Over the past decade in particular, artistic director Richard Tognetti and the ACO have been expanding on what audiences expect from an orchestra – collaborating with names such as Bill Henson and the Sydney Dance Company, and presenting an ongoing surfing series, which began with Musica Surfica, and has continued with The Glide and The Reef. These shows are a fusion of sound and vision, with breathtaking surf footage projected onto a screen behind the musicians, who accompany the visuals with pieces by Beethoven, Ligeti, Rachmaninov, and a band familiar to most surfers – Alice In Chains.
The Reef materialised over a two-week residency in coastal Western Australia, with the ACO and friends – including ocean cinematographer Jon Frank and director Mick Sowry – surfing, making music, and shooting film.
“What we came up with couldn’t have happened anywhere else but this place, where the desert meets the sea,” says Tognetti, referring to Gnaraloo Station, where they stayed. “The surf, the aridity, the social set-up – it was all integral to the creative process. Losing track of days out on the edge of the desert is something you just can’t do in the city or in the studio.”
In addition to practicing pieces from established composers, Tognetti wrote original music in situ along with Iain Grandage, didgeridoo player Mark Atkins, and singer-songwriter Steve Pigram – all of which you’ll hear during The Reef.
“Right from the early stages, we wanted a broad brush of musical styles,” Tognetti says. “And we wanted new music. That doesn’t have to be newly written music – it can be music rearranged and played in another place to people who haven’t heard it before.
“If we had gone out to this harsh but beautiful landscape just for the water, we would have been ignoring what lies beneath and beyond. I wanted some quite profoundly unsettling moments that make you feel as though you’re in the desert. I also wanted music that reflected the connection with Indigenous Australians.
“The concept is that we build this day in the life of our activities at Ningaloo, from the time-lapse of the sun rising in the east through to the chill of the desert offshore wind in the early morning, then the afternoon sun starting to bake the sand and feeling the arid harshness of the landscape. Once the sun starts setting, you feel the desert cold come in again and the stars come out. And there is no sight like stars out in the desert.”
As well as these collaborations, the ACO also breaks away from traditional repertoire with their Underground ensemble, where you’re as likely to hear songs by Radiohead as you are Rameau. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (whose Popcorn Superhet Receiver the ACO performed in 2010) spent time writing and performing with the orchestra late last year.
“When the Radiohead tour ended in Sydney in November, Jonny had several weeks of intense workshops with the ACO,” Tognetti says. “He had already done a lot of work on the composition, so this was a rare chance for composer and orchestra to bat ideas back and forth, to find out what could and couldn’t be done and to work out ways it could be improved. Jonny said he’d rather make mistakes on paper and edit away rather than work with a skeleton and add to it.” The ACO will perform the world premiere of the Greenwood piece in 2014.
BY DANIEL CRICHTON-ROUSE
