Psathas / Fragment: music by John Psathas

Milan Mrkusich (b.1925), Emblem V – In the Beginning, 1963, oil on canvas, 1500 x 1120 mm.

Private collection, Auckland. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

PSATHAS/FRAGMENTS 1 Fragment (percussion version) 2:58

Stephen Gosling / Piano

jeremy fitzsimons / Percussion

2 Happy Tachyons

Stephen Gosling / Piano

jeremy fitzsimons / Percussion

3 - 5 Piano Quintet

Stephen Gosling / Piano

7:39

18:32

NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET

6 Jettatura

Stephen Gosling / Piano

4:33

7 Matre’s Dance

Stephen Gosling / Piano

9:37

`

B 2003

jeremy fitzsimons / Percussion

HRL MORRISON MUSIC TRUST

8 Fragment (piano duet version) 3:45

Stephen Gosling / Piano

Total duration

mmt2047 DIGITAL STEREO RECORDING

47:06

- 2003

HRL MORRISON MUSIC TRUST The music of john psathas is published exclusively by promethean editions

Psathas John Psathas (b.1966) is one of New Zealand’s most successful composers.

With works in the repertoire of such highprofile musicians as Evelyn Glennie, Michael Brecker, the New Juilliard Ensemble and others, he has established an international profile and receives regular commissions from organisations in New Zealand and overseas.

Psathas, who grew up in Taumaranui and then Napier, left high school early to study composition and piano at Victoria University of Wellington. He supported himself as a student partly by playing up to nine gigs a week in a jazz trio.

Psathas studied further with composer Jacqueline Fontyn in Belgium before returning to New Zealand, where he has since lectured in music at Victoria University of Wellington and continued to fulfil a busy schedule of commissions.

Early success came with Matre’s Dance in 1991, a maximum-energy duet for percussion and piano that has since made Psathas’ name internationally having been adopted and championed by percussionist Evelyn Glennie. This work

and Drum Dances are fast becoming standard repertoire for percussionists throughout the world. The composer’s relationship with Evelyn Glennie has been a particularly fruitful one for them both. Her performing repertoire includes Matre’s Dance, Drum Dances, Spike, Happy Tachyons and the double concerto for percussion and piano, View From Olympus.

A work by John Psathas is an individual, unique entity. His ‘sound’ is difficult to define – the harmony and improvisational feel of jazz, the compelling rhythmic drive and excitement of rock music and the sustained repetitive textures of minimalism are apparent as influences, yet they combine and intermingle with something else less tangible. His is one of the most original voices in the arena of New Zealand contemporary music.

A highlight of 2000 was the première of the Saxophone Concerto, a work tailored to the particular improvising talents of jazz saxophonist Michael Brecker, at an outdoor performance in Bologna, Italy.

Two of Psathas’ works, including the Percussion Concerto, were performed at the 2001 Klangspuren Festival in Schwaz, Austria. The concerto for mallet percussion and chamber ensemble,

Psyzygysm, was premièred by Portuguese percussion virtuoso Pedro Carneiro in the 2002 New Zealand Festival, and in July of the same year View From Olympus was first heard at a prestigious concert during the Manchester Commonwealth Games, performed by Evelyn Glennie and Philip Smith with the Hallé Orchestra. And in November 2002, the 50-minute oratorio Orpheus in Rarohenga was premièred at a concert to mark the 50th anniversary of the Orpheus Choir of Wellington.

A retrospective concert of Psathas’ chamber music was given in the 2000 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, culminating with the première of the specially commissioned Piano Quintet. In a programme note, Psathas described the process for him of creating music: ‘When I write music, it’s not a sense of inventing I experience, as much as it is a sense of finding something that exists at the remote periphery of what I know. It is like seeing things – that aren’t really there – in the corner of one’s eye, but not spinning around to view them, because then they would simply cease to be. It is a case of being aware of a thing in one’s peripheral vision and, while staring straight ahead, trying to decipher,

without looking at it, the true nature of what it is. What one is finding is exactly the right thing for any given moment in a musical work.

