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Still Night: Music in Poetry

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In 2018, Still Night: Music in Poetry won the Australian Jazz Bell Award for Best Vocal Album. The song cycle was performed at The Port Fairy Spring Music Festival (October) and the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival (November). Still Night activity, from its formation in late 2016 to date, also includes performances at the Melbourne Recital Centre Salon, the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, and the Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival.

History

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  • Recorded or Rendered Work

NTRO Output Category

  • Recorded or Rendered Work : Performance

Place

Melbourne, Australia

End Date

2017-11-30

Medium

CD / digital audio recording

Research Statement

Keller devised Still Night: Music in Poetry as a meditation on omnipresent sentiments of death, grief and loss. The 60-minute song cycle composed by Keller in 2016 incorporates poetry that spans centuries and the globe, including tenth-century Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu, nineteenth-century English poet John Keats, American writer Walt Whitman, Irish poet William Butler Yeats, French novelist Marcel Proust, American poet Sara Teasdale, and further into the twentieth-century with American writer e. e. cummings, Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas, to contemporary Australian poet, dancer and filmmaker Richard James Allen. Composed and orchestrated for jazz quintet (including male & female voice) the songs of Still Night feature Vince Jones (voice), Gian Slater (voice), Julien Wilson (tenor saxophone & bass clarinet), Stephen Magnusson (guitar), and Andrea Keller (piano). The song cycle, although composed specifically for singers Gian Slater and Vince Jones, has now also been performed by singers Josh Kyle, Kristin Berardi and Mark Sholtez. In the case of the latter two singers, keys were altered and in some instances melodies and parts were adapted to fit the new voices. Keller’s research process for selecting appropriate poetry/texts, undertaking lessons with leaders in the field of composing for voice and text, and workshopping periods with members of the Still Night ensemble, proved incredibly significant in terms of her professional development and the attainment of knowledge.

Size or Duration of Work

60 minutes

Affiliation

Andrea Keller Meagher, University of Melbourne

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