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)

Early morning,
One star remaining,
It’s a good day too.

A wandering poet and ascetic Zen priest, Santōka was a disciple of Ogiwara Seisensui, one of the first poets to discard the traditional use of the 5-7-5 structure in haiku.

Santōka’s poetry emphasizes the necessity of sabi (solitude) in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment and serenity.

One star remaining (naviarhaiku492)

Intrépido y vago tlacuachito

This episode features music made by Naviar’s community inspired by Janice Doppler’s poem “Summer sky… / rippling the silence / a watersnake”. 

https://www.naviarrecords.com/2023/09/20/naviarhaiku507-summer-sky/ 

Tracklist:

Zenbytes - Watersnake
Halcyon Hum - Rippling Silence
Rikardfvs - Summer Watersnake
Noksidam - Summer Sky Watersnake
Ed Mundio - The Watersnake's Song

Credits:

music intro: “This ruined house” by Tuonela
voice intro: Ian Joyce
cover image: Micah Hallahan
voice reciting the poem: Marco Sebastiano Alessi

Naviar Broadcast is a radio programme curated by Naviar, broadcasted on Resonance Extra every Wednesday at 7pm UK time. Thirty minutes of experimental music made in response to a weekly assigned haiku poem.
To have your music featured on the show, you'll have to participate in the Haiku music challenge: https://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku
support the show: https://www.naviarrecords.com/support-us/

Naviar Broadcast #287 – summer sky… – Wednesday 4th October 2023

This is a response to naviarhaiku challenge 512

Endless echo
footsteps on an empty house
once full of life

https://www.naviarrecords.com/2023/10/25/naviarhaiku512-endless-echo/

Endless echo footsteps on an empty house once full of life naviarhaiku 512

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0618: Burying the Lede

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0618 discussion thread:

Having lived and worked most of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area, I selected a descriptive New York Times article from March 1, 1970, about the colorful salt evaporation ponds located in South San Francisco Bay "Coast Salt Flats: New Ecological Battlefield". The article examines the battle between industry, developers, and conservationists. 50+ years after the article was published, some of the wetlands have been restored, but the conflict still continues.

I recorded from Chrome's Read Aloud text-to-speech reader to a Tascam DR-100MKIII. I then processed the audio four times using Calsynth Monsoon (Clouds clone) with different settings, and placed them on four tracks in Ableton Live. From there, I added reverb/delay effects, as well as a track with sliced samples of the original unprocessed audio using Ableton's Simpler. Created additional tracks using Slate+Ash Choreographs, Sugar Bytes Aparillo, Jogging House Sonic Beds Vol. 1, PaulXStretch, and AudioThing Noises.

Although I no longer live in Northern California, it was cool to create a piece that links to an area that’s part of my history. This turned out to have more of a darker vibe than I would have liked, but in the end, I enjoyed putting this together and am good with the result. 
 
More on this 618th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Burying the Lede (The Assignment: Turn old news into new music), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0618: Burying the Lede – Disquiet
About the Disquiet Junto: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet 1
Subscribe to project announcements: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co 2: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0618-burying-the-lede/

Even On Clear Days [disquiet0618]

Electronic composition inspired by haiku:

A Black Dog

A black dog Transformed into a lantern! The way in snow

Transformed

Transformed - (naviarhaiku513)

Ilitizen

Disquiet Junto Project 0624: Fresh Pair
The Assignment: Combine two influences, however disparate they may be.

This piece of music is a fusion of two opposing philosophical influences: Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. The Kant motif is structured and simple, reflecting his emphasis on rationality and moral imperatives. It has a friendly tone consistent with Kant's belief in ethics. His motif also has a preachy element that is meant to remind us of Kant's belief in universal laws and also that his writings are frankly quite boring. In contrast, the Nietzsche motif is darker and wilder, reflecting his challenging and often provocative and mostly interesting ideas. The more chaotic (and randomnized) nature of his motif reflects Nietzsche's commitment to individual will and his rejection of social norms (or even his own ideas). However, they also had some things in common, such as a great interest in the emerging natural sciences or the fact that they struggled with the idea of a God. Ultimately, the Kantian theme prevails and has the last word, as Nietzsche is frowned upon for influencing the difficult to understand and often misunderstood "Ubermensch" idea, whereas today we (some of us) actually try harder to act according to Kant's theory of reason, even if a glance at the news teaches us that we as humankind simply don't succeed in doing so.

--

This was fun, even to make the cover image with Dall-E 3, which in no way was able to make both philosophers really recognizable. The prompt: "A 19th-century style painting, more abstract than realistic, featuring a recognizable Immanuel Kant on the left and an older, recognizable Friedrich Nietzsche with a beard on the right, engaged in a passionate debate. Kant, shown in his middle years, is in 18th-century attire, exuding a calm and refined aura. Nietzsche, depicted in his later years with an iconic beard, is dressed in typical 19th-century clothing, with an intense and expressive demeanor. The setting is a music studio library, filled with books and modular synthesizers, blending a deep intellectual atmosphere with the spirit of modular synthesis."

--

More on this 624th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Fresh Pair (The Assignment: Combine two influences, however disparate they may be), at: https://disquiet.com/0624/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0624-fresh-pair/

Kant - Vs - Nietzsche [disquiet0624]

Winter sky–
Distant dreams
Shattered and flown away

(Tr. by John Stevens)

Haiku by Santoka Taneda https://www.chzc.org/Nonin.htm

More information @ https://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

more halF unusuaL

halF shattereD [naviarhaiku520]

There are more of them approaching

James is a multi-instrumentalist creator of music as well as a contemporary artist. He plays stringed instruments (guitars, cello, ukulele, bass, etc.) and uses a midi controller for any instruments he doesn't have access to; such as a timpani or a glockenspiel.

James creates music that is inspired by the pure love and joy of making music. The style of music he creates varies from piece to piece. He will go from songs that are accompanied by guitar or ukulele to full arrangements of a traditional North American band to orchestral scores that you could easily hear backing a film or video. 

By browsing his music you're likely to come across traditional pieces of music sounding as old as time and other pieces sounding as new as yesterday's jingle. 

Instruments inspire him to make new sounds come together to form music and combining old and new sounds is something he very much enjoys exploring.

While music and sounds are a big part of James' personality so is making art, graphics, and videos. James has worked professionally as a technical illustrator/graphics specialist since 1991. So James almost always creates art specifically for each piece of music he puts out into the world. The art may or may not be directly related to the piece of music in context but it will definitely give you another perspective on how the music has inspired him or makes him feel.

To learn more about James and/or see his art seek him out on Instagram.com and YouTube.com; he’s easy to find if you spell his name correctly.  A pseudonym also being used by James is Mildred Stain.

If you are interested in collaborating in any way, contact him!

Transformed - (naviarhaiku513)

jamesbrynildsen

Recent comments

halF unusuaL

Related tracks