‘Composing for me is essentially a continual re-travelling of a journey that begins with ‘any conceivable thing is possible at this moment’ and concludes with, ‘it couldn’t be anything but this’.

There are some piano phrases in the first movement of the Piano Quintet which were so difficult to ‘find’ that I came very close to really giving up. Now that they’ve been discovered, they flow naturally in and out of the fabric of the work and no-one would be capable of sensing the colossal frustration experienced in placing the right notes in the right place at the right time. It is one of the great ironies composers have always endured, that the labour, agony, and difficulty which are part of the process of writing music, should not be audible in the finished work.’

For more information, visit:

www.johnpsathas.com The music of John Psathas is published exclusively by Promethean Editions:

www.promethean-editions.com

1

Fragment (2001)

This short work is an adaptation for vibraphone and piano of the original piano duet (track 8). At the time of its composition, I was engaged in writing my double concerto for percussion, piano and orchestra, View From Olympus, and in mood and musical material, Fragment is related to the second movement of that work (in fact, it forms an optional encore to the concerto).

John Psathas Fragment is a refreshing piece to play. It makes me think of water and crystal, like icicles melting in the spring – you can hear the water dripping from the icy structures.

The pure sound of the vibraphone has the opportunity to shine through. It is a joy to play: every note is important.

Jeremy Fitzsimons Fragment was given its official première performance by Kostas Theodorakos (vibraphone) and Stavros Kollias (piano) on 31 March 2003 in the Auditorium of the French Institute, Athens, Greece.

Luise Fong (b.1964), Smoke VIII, 1992, gesso and watercolour on panel, 1000 x 800 mm.

Private collection, Auckland. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

2

Happy Tachyons (1996)

Happy Tachyons, for vibraphone, marimba and piano, was written at the request of Evelyn Glennie. The technical demands of the work are deliberately pitched at the edge of what is humanly possible, particularly the passages where the percussionist is required to play both vibes and marimba simultaneously.

The exuberant high spirits which pervade the piece reflect the fact that during its composition Carla and I were expecting our first child, Emanuel, who was busy preparing his entrance into this world.

John Psathas One word really sums up Happy Tachyons for me: Whew! It’s a really rewarding work to get one’s teeth into. After a run-through I feel the same euphoria and endorphinrush as I would after having run a marathon. What a buzz!

I would like to say a special ‘thanks’ to Sarah for having put up with me learning this piece for months on end.

Jeremy Fitzsimons Happy Tachyons was commissioned by Evelyn Glennie with financial support from Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.

Martin Harms (b.1953), Study 47b, 2002, acrylic on stretched canvas, 800 x 1000 mm.

Private collection, Wellington. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

3- 5

Piano Quintet (2000)

The Piano Quintet was written during the recent millennial changeover. It is inspired by and reflective of four composers by whom I have been influenced: Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke, Jack Body, and Johann Sebastian Bach. There is a fifth element of inspiration functioning here also; the collective ‘composer’ made up of a great many unknown musicians who live in the folk music traditions of the Greek islands. This island music has always moved me in both its simplicity and refinement. The second movement of this piece is based on a transcription I made of a recorded improvisation by the brilliant Greek violinist Stathis Koukoularis.

While no music I’ve written has been programmatic, or had a literal narrative, I have come to realise that it is impossible to exclude what is immediately happening in one’s personal life from the final complex of ideas and emotions that make up a new piece of music. This autobiographical aspect of composition is nowhere more apparent to me than in this work. An example of how this manifests itself: some three or four minutes into the first movement, the second violin and viola burst out in melody. Prior to this moment I had spent almost an entire week failing to find a way forward from the previous bars. My family (three generations in the house at this point) took control and absolved me from all other responsibilities. Relieved of a great number of other pressures, I immediately found a way forward in the music, and the sense of liberation and sudden release is clearly audible in the second violin and viola as they sing out.

