MODART provides emerging compsoers with the opportunity to develop a new work for vocal ensemble and receive a public performance by the Song Company
MODART
"Next came a piece called You in the Night by another NSW resident, Chris Williams, using only the three male voices of The Song Company - a relatively straight-forward setting of text characterised by plenty of vigor and interesting interplay amongst the vocal lines."
- OPERA OPERA David Gyger
Biography: Chris Williams
Chris Williams was the first Australian composer to be selected for the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival, Italy. As an invited composer at the festival, he workshopped his music for recital with musicians such as American flautist Lisa Cella and violinist Beth Schneider. Following his involvement in this festival, Williams was recognised as the only composer to receive the ‘Soundscape’ award, and was subsequently commissioned to create an opening work for next year’s festival. In 2006, his solo piano works were featured alongside those of Carl Vine’s in recitals both in Italy and the U.S.A.
Among the many awards recognising his music, Williams has received both the Raymond Hanson, and Alfred Hill memorial prizes for composition, and in 2006 his multi-movement work Piano Quintet no.1, written when he was only 17 years of age, was awarded first place in the Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize for Composition.
Born in Newcastle, Australia, Williams currently lives and works in Sydney, where he is studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for his B.Mus (composition). Teachers have included Nigel Butterley, Damien Ricketson, Brad Gill, Anna Pimakhova, and American composer Dr. Brian Hulse.
He has been commissioned by the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival, M.H.S Symphony Orchestra, as well as the M.H.S. Combined Choirs. His work has been performed in Australia, Canada, U.S.A, Italy and Austria, and is catalogued and held at Fischer Library, Sydney University, and in Cortona library archives, Italy.
Program Note: You in the Night Chris Williams
Chris’s piece You in the Night, is a setting of two poem’s by Harold Pinter. Like much of Pinter’s dramatic output, there is a bleak beauty and elegance to the poems, but unlike many of his plays, there is also an idiosyncratically youthful romantic character. In both poems the notion of light, and the progression from day to night are prominent images. Using only three solo voices to convey the intimacy of the poems, the linear interplay and resultant harmonic exploration are central to the piece’s construction.
