taken from the album 'Acts of Beauty/Exit no Exit' which couples two world premiere recordings.

Life's Chaos is the fourth of five songs in Nyman's song cycle 'Acts of Beauty -- based on miscellaneous texts on beauty from a 1556 text of Vincenzo Cartari, which looks at the measurements of beauty by comparing buttocks to beauty in the urban environment as viewed by Kurt Scwitters and Dzuga Vertov to Martial's Epigrams on another kind of sexual measurement: the weighing of penis. It presents an entirely different Nyman approach to vocal writing than is found in Six Celan Songs/The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi.

Buy from MN Records

Life's Chaos

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)

Dreamer, a song for soprano, piano and violin, written for soprano Megan Mead's final recital at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Performed in the Peacock Room, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London. Soprano - Megan Mead, Piano - Rianka Bouwmeester, Violin - Grace Byrne.

Dreamer (Live) - from 'Just Keep Blooming' song cycle

Christopher James Harrison: piano, electric guitars, acoustic guitar, vocals
Grant Gordon: bass guitar
Gary Mackenzie: drums

written and produced by Harrison/Gordon/Mackenzie
recorded and mixed by Al Harle
additional recording by Grant Gordon
photography by Tom Aldwinckle

check out the Echoes of Ilion 'Inspirations' playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6tiSxU13M3ACXQlZzP7RWU

The Song of The Horse

Christopher James Harrison: electric guitars
Grant Gordon: bass guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, vocals
Gary Mackenzie: drums

written and produced by Harrison/Gordon/Mackenzie
recorded and mixed by Al Harle
additional recording by Grant Gordon
photography by Tom Aldwinckle

check out the Echoes of Ilion 'Inspirations' playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6tiSxU13M3ACXQlZzP7RWU

 We come from the sea we return to the sea and if you still believe you're immortal you'll suffer
We come on our boats and we'll flood out your moats
And we'll tear down your walls and slaughter your children
We are the new order in this waterworld
You're so self deluded to think you could conquer
This kingdom of water
Which birthed us all
And we will all eventually fall
Surrender yourselves to the sea people
Come back home again to where you're from

We laugh at the cheap tawdry weapons you made from copper and tin they're picks and spades
The future is with us, blowing our sails, propelling us forward to quicken your wails
We are the new order 'cross land and sea
We'll shatter your ramparts and make your kings bleed
Helped by volcanic eruptions or three
We saw the chance to take the lead
History has ended today we declare
Lock all the doors and turn the lights off

The Song of The Sea Peoples

Christopher James Harrison: electric guitars, vocals
Grant Gordon: bass guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals
Gary Mackenzie: drums

written and produced by Harrison/Gordon/Mackenzie
recorded and mixed by Al Harle
additional recording by Grant Gordon
photography by Tom Aldwinckle

check out the Echoes of Ilion 'Inspirations' playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6tiSxU13M3ACXQlZzP7RWU

The Song of Alexander

This piece is the fourth of five songs in Elgar's 'Sea Pictures' song cycle. Each piece reflects a different aspect of the ocean and a longing be at one with its beauty.

Mezzo-Soprano: Gracie Caton
Piano: Catherine Hall-Smith

Where Corals Lie - Elgar

Tenor Jonathan Price, Pianist Diane Braun, Poetry by <a href="http://jnradway.com/">John North Radway,</a> Music by Mattia C. Maurée

vi.

At night the monsters circled in the sky.
The empty sands upheld the man
who beat the earth with fists to let him in.

Hearing, they came—the ones he’d touched,
the ones he’d changed,
filling that waste with green and the hum of voices.

The willow spoke, My boughs bent low in grief.
You sang it into leaves
till I learned to gather light,
   but he wore the darkness like a coat.

Up sprung a gentle wind:
I raged in the north alone, it said
until your music lured me toward the sun,
   but the note he heard was cold as winter.

Leopards, crows, and oxen circled round.
You taught us life from death
when you touched your strings, they said,
   but day and night were one inside him.

And far below, the dry throats of the dead
rasped of how his song had warmed  their shadows
for a while. Her voice was low, unheard.

He cocked his head and let the night come in.
Above, the monsters thrashed their claws, undid
the music of the spheres, the tune concealed.

