Friday November 13, 2009 - 7:30pm to 8:30pm
Where: Friday 13th November, Peter Karmel Building, Childers St, ANU, Canberra @ 7.30pm.
Performers: Jane Sheldon soprano and Ensemble Offspring
The Origin Cycle
Charles Darwin's Origin of Species is not only one of the most important scientific works of all time, but one of the most beautifully written. In The Origin Cycle, for soprano and chamber ensemble, fragments of Darwin's great book are set to music by Australian composers Elliott Gyger, Elena Kats-Chernin, Kate Neal, Rosalind Page, Paul Stanhope, Nicholas Vines, and Dan Walker. In celebration of the 2009 bicentennial of Darwin's birth and 150 years since the first publication of the Origin, this performance by Ensemble Offspring and soprano Jane Sheldon will take place among the exhibits of the Australian Museum. The passages chosen encompass the entire work, capturing the many facets of a Darwinian view of nature and summarising what Darwin called the ‘one long argument' contained in the Origin. They include the passages introducing his most famous and enduring images - the ‘tree of life' connecting all species, the vision of nature as a surface into which wedges are unceasingly struck, and the book's final invocation of ‘grandeur in this view of life'.
Program
- Elliot Gyger: The Face of Nature
- Kate Neal: Hourly Scrutinising
- Elena Kats-Chernin: Tree of Life
- Nicholas Vines: Economy of Wax
- Dan Walker: A History Imperfectly Kept
- Paul Stanhope: Contemplate an Entangled Bank
- Rosalind Page: Floreana
- Barry Conyngham: Darwin: Comparing th Eye to the Telescope
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