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A Celebration of Women – their music and their stories

Announcement posted by Music Performance Unit 10 May 2019

The song recital is in decline, waning, perhaps dead. So at least many have claimed or suggested[1]. However, Sara Macliver, soprano and Ian Munro, pianist, have made it their mission to cherish and nurture this artform by presenting well known and not-so-well-known art song about women at Songs My Mother Taught Me.

 

“It is not that long ago that everyone knew what art song was” Macliver says, “and everyone performed it, however that has changed in 2019. Now people ask me ‘so, what is art song?’”.

 

Australia Ensemble pianist Ian Munro explains “song recital is a genre that has suffered a bit in the last few decades.” Continuing, he says he doesn’t often get the chance to play solo vocal repertoire. Even though he and Macliver have been working together for 20 years, they have “never had a chance to do a whole recital together.”

 

Songs My Mother Taught Me, after Dvořák’s work of the same name from his Gypsy Songs cycle, explores various views of womanhood through art song and features the music of composers Hélène Tham and Amy Beach.

 

This dynamic duo has been performing together for 20 years and have developed a friendship which they will draw on when interpreting these timeless works. There is a huge amount of art song repertoire to explore, and the mission of nurturing these works before the next generation picks up the mantle is a challenging one. Macliver and Munro are taking this rare opportunity to present a full song recital to champion women – their stories and their music.

 


Winter Gala: Songs My Mother Taught Me

Sir John Clancy Auditorium

Friday June 21, 8:00pm

Ian Munro, piano and Sara Macliver, soprano

 

Tickets
W
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/winter-gala-songs-my-mother-taught-me-tickets-60111810042

P 02 9385 4874
$60/$50/$40


More Information

Alex Siegers

E cmc@unsw.edu.au
P 02 9385 5243

About Sara Macliver

Sara Macliver is one of Australia’s most popular and versatile artists, and is regarded as one of the leading exponents of Baroque repertoire.

 Sara is a regular performer with all the Australian symphony orchestras as well as the Perth, Melbourne and Sydney Festivals, Pinchgut Opera, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Musica Viva, and a number of international companies.

Sara records for ABC Classics with more than 35 CDs and many awards to her credit. 

In 2017/18 Sara sang with Sydney Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Opera, West Australian Symphony Orchestra and Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Australian String Quartet, St George’s Cathedral, the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra and in several programs with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; she also sang with Bangalow Festival, St George’s Cathedral and Collegium Musicum amongst many other projects.  Sara recorded a CD of Calvin Bowman songs which was released last year.

In 2019 Sara will sing with the West Australian, Tasmanian, Queensland and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras, Sydney Philharmonia, Ten Days on the Island, the Peninsula Summer Festival, Brisbane Camerata and ANAM amongst others.

Sara has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Australia in recognition of her services to singing.

 

About Ian Munro

Ian Munro is one of Australia’s most distinguished and awarded musicians with a career that has taken him to thirty countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia. As a composer, Ian is the only Australian to have been awarded the Premier Grand Prix at the Queen Elisabeth Competition for Composers (2003), and was in 2011 the Featured Composer for Musica Viva Australia.


After completing his early training in Melbourne with Roy Shepherd, Ian furthered his studies in Vienna, London and Italy with Noretta Conci, Guido Agosti and Michele Campanella, launching his international career in the UK. He has performed with leading orchestras throughout the UK, Poland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, USA, China, New Zealand, Belgium, Switzerland and Uzbekistan, and with all the leading orchestras in Australia in over sixty piano concerti. 


Ian has recorded for ABC Classics, Hyperion, Cala, Naxos, Marco Polo, Tall Poppies and the UK label Warehouse as soloist and chamber musician. Recent discs include the collected music by Tasmanian composer Katherine Parker and Elena Kats-Chernin’s piano concerto commissioned for Ian Munro by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. A widely experienced chamber musician, Ian joined the acclaimed Australia Ensemble @UNSW in Sydney in 2000, for which he has also composed and arranged several works.

 



[1] The Art Song Recital in Review Author(s): ERICK NEHER Source: The Hudson Review, Vol. 64, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 325-330 Published by: The Hudson Review, Inc Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41300671 Accessed: 03-05-2019 06:34 UTC