A Little Cha Cha, A Little Off Beat, The Way Home, Different Noodles, Fish 'n' Chips, Groovy Baby, It's Not Where You Think It Is, Latin Holiday, Low Tide, Secret Agent, Possums in the Roof, Strange Sounds From the Forest, Suede Shoes, Things That Go Bump in the Night, Whistling
Contents: The Child, The Maker, Woman to Child, Seasonal Flocking, Lament for Passenger Pigeons
This suite comes from a piece written in 2005 for the Festival of Arts and Activism in Braidwood (near Canberra). The festival honoured the work of Judith Wright, a poet and enviromental activist. The original performance was semi-staged and included many more of Wright’s poems. I worked with storyteller Jane Ahlquist, alternating readings of the poems with solo flute. Later I reworked the music into a suite of five pieces.
Contents: Deluge, Dirt Blues, Karwan, Harriet's Lullaby, Simpatico, Umlaut
Program note
A phoenix - is a mythical bird that is a fire spirit with a colourful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends).
It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again.
The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self.
