News archives

News 2006
News 2005
News 2004
News 2003

In Defence of Classical Music reprinted

October 2006. Andrew Ford’s latest book, In Defence of Classical Music, has been reprinted by ABC Books after its first print run sold out. It is available from all good bookshops in Australia, and online from ABC Shops.

In the book, Ford asks how the symphonies of Beethoven and string quartets of Brahms can possibly be relevant to a post-9/11 world. He argues that it is precisely because we live in discordant times that classical music is more valuable than ever.
‘Classical music is not escapism,’ Ford maintains, ‘it is a form of consolation. A retreat, certainly, but a retreat into reality rather than away from it.’
The distinguished author and musicologist Wilfrid Mellers writes of In Defence of Classical Music, ‘The book is brilliant – especially Part I, which is a necessary prelude to everything I have ever written about music, though neither I nor anyone else has ever done it!’

Other books by Andrew Ford include Composer to composer: conversations about contemporary music and Speaking in Tongues: the songs of Van Morrison, co-written with Martin Buzacott.
See also: the books page.

A Reel, A Fling and A Ghostly Galliard
and other new works

July 2006. Andrew Ford has recently completed his String Quartet No 2 for
the Grainger Quartet. Entitled A Reel, a Fling and a Ghostly Galliard, the 10-minute piece was commissioned for the Graingers by two of their supporters, Pamela Pearce and Wally Patterson.

The new work will be heard during the quartet's inaugural concert tour in November, beginning in Sydney, then travelling to Adelaide, Melbourne and Hong Kong.

Ford is currently working on an orchestral piece, Headlong, for the Sydney Symphony and Jeffrey Tate (August 2007), and has composed the first part of his Symphony for the Australian Youth Orchestra (first performance in 2008). The latter is one of a series of pieces undertaken
during the two-year fellowship awarded by the Music Board of the Australia Council at the end of 2004.

The fellowship has so far produced five new works, including Barleycorn, which was given its