Orpheus - vi - After

Short Day: Five Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano

Kyrsten Chambers Jones, mezzo-soprano
Orlando Diaz, piano
Live Performance at Ciminelli Lounge, Dec. 11th 2019

Short Day: 1. The Passing of the Hours

Text by Mordechai Gebirtig. Set to music by Benjy Fox-Rosen
 Featuring Patrick Farrell, prepared piano; Avi Fox-Rosen, guitar; Benjy Fox-Rosen, voice and bass; Tyshawn Sorey, drums; Michael Winograd, clarinet. Produced by Daniel Blacksberg. Translation by BFR

The bells are tolling
GLIN GLANG
GLIN GLANG
As if someone were asking:
How much longer? How long?
How much longer? How long?
Will man be a beast,
Will man be a disgrace,
Will man be abandoned
to the devil's hand.
How much longer?
How long will he rule?

The bells are tolling
GLIN GLANG
GLIN GLANG
As if someone were answering:
Not much longer, not long!
Not much longer, not long 
Will the devil rejoice,
Thanks to him
The world is in flames.
Glin glang, glin glang.
Not long, not long! 
His defeat is near!


The Bells' Toll/ Glokn Klang

Strands of ethereal beauty with an undercurrent of intensity.

Composer & Flautist | Juris Doctor Graduate | Aether Duo | Wattle Fellowship
www.roberttmcintyre.com

Robert McIntyre is an Australian composer keen to consider commissions, collaborations, and more - please enquire and email at: rtm.composition@gmail.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/roberttmcintyrecomposer/
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/roberttmcintyre/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttmcintyre
__________________________________________________________________

Leo Holder, a London-based composer, orchestrator, arranger and producer.

Echoes of Ilion features Grant Gordon, bassist with iconic New Wave band And Also The Trees and formerly of The Divine Comedy, drummer Gary Mackenzie (previously of seminal UK rock band Praying Mantis), and brilliant multi-instrumentalist Christopher James Harrison (The Mighty Handful, Ali Azimi & The Need.  

 

After playing on each other’s solo recordings for some years, Harrison, Gordon and Mackenzie formed Echoes of Ilion to explore their shared love of an eclectic range of influences - from King Crimson, Opeth and Pain of Salvation through Pink Floyd, Rush and Transatlantic to Kate Bush, Nick Cave and Ben Folds.

 

Using the siege of Troy as their starting point, each song explores a different aspect of how the Trojan myth has resonated through the centuries. The ‘Horse’ E.P. is the first part of the ‘Troy’ song cycle.

 

‘The Song of the Horse’ is a visualisation of what the Greek soldiers inside the Trojan horse might have been feeling as they waited for dawn to rise, deep into enemy territory.

 

‘The Song of Alexander’ is voiced by Alexander the Great who saw himself as the ‘new Achilles’, the greatest Greek warrior in Homer’s Iliad. Alexander was so obsessed with Achilles that he made a pilgrimage to his death-site at Troy in order to channel his warlike spirit before embarking on his epic invasion of Asia.

 

Contemporary with the Troy stories is The Bronze Age Collapse, an epoch during which numerous prosperous and cultured societies (including a rebuilt Troy) across the Aegean and Mediterranean suddenly disappeared. No-one is sure why, but the strongest theory seems to be that a mysterious military coalition ran riot across the entire area – ‘The Song of The Sea Peoples’ explore this crucial time.

 

The story of Troy is so rich. It is our alternative creation myth, and the first great East-versus-West confrontation. Virgil wrote that the Trojan hero Aeneas escaped the burning city, headed west and founded Rome. There is a sense that ancient secrets and learning from the East, encoded in the city of Troy and its inhabitants, were brought to Rome. This is the start of our culture. From the long Dark Age that followed The Bronze Age Collapse, the West was born.

 

The band wanted to explore the possibilities - musically, socially and politically - of being a trio. With Red-era King Crimson and Rush as their models, it has been an experiment in collaboration, ego-liberation and democracy - values that were, it turns out, invented in classical Greece.

 

Their next E.P., exploring more Troy resonances - from the Anzac landings at Gallipoli in 1915, the Nazis obsession with the city in the 1930s, and the first excavations of Troy in the 19th century when it was first realised that the myths might actually be true - will follow later in 2019.

 

Check out the Echoes of Ilion ‘inspirations’ playlist on Spotify. Each band member chose 10 songs each to trace the musical paths that brought them to Echoes of Ilion, and to Troy.

 

Christopher James Harrison: vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano

Grant Gordon: vocals, bass, acoustic guitar, keyboards

Gary Mackenzie: drums

 

All songs written and produced by Harrison/Gordon/Mackenzie

check out the Echoes of Ilion 'Inspirations' playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6tiSxU13M3ACXQlZzP7RWU

Michael Nyman's Official Soundcloud channel

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