The third movement is an expression of the wonder and luminous joy I experience when looking at our beautiful daughter, Zoe, who came into the world as I was working on this piece. The Piano Quintet is dedicated to Jack Body. D John Psathas n:

John’s music strikes me as consistently vibrant and provocative, and while it has a compelling immediacy, it also taps into deeper spiritual zones. Working through his music with him is a pleasure – he holds no ‘misty’ notions, just clearly formed images of what he hears.

The creation of singular and evocative string/piano textures in all three movements of the quintet provides ample demonstration of his focused ear. In the first movement the rolling (sometimes ‘boiling’) legato string-crossings, interwoven throughout all four quartet voices, has to be clear and well synchronised, yet as much like a pedalled piano as possible – a ‘wet’ virtual sea of sound (to contrast the at times argumentative diatribes of the piano). The instrumental soliloquies in the middle movement should be carefully balanced by almost-indistinct, fragile murmurings in the accompanying groupings. And in the final movement, a similarly refined attention from John to the timbre and scope of the quartet’s sostenuto swells allows a crystalline clarity to emerge from the virtuosic moto perpetuo of the piano line.

For myself, now that we’ve played it several times, the quintet seems to involve the sense of time as an ‘unfolding’, with only brief interludes of willed involvement. And if, as a group, we are able to tap into this deeper unforced pulse, the remarkable sense of organic transformation proves a compelling unity.

Douglas Beilman The Piano Quintet was commissioned by the 2000 International Festival of the Arts for Dan Poynton and the New Zealand String Quartet with financial support from Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. The work was given its première performance by these artists on March 14, 2000.

John Reynolds (b.1956), Galileo, 1992, mixed media on two panels, 2040 x 1825 mm.

Private collection, Auckland. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

6

Jettatura (1999)

For a country that is home to me in so many ways, Greece has not been so kind to this particular absent son. Practically every journey I have made there has left me with a permanent reminder of some unpleasant and often bizarre experience. After donkey bites to the groin, motorbike accidents on the island of Santorini and a protracted bout of salmonella-induced weight loss that would have made Jenny Craig’s eyes water, it was not surprising that members of my family there began to imagine I had fallen under the influence of someone’s evil eye.

An expedition to Greece in 1998 brought an unprecedented onslaught of bad luck, this time involving my wife and son. My dear, concerned, sister went to the village expert in such matters to discover if I was afflicted with the evil eye (otherwise known as mal occhio, or jettatura). ‘Jettatura’ is the ancient belief that the gaze of strangers casts unwanted magic into the lives of the innocent. The belief is that a person – not otherwise malefic in any way – can harm you, your children or your livestock merely by looking at them with envy and praising them. The soothsayer, when checking my aura by long distance (these days such matters can of course, be conducted over the phone via pay-per-call numbers), gasped, went silent, and then declared I was so heavily and completely hexed that my halo was utterly opaque. In Greece there is a talisman one can wear, or place in a car, house or shop which offers protection against the evil eye (in some countries, one protects oneself against false compliments by spitting on the person who proffers a compliment). This talisman is in the form of a glass blue eye, a ‘good eye’. Jettatura, written upon my return from Greece, is my talisman, my good eye, and is dedicated to my sister Tania.

John Psathas Jettatura was written for Susanne Achilles and first performed by her on 21 November 1999 in Ludenscheid, Germany, in the 49th concert of the ‘MM::99’ Festival, which showcased representative music from every year of the 20th century.

7

Matre’s Dance (1991, rev. 1994)

Created during an intense eight days, and originally commissioned as a violin solo, Matre’s Dance was premiered by David Guerin and Bruce McKinnon in the Adam Concert Room of the Victoria University School of Music in 1991. This was the first piece which suggested to me I might have some future in composing. Following its première, Matre’s Dance passed from my hands into Evelyn Glennie’s and has now seen much more of the world than I will.

Evelyn, Matre’s Dance, and I were recently reunited in Bologna’s beautiful opera house, where after a much-rehearsed introduction (in Italian) by Evelyn, I, the composer, was presented to the audience. As I rose in my private box to give the royal wave, the house went completely dark – to which the audience politely applauded.

Considering my friend from New Zealand was shrieking with enthusiasm, gyrating and gesticulating with the euphoria more often found at a Rugby World Cup final, this unexpected blackout was no small blessing.

John Psathas This recording was a great opportunity for me to re-learn an old favourite, having played an earlier version of Matre’s Dance with John on piano back in 1994.

This is a work which has become part of the core international repertoire, and so for me the challenge has been to try to add something new. The percussion timbres are crucial to the impact of the piece, and I had been searching for years for the perfect sound for the highest drum in the set-up. Finally I found it: a little 8-inch diameter snare drum. This, coupled with two timpani (tuned to A and C) and three double-headed tom toms, gives a really punchy set-up.

Jeremy Fitzsimons

Milan Mrkusich (b.1925), Dark Over Dark, 1967, oil on canvas, 1753 x 864 mm.

Private collection, Auckland. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

1

Fragment (2001)

This piano duet was composed to commemorate the occasion of the retirement of my first piano teacher, Peter Williams. The première was given at a special function in Napier to celebrate the achievement of Peter Williams, in March 2001, where the pianists were Anne Jago and Dermot Horne.

Fragment is dedicated to Peter for setting me on the right track.

John Psathas

J.S. Parker (b.1944), Plain Song Chordal, 1994, oil on canvas, 1524 x 1830 mm.

Private collection, Auckland. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

Gosling Pianist Stephen Gosling is a ubiquitous presence on the New York new music scene, and has also performed throughout the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia. His playing has been hailed as ‘brilliant,’ ‘electric,’ and ‘luminous and poised’ (New York Times), and as possessing ‘utter clarity and conviction’ (Washington Post), and ‘extraordinary virtuosity’ (Houston Chronicle).

A native of Sheffield, England, Gosling relocated to New York in 1989 to begin studies with Oxana Yablonskaya at the Juilliard School. Upon graduation from the Bachelor of Music programme in 1993, he was awarded the Mennin Prize for Outstanding Leadership and Excellence in Music. Earlier that year he performed Corigliano’s Piano Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Juilliard Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, and gave the European premiére of Paul Schoenfield’s Four Parables with the Dutch Radio Philharmonic under Lukas Foss.

In 1994 Gosling received his Master’s

degree from Juilliard and was awarded the Sony Elevated Standards Fellowship.

He subsequently enrolled in the Doctor of Musical Arts programme, from which he graduated in 2000.

Stephen Gosling was for three years pianist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and appeared in several seasons of the ‘Summergarden’ series at MOMA. He is a member of both Ensemble Sospeso and the New York New Music Ensemble, and has performed with Orpheus, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Centre, Speculum Musicae, the DaCapo Chamber Players, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Continuum, the League of Composers / ISCM Chamber Players, and Da Camera of Houston. He has also participated in off-Broadway productions and collaborated with a number of dance companies, including the American Ballet Theatre and the Parsons Dance Project.

Jeremy Fitzsimons graduated from

Fitzsimons Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand with a Bachelor of Music degree with First Class Honours in 1995. While at Victoria he formed and led the Victoria University Big Band, was appointed Principal Percussionist of the Wellington Sinfonia, played with many other ensembles including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and attended the Pacific Music Festival in Japan.

A Fulbright Scholarship took him to the United States where he received his Masters degree (1997) and Performance Certificate (1998) from Northwestern University in Chicago. While in Chicago Fitzsimons was principal percussionist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, a member of the award winning Northwestern University Percussion Ensemble and also attended the Music Academy of the West in California and the Leigh Howard Stevens marimba seminar in New Jersey.

Jeremy Fitzsimons was a founding

member and director of the percussion group Strike from 1993-2003, and has recently toured for Chamber Music New Zealand both as part of a duo with Bridget Douglas (flute) and with the concert tango group Tango Virtuosi.

