AWO presents The Magic of this Dawn

7:30PM Saturday 9 November, Elder Hall, University of Adelaide
Conductor – Bryan Griffiths
Organ – Joshua van Konkelenberg

Christopher Sainsbury – The Magic of This Dawn
Stuart Greenbaum – The Gradual Slowing of the Earth
David Maslanka – Symphony No. 4

Reflections on the earth, the universe and our connections to both.

Taking inspiration from Jay Sigmund’s poem Morning Mists on the Wapsipinicon, which speaks to the dispossession of First Nations Peoples. Sainsbury, himself of Australian Aboriginal heritage, pays homage to Australian First Nations people in The Magic of This Dawn. He writes, “I write dawn into this work the first light, the awakening busy-ness on the ground and in the air, the growing warmth, also joy of the new day, swirling mists, the previous night’s ceremony, and more…I love the idea of the whole universe expressed in your own place, your language region, your own town, or farm or city, and this is an idea that is inherent within regionalism, something that I also connect with as an Indigenous person.”

Joshua van Konkelenberg joins AWO to perform the organ concerto by Stuart Greenbaum, The Gradual Slowing of the Earth. This concerto for organ and symphonic winds is written in contemplation of a ‘global slow-down’. It’s an unsettling idea – but apparently it also allows gravity to pull the planet’s shape into an ever more perfect sphere.

David Maslanka’s Symphony No. 4 is as close to a Mahler-ian epic as exists for the symphonic wind ensemble. AWO originally gave the Australian Premiere of this work in 2014 and we are delighted to perform it ten years later. Maslanka was a highly spiritual composer, as well as being prolific and brilliant. Throughout the work he references both the voice of the Earth whilst hymns such as ‘Old Hundred’ as the backbone of the work as it stirs to it’s epic finale.

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