Professional Documents
Culture Documents
AN AUSTRALIAN DIARY
I
March 2000 7
Friday, January 14
As I was about to get on the plane from
Sydney to Armidale, N.S.W., where the
Festival was taking place, someone tapped
me on the shoulder. It was Aldo Abreu! We
apparently stayed over in the same hotel
without knowing it. On the plane, we
catch up on each others lives. Aldo, the
proud father, shows me photos of his beautiful daughter Marisol. We discuss the joys
of having children and being a parent. We
then get to talking about music, in particular about the Bach partita that Aldo won
the Bruges competition with in 1984,
which I have to perform for the first time in
Berlin in a few months.
After a relatively short time we arrived
in Armidale and were driven to the New
England Girls School, where the workshop was to take place and where we were
housed. I finally met Zana and Caroline,
the organizers of the Festival. Zana was
very pregnant! She told us that the baby
was due on Wednesday, the day off! (The
baby was born one day later.) Caroline
studied viola da gamba and recorder with
Ruth Wilkinson at the University of Melbourne and earned an M.F.A. degree studying early music instrumental collections
around the world. Robyn Mellor, artistic
director of the Canberra-based musical organization Gaudeamus, was already there,
as were John Tyson, his wife Miyuki TsuruAt left, Caroline Downer (left) and
Zana Clarke with David Bellugi. Below,
Ben Thorn, center, welcomes
John Tyson, left, and Aldo Abreu.
8 American Recorder
Genevieve Lacey
Monday, January 17
Early morning, I found myself closed
out of the music building where I was to
teach, so I started walking back to my
room. I was captivated by a very unusual
sound that I heard coming from the science building. At first I thought that it
must be a recordingmaybe a CD of
Burmese flute music. It turned out to be a
young recorder player named Genevieve
Lacey who was practicing a piece from the
15th-century Faenza codex for a concert
that evening! Genevieve is on her way to becoming an international star. Count on hearing
more of this very interesting and talented
young musician soon! (see box).
National Recorder
Competition
A Third National Recorder Competition
was sponsored by
Orpheus Music and
Dragon Early Music
Enterprises in conjunction with the
Call of the Four Winds Festival in
Armidale, N.S.W., January 15-22. The
competition was entered by participants from around Australia and overseas. Winners in the performance sections were: Open Solo (Fred Morgan
Memorial Prize): Kara Ciezki (pictured, from Melbourne); Under 18
Solo: Karyn Ashley (Armidale);
Under 12 Solo: Marion Barraclough
(Melbourne); Open Ensemble:
Fortune (Sydney); Under 18 Ensemble: The Fipple Pipers (Wollongong). Winners in the Composition
sections were: Open piece for solo recorder: Yasuharu Fukushima
(Japan); Open Ensemble piece:
Miggs Coggan (Armidale); Under 18
section: Cavin Adams (New-Zealand).
10 American Recorder
Top left, Rodney Waterman at the concert on Tuesday, January 18. At left,
John Tyson, far right, joins in on an ensemble piece that closes the first half of
the concert. Above, in the
second half of the concert, Linsey
Pollack as Ivan, a kitchen-hand whos
eccentric, hilarious, and
totally irresistible, and who lives in a
musical world where all is possible.
Sunday, January 23
Clean up day. De-briefing meeting.
Zana and Peter showed up with three-day
old Shah. After the meeting, I offered to exchange CDs with anybody present. (I came
home with two dozen CDs of colleagues!)
In the afternoon, I flew to Sydney. The departures were not all painful, as Id already
made arrangements to see all of the Melbourne-based colleagues the following
week.
January 26, Australia Day
Early morning breakfast with Racheal
and fellow haBiBis member Irine Vela in
their backyard in Melbourne. Alexandra arrived and we played some trios. Then Alexandra took me to visit Fred Morgans wife, Anne
Murphy, in Daylesford. I had known Annes
sister, Mary, when she lived in Paris. Anne
Murphy is a harpsichordist who teaches at
Melbourne University. We spent a very warm
and gentle evening together. Visiting Fred Morgans workshop was a very special moment,
because, although I never had a chance to meet
this extraordinary man, his presence was tangible in the festival through his lifes work.
Conclusion
Zana Clarke and Caroline Downer
showed remarkable vision and purpose in
putting together this unique festival, assembling a versatile and eclectic group of
people who worked together smoothly
over the entire period. (A note of special
recognition should be given to Caroline
Downer for shouldering most of the dayto-day responsibilities with expertise and
good humor.) I wish to congratulate them
both personally and thank them for having
included me. I'm only sorry that time did
not allow me to visit and experience firsthand all of the remarkable work that I
know was happening at every moment of
the day! Having seen so many talented and
committed young students also gives me
great hope for the future. For me, this festival was both an appropriate ending of one
century and a promising beginning of a
new millennium. There is no doubt in my
mind that the Call of the Four Winds
Festival will be an event that people will be
talking about for years to come. I would especially like to thank Giovanna Jatropelli
and Giorgio Campanaro, directors of, respectively, the Sydney and Melbourne
branches of the Italian Cultural Institutes,
for their help, kindness, and sponsorship.
Based in Italy, David Bellugi is an American recorderist known for exploring multiple
cultural influences in his programming.
March 2000 11