Colour and Light, Life and Death: Australian Poetry Set to Music

Name: Colour and Light, Life and Death: Australian Poetry Set to Music
Start: 2025-05-25T14:30:00+09:30
End: 2025-05-25T17:30:00+09:30
Location: Scots Church Adelaide

Schedule

Sun May 25 2025 at 02:30 pm to 05:30 pm

UTC+09:30

Location

Scots Church Adelaide | Adelaide, SA

Eminent literary scholar Dr. Gillian Dooley, and acclaimed Adelaide pianist James Huon George collaborate to perform songs written by Australian poets set to music by Australian composers, including Miriam Hyde, Margaret Sutherland, Horace Keats and Colin Brumby. Ranging from the pensively philosophical to the hilarious, the poems, are by Judith Wright, Adam Lindsay Gordon, John Shaw Neilson, and Wilbur Howcroft.
The program explores great variety, from the pensively philosophical to the hilarious, and will be a rare presentation in the respect that both the music, and poetry are written exclusively by Australians. The exception will be ‘The Swimmers’ from Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures, but set to words by Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon. There will also be a song composed by Canberra-based composer Michael Dooley, and a song by Gillian herself titled ‘The Light: In Memoriam’, set to words by Matthew Flinders.
There will be an obligato in Margaret Sutherland’s ‘The Gentle Water Bird’ provided by cellist Sally McLoughlin, and James will be joining her in Percy Grainger’s ‘Sussex Mummers’ Christmas Carol’ for cello, and piano.
PROGRAM:
- The Green Singer (Phyllis Batchelor/John Shaw Neilson)
- The Gentle Water Bird (Margaret Sutherland/John Shaw Neilson)
- The Secret Place (words and music by Michael Dooley)
- The Swimmer (Edward Elgar/Adam Lindsay Gordon)
- 3 Anzac songs by Miriam Hyde:
o Anzac Threnody (Dorothea Dowling)
o Dawn Service (Mary Bertram)
o Illawarra Flame (Patricia Francis)

Interval
- Ego (Horace Keats/Edith Sterling-Lewis)
- Turning Fifty (Paul Paviour/Judith Wright)
- The Light: In Memoriam (GD)
- Sussex Mummers Christmas Carol (Percy Grainger)
- The Trenchant Troubadour (selections) (Colin Brumby/Wilbur Howcroft)
o 1. If I Were
o 2. The Trenchant Troubador
o 3. Meditative Meanderings
o 5. Campfire Cogitation
o 7. Wait a Bit