He is currently working with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and pursuing various chamber and solo projects.

New Zealand String Quartet The New Zealand String Quartet performs numerous concerts each year in New Zealand and abroad. In 2000 it made its London debut at Wigmore Hall and will make its New York debut at the Frick Collection in November 2003.

The group has been featured on North America’s popular public radio programme ‘St Paul Sunday’, and has recorded for Deutsche Welle, CBC in Canada, and Australia’s ABC, as well as regularly appearing on New Zealand’s Concert FM. Deeply committed to New Zealand music, the quartet has premièred more than twenty works by New Zealand composers.

Dedicated teachers as well as performers, the ensemble has been Quartet-in-Residence at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand since 1991. In North America it has been guest faculty at the Banff Centre, Quartet Fest West, and the Quartet Programme at Bucknell in Pennsylvania.

Highlights to date include the performance of Bartók’s cycle of six string quartets, a CD recording of which was released in 1998. More recently, the quartet has presented more than six complete performances of Beethoven’s cycle of seventeen string quartets to both critical and public acclaim.

The New Zealand String Quartet gratefully acknowledges the following sponsors: HSBC: Principal Sponsor Montana Wines: Chair Sponsor, First Violin Meridian Energy: Chair Sponsor, Viola Air New Zealand Murray + Loth Consulting Turnovsky Endowment Trust Adam Foundation Creative New Zealand Douglas Beilman plays a Storioni violin kindly loaned by Mr Craig and Mrs Brumby

Artwork Luise Fong (b.1964) Born in Sandakan, Malaysia, Luise Fong studied at the Auckland University School of Fine Arts, She graduated in 1989, and was then appointed a lecturer.

In 1994 she took up artist residency in Melbourne, Australia.

Her style can be seen to have developed out of the airy colour fields of Gretchen Albrecht and Milan Mrkusich. Where her work departs from these precedents is in her treatment of the support, where the picture surface is drilled with holes, incised and opened up. Fong works with traditional painting media, often in multipanel formats to produce very evocative abstract painting. She now lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Martin Harms (b.1953) Martin Harms was born in Hamburg, Germany. He studied art from a young age and took up an apprenticeship as a retoucher of photographs. This highly specialised skill lead to work in the graphics industry in Germany and later in New Zealand (where he emigrated in

1982), but he continued to paint and sculpt in his spare time, and had solo exhibitions of his work in Germany, France, and more recently New Zealand.

He has been painting full-time since 1997.

Milan Mrkusich (b.1925) Milan Mrkusich was born in Dargaville, New Zealand. Largely self-taught as an artist, he was an important architectural designer in the 1950s, before returning to full-time painting in the 1960s. He was the recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Grant in 1971. He has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and is notable for his rigorous commitment to abstract modes within his painting.

In Emblem V – In the Beginning, painted in 1963, the expressionist brushstrokes are beginning to be contained by a geometric scaffold. Dark Over Dark dates from four years later, when many of his works began to have an almost heraldic look to them. The coarse, heavy weave of the canvas support adds to their sense of tangible physical presence,

and to the impression that these symbolic forms have emerged from processes of elemental transformation. Deep glazes of greens, blues and browns gild the darkness in which the forms appear. The alignment of circles, bars and horizons evoke separations between light and dark, form and void on a mythical cosmic level.

J.S. Parker (b.1944) Born in Auckland, New Zealand, J.S. Parker studied at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, graduating in 1966 with a DFA (Hons) in painting.

Parker’s works can be described as abstraction grown from observation. He is best known for his ‘Plain Song’ series of paintings. The title is multi-faceted: it alludes not only to the mediaeval Gregorian chant, but also to the shapes on the plains of Canterbury and Marlborough, both sources of inspiration; it puns on the two-dimensional ‘planes’ emphasised in cubist painting (Parker describes himself as a latter-day cubist); and it conveys the idea of ‘plainness as

opposed to embroidery, exaggeration or busyness’. Parker says that his work has within it ‘elements of both architecture and musical structure’ He now lives and works in Blenheim.

