Aventa 2015 tour to Australia and New Zealand

Adelaide Festival presents Aventa and Marilyn Forever

Commissioned by the Aventa Ensemble and with a libretto by Marilyn Bowering, Bryars’ Marilyn Forever examines the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, and her intellectual and emotional relationships with death and love. Often seen as a victim, fantasy and sex object, the character of Monroe is fleshed out in this chamber opera: ‘We are given through Monroe’s own voice her combination of sensitivity and exhibitionism, allied to the narrative of the ‘chorus’, a view from the ‘inside’ of the conflicting emotion and ambitions of this compelling and timeless personality.

The Australian premiere of Marilyn Forever on 27 February began Gavin Bryars’ highly anticipated residency with the Adelaide Festival. The performances attracted rave reviews from critics:

“Marilyn Forever is an intimate piece steeped in beautiful melancholia. Jealousy, fame and the search for love collide making this soulful opera with a perfect ending an Adelaide Festival highlight.” – Gordon Forester, Limelight

“Aventa played with wonderful fluidity, ease and naturalness…whimsical, surreal and musically absorbing, Marilyn Forever is an undeniable highlight of this year’s Adelaide Festival.” – Graham Strahle, The Australian

“Grimm was excellent as Marilyn, and Morris was commanding…A jazz trio (with the composer himself on bass) takes stage right, and an eight-piece ensemble fabulously conducted by Bill Linwood provides the main musical backing from stage left.” – Kym Clayton, The Barefoot Review

STUDIO 520 – ABC COLLINSWOOD CENTRE Adelaide Festival

Sydney, Australia – Aventa and Ensemble Offspring

8pm – Paddington Uniting Church – a collaborative concert with Ensemble Offspring
Aventa Ensemble / Bill Linwood, conductor

Giorgio Magnanensi, Améya II
Juliet Palmer, The Truth and the Truth
Michael Oesterle, Delilah
James Rolfe, rAW
Jordan Nobles, Surface Tension

Auckland, New Zealand – The Truth and the Truth (Mar. 6, 2015)

Music Theatre, University of Auckland

1 pm – Workshop – a presentation of Canadian new music to the music students at the University of Auckland School of Music

8pm – Music Theatre (musically speaking series)

Aventa Ensemble / Bill Linwood, conductor

Giorgio Magnanensi, Améya II
Juliet Palmer, The Truth and the Truth
Eve de Castro-Robinson, Sheer Apple Knife Brush
Giorgio Magnanensi, Ethuia V
James Rolfe, rAW
Jonathan Mandeno, The Death of the Bullfighter

The second Magnanensi piece of the evening, ethuiá V, offered an immersive and serenely expansive soundworld. Amplification of the horn allowed the instrument to synergise with the electroacoustic track, creating a convincing relationship between the two elements. Soloist Darnell Linwood, to whom the piece was dedicated, demonstrated great sensitivity and command over the varied material, successfully transforming the atmosphere of the performance space and transporting us to ambient and mystic landscapes. – Sarah Ballard, The Listener

Schnee

Sunday, November 30, 2014  8:00PM (Pre-concert talk 7:15PM)
Tickets: $20
Phillip T Young Recital Hall (University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building)
Aventa Ensemble
Bill Linwood, conductor

Tristan Murail – La Chambre des cartes
Giorgio Magnanensi – améya II
Giorgio Magnanensi – es soll alles schweben
Hans Abrahamsen – Schnee (Canadian premiere)

Aventa’s opening concert features the Canadian premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s (DK) tour-de-force work, Schnee. In an hour-long set of gradually crystallizing canons, Schnee describes musical portraits of snow: its flurries, how it blankets and blanks out the landscape, its delicacy, its coldness.

Vancouver composer, Giorgio Magnanensi has been described by acclaimed composer Franco Donatoni as “a composer, musician and conductor of great talent and one of the most interesting personalities of the Italian generation.” Aventa presents two of Magnanensi’s most exquisite works for ensemble, améya II and es soll alles schweben.

VOI (rex)

Sunday, February 8, 2015  8:00PM (Pre-concert talk 7:15PM)
Tickets: $20
Phillip T Young Recital Hall (University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building)

Aventa Ensemble
Helen Pridmore, soprano
Philippe Leroux, electronics
Bill Linwood, conductor

Aventa presents one of the first masterpieces of the twenty-first century – Philippe Leroux’s hyper-virtuosic VOI (rex). The composer joins Aventa in the performance of this work, in which live electronics seamlessly integrate the various elements of the score. Leroux’s treatment of the voice is unique, triggering and instigating fascinating exchanges between the acoustic and electronic sound worlds.

Gordon Fitzell – Evanescence
Zosha di Castri – La forma dello spazio
Philippe Leroux – Continuo (ns)
Philippe Leroux – VOI (rex) 

The Undivine Comedy

Thursday, May 14th, 2015 8:00pm 

Phillip T. Young Recital Hall (UVic School of Music, MacLaurin Building)
Tickets at the door $20
Pre-concert talk 7:15pm

Aventa Ensemble
Bill Linwood, conductor
Helen Pridmore, soprano

Michael Finnissy – Horn Trio *
Michael Finnissy – Sesto Libro de Gesualdo
Martin Arnold – Janet
Michael Finnissy – Selections from The Undivine Comedy *

In an evening of premieres, Aventa presents the music of renowned English composer Michael Finnissy.  The concert opens with the world premiere of Finnissy’s Horn Trio.  This work was written for Darnell Linwood, and its opening is modelled on late 19th and early 20th century chamber works: Brahms and Schoenberg. This intense, quasi-symphonic music is gradually transformed: stretched, smudged, scratched over, erased, re-punctuated, yielding to other memories of other music (Bruckner, Fauré), and eventually a different mode of discourse. 

 Michael Finnissy wrote Sesto Libro di Gesualdo especially for violinist Müge Büyükçelen and flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor in 2013. The piece is a two-movement sound portrait of one of the most shocking characters in Western Art Music: the Renaissance composer Don Carlo Gesualdo, who infamously murdered his wife, her lover, and possibly even his infant son in a fit of jealousy.