Music for Reflection began in 1995 as a concert concept: music for Townsville’s wonderfully resonant Sacred Heart Cathedral – music for reflection in the sense of contemplation, and music which exploited the acoustic reflections in various ways.
After five such concerts in six years, involving a broad range of instrumentalists, vocal ensembles and genres, I decided to make a CD focusing on one segment of that material, the instrumental music with recorders. That in turn put the emphasis on Australian music of the last twenty-five years.
The final selection includes solo pieces by Zana Clarke (Cold Honey), Andrew Uren (Sonatina, accompanied by piano), Simon Wade (Turtle Beach) and myself (Ikaho and Franklin River); ensemble pieces by Ann Carr-Boyd (Whitsunday Moon) and Gareth Farr (three movements from Lima Gending); and three Irish-Australian ballads, The Streets of Forbes, Moreton Bay and She Moved Through the Fair, with my own Hobart Town (which is very much in the same idiom) arranged for various combinations of recorders, violin and guitar. Nearly all of it is recorded here for the first time.
All recording was done in the Cathedral, with microphones sited to ‘place’ the listener and performers in the appropriate part of the acoustic space for each piece, and we tried to retain some of the immediacy of a live performance by keeping editing to a minimum. The CD was released in September 2002.
Music for Reflection $25.00 plus postage $5.00
Audio samples
Ikaho composed and performed by Malcolm Tattersall
Moreton Bay arranged by Malcolm Tattersall and played by Calliope.
The Performers
- Malcolm Tattersall
- Blue Moon
- The three youngest members of Blue Moon – Daniel Cocks, Wade Tattersall and Joanne Coleman – performed together regularly as Calliope at the time of the recording and contributed one track as an ensemble.
- John Roberts was Blue Moon’s regular guitarist. The larger ensemble items on this disc happened not to include him, but he featured in duos and trios. Margaret Caley (co-leader of The Telemann Ensemble) joined us on baroque violin for a couple of tracks, as did Jessica Westwood on piano and James McNicol on congas.
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