really lovely to hear the young voices sing because part of what I want to do is to persuade young people to join community choirs. A lot of community choirs are finding it difficult to get new members, the young people don't join the community choirs and this is part of what I want to do."
"Songs for a Distant Land' will premiere in a special performance at Elder Hall on North Terrace on Sunday the 13th of September at 2.30. And if Val has her way, it will be the first of many to be commissioned by Choralworks Inc. Tickets are $38 for adults and $18 for children. Booking at Bass.
'Songs for a Distant Land' By Timothy Sexton
2.30pm Sun 13 Sept
Elder Hall
North Terrace
Bookings at Bass 131 246Choralworks Inc
Published 30th August 2009
