https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/product/our-duty-to-care-song-cycle-for-soprano-piano-trio

Our Duty to Care is a cross-disciplinary music composition based on the legal case Sharma v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560, where eight Australian teenagers (namely Anjali Sharma and Isolde Raj-Seppings, Ambrose Hayes, Tomas Arbizu, Bella Burgemeister, Laura Kirwan, Ava Princi & Luca Saunders) represented by an octogenarian nun (Sister Marie Brigid Arthur) as their litigation guardian, sued the Minister for the Environment (Cth) and Vickery Coal Pty Ltd.
They successfully argued that the Minister owed them and other Australian children a duty of care, which was supposedly breached when the Minister approved the extraction of coal from a coal mine.

Whilst this decision was later successfully appealed by the Minister, this case monumentally established that climate change is legally real – with all submitted scientific evidence un-refuted. This denotes a significant shift, as we are no longer fighting to prove our climate crisis, but rather urging all to fight the crisis itself.

This work sets newly commissioned text by poet, close friend & regular collaborator Savanna Wegman, who has re-interpreted my own legal research about the case into a 3-part poem, which has in turn structured the song cycle. It embodies climate anxiety, the nervous excitement of the trial and its success, and the melancholic yet hopeful transference of ideology: how far we’ve come & how far we still have left to go.
Composed as part of and made possible by a 2022/23 University of Melbourne Wattle Fellowship.

Timing: ~ 18 minutes 
1: Robed in Apocalypse (~6min)
2: they will rise, as birds fall (~5min)
3: The Changing Wilds (~7min)

Written for Bridgette Kelsey and Solstice Trio. Dedicated to all current and future generations of Australians who inherit a climate crisis. 

Bridgette Kelsey, soprano
SOLSTICE
Isabel Hede, violin (guest)
Stephanie Arnold, cello 
Georgina Lewis, piano

Commissioned Cover Art Illustration © by Lucinda McIntyre.

Commissioned Sext Text: ‘Prophecy, as a fire comes’ by Savanna Wegman © 2022 
Text used for 1: Robed in Apocalypse:
No more prophecy 
until the sky begets a softer 
Everlasting sun 
or
the youth unravel 
braided darkness
rushing innocence
all over Earth 

Shadows designed 
for our tired birth places
ghosting the new life 
upon babbling breaths  
 
And so the young are born 
New guardians 
Robed in 
Apocalypse

Text used for 2: they will rise, as birds fall:
Know they will rise
As disappearance is written  
on ancient weather 
become beast
She watches above 
as birds fall 
out of the mother sky 

March into the high courts 
of creators and destroyers
Anjali Sharma and the army 
                  Future keepers
Enter this laced arena 
burning horizons in their bellies 

The Minister surveys the gravity
how deep we may breathe
how quickly we will fall
when the Earth veins split 
and the sanctuary howls 
at its open flesh  

The weather sounds like a whisper 
in these walls that stand for justice 
Lay down a pocketful 
of bird bones
of poison oceans

Text used for 3: The Changing Wilds
They speak for the
forgotten
Their ancestral home-body
Their drowning, burning worlds
for their lands that have lost hope 
together their voices are louder
Becoming suns
Becoming rains 
Becoming rivers multiplied 
Becoming the skyward call 
of protection 

this call
Is honoured
the duty of care rewritten
A first for acknowledging
the changing wilds

Evidence now held
in palms that believe in
collapse
and might begin to
listen
Blessing the horror 
with a soft breath of courage 

Remember how
young sacred tears 
are greeting Earth 
like miracle seeds

Our Duty to Care (LIVE)(song cycle for soprano & piano trio)(2023)(Bridgette Kelsey & Solstice Trio)

Key Roles

Sat down in the front room to play a short 2x12 bar blues on my mother's birthday, thinking of when she was a barmaid. 

Bill Boethius: guitars, [Ibanez Gax70 guitar & Boss wah wah], voice


Composed, performed and produced by Bill Boethius

12 bar maid shorts

⁂Dreaming While Awake/DWA/Espen Skaar
See track: https://soundcloud.com/dreamingwhileawakemusic/tik-tok

Tock Shock

Ticked Tock

Ticked Tock (Collab Lady ElectroTrek W/ DWA: Espen Skaar)

A short venture into atonality after a long sojourn in the tonal sphere. Instrumentation: Harpsichord Celeste Horn Tubular Bells and oboe and Base Clarinet

Atonal Tune

lamentations path

Man from the past

MOVIN

A test run of a piece from a game I've been working on since last year (I do not know when it will be finished, sorry). The game is all about space travel, and this is an early pass at one of the dozen or so tracks representing the powering up (and possible overloading) of your ship's warp drive. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe you arrive at your destination, maybe you explode into a million pieces. Fun!

Boom Jumpers-Powering the void drive (test)

Ida von Toggenburg

Passion.

Passion is the fifth album made by Henry Guy. The album mainly represents the concept that, over time, we lose interest and passion for things we used to love. Passion is an honest exploration of growth, change, and the nuanced experience of losing interest in what once defined you. 

Please do not distribute these tracks without my own permission. These are independently produced entirely by me and all copyright belongs to Henry Guy. 

Man from the past

barabajagal

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