From The Sydney Morning Herald 10/07/08Two composers have collaborated on a work which captures their response to a picture book story about a little girl's bad day, writes Clare Morgan.
Everyone knows the feeling. You wake up with the nameless dreads, as if a dark cloud is hanging over you and nobody understands why you feel so low or can penetrate that sense of being alone.
The Australian author and artist Shaun Tan captured such emotions exquisitely in his children's picture book The Red Tree, the deceptively simple story of a little girl struggling through a bad day, confused and afraid, until a final, glorious blossoming of hope.
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2 comments:
I absolutely loved the Red Tree and whilst I was skeptical about the Shostakovitch / Arrival synergy I was won over by half way through the piece. That's one of the things I love about the ACO. It has the courage and artistic vision to push boundaries and lead one to new experiences. I was really excited by last night's performance in Melbourne. Fantastic effort by one and all. The choir were so good. Despite the macabre nature of the thmes presented I came away uplifted.
I want to thank the ACO for giving those of us who were sitting in Box E of the SOH yesterday a chance to view the images of Shaun Tan properly. The pre-concert talk given by Ken Healey was very interesting and helped to understand about the first half. A bonus to this pre-concert talk was when Michael Yezerski joined Ken later to discuss about "The Red Tree". I found the first half of the concert was dark, and understandbly so, because the music Shostakovitch wrote was when he was dying. Watching Shaun Tan's images of his family fleeing their homeland as refugees was poignant. The second half was in total contrast. Michael Yezerski's and Richard Tognetti's composition was very exciting to listen to, and the Gondwana Voices gave a terrific performance. Is there any chance of recording this performance for posterity?
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