Join musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) for a performance curated and inspired by Ron Mueck’s Mass. 

ANAM musician Lily Bryant will respond to Mass through this concert program, exploring the theme of death as it has been represented in music throughout history, by artists from a range of backgrounds.

Two of Schubert’s most famous and most haunting lieder bookend the program, which takes us through Australian composer Matt Laing’s meditation on nihilism, followed by famous Tudor Anne Boleyn’s morbid final lament as she awaited her execution. The macabre imagery of Australian composer Marlene Radice is followed by Debussy’s deeply beautiful Syrinx, and excerpts from David Lang’s groundbreaking opera Death Speaks, a reimagining of Schubert’s many musical personifications of Death.

This program wanders through musical depictions and impressions of death; explorations of mortality; an artist’s last moments. Spanning hundreds of years of musical development, these works allow us to see (and hear) humanity at its most vulnerable.

Program 

SCHUBERT Der Töd und das Mädchen D.531, Op. 7 No. 3 (arr. flute and piano) (3’)
M LAING Destructive Interference (8’)
A BOLEYN O Death, rock me asleep (5’)
M RADICE Sawdust, Bone, White Ash & Silk (7’)
DEBUSSY Syrinx (4’)
D LANG death speaks (9’)
i. you will return
v. I am walking
SCHUBERT Der Leiermann D.911 (arr. flute and piano) (4’)

Musicians

Lily Bryant (alumna 2022) Flute/Curator
Clare Fox (NSW) Clarinet
Matthew Garvie (NSW) Keyboard
Reuben Johnson (QLD) Keyboard
Alisya Rae (Guest) Voice
Ethan McAlister (guest) Electric Guitar
Rachael Kwa (NSW) Violin
Oliver Russell (QLD) Cello

For more information on this performance click here >

Presented in partnership with the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).

ANAM is dedicated to training the most exceptional young musicians from Australia and New Zealand. It is a place where musicians fulfill their potential as music leaders, distinguished by their skill, imagination and courage, and by their determined contribution to a vibrant music culture.