John Reynolds (b.1956) Born in Auckland, New Zealand, John Reynolds graduated from the Auckland University School of Fine Arts in 1978.

He won the Montana Lindauer Art Award in 1988 and has been involved in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Distance Looks Our Way, which toured Spain and the Netherlands in 1993.

Reynolds’ work follows a very expressionist path and can be seen to be allied to the work of senior New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere. His calligraphic marking is a central pivot around which his work revolves, and ranges from graffiti-like to sketchy and diagrammatic.

The works themselves often suggest a buried narrative, a feeling heightened by Reynolds’ literary approach to the titling of his work.

PSATHAS/FRAGMENTS MMT2047 Digital Stereo recording B 2003 HRL Morrison Music Trust -

2003 HRL Morrison Music Trust

Recorded in the Adam Concert Room, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand 12-17 January 2003.

Producer John Psathas Recording Engineer, Editing and Mastering Steve Garden Executive Producer Ross Hendy Design Mallabar Music Booklet Editor Aaron Lloydd The HRL Morrison Music Trust gratefully acknowledges the support of the following people and organisations in the making of this recording: Jenny Gibbs, Jeremy Fitzsimons, The Wellington Brass Band, Diana Marsh, Wayne Laird and Lissa Meridan.

The HRL Morrison Music Trust was established in March 1995 as a charitable trust to support New Zealand musicians of international calibre.

All funds received by the Trust are used to make recordings, present concerts – both in New Zealand and overseas – and assist artists to undertake projects to further develop their talents.

This recording was made with funding assistance from Creative New Zealand and the Victoria University of Wellington Research Fund.

The composer wishes to thank: Carla, Emanuel and Zoe for support, endurance and love • Emanuel, Anastasia, and Tania for the strength that keeps me working • Steve, Jeremy, Helene, Douglas, Gillian, and Rolf for their commitment to these pieces and the intensity they bring to my music • Creative NZ for all the crucial support during the last 15 years • Victoria University for supporting this project • My colleagues at the School of Music, Victoria University • Carla Van Zon, Joseph Seelig and Diana Cable of the NZ International Festival for commissioning the Piano Quintet • Evelyn Glennie and Philip Smith for believing in my work and playing it so much • Steve Garden for another superb recording experience, great wine, and discussion • Dan Poynton, David Crossan, David Downes and Kostas Thodorakos for friendship and empathy • Ruth and Bruce Blair for lending me their house to write Matre’s Dance all those years ago • Steve and Vicky for their hospitality • Michael Houstoun for encouragement, support and meaning • Ross Hendy for management, guidance, and friendship • Thomas Liggett, Aaron Lloydd and the team at Promethean Editions & Trust Records • Scilla Askew and the team at SOUNZ • Thomas Tamvakos for his support in Greece • Peter Williams and Jack Body for convincing me to look under the musical surface.

More information about other releases by the HRL Morrison Music Trust can be found at the internet site:

www.trustcds.com

PSATHAS/FRAGMENTS 1 Fragment (percussion version) 2:58

Stephen Gosling / Piano

jeremy fitzsimons / Percussion

2 Happy Tachyons

Stephen Gosling / Piano

jeremy fitzsimons / Percussion

3 - 5 Piano Quintet

Stephen Gosling / Piano

7:39

18:32

NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET

6 Jettatura

Stephen Gosling / Piano

4:33

7 Matre’s Dance

Stephen Gosling / Piano

9:37

`

B 2003

jeremy fitzsimons / Percussion

HRL MORRISON MUSIC TRUST

8 Fragment (piano duet version) 3:45

Stephen Gosling / Piano

Total duration

mmt2047 DIGITAL STEREO RECORDING

47:06

- 2003

HRL MORRISON MUSIC TRUST The music of john psathas is published exclusively by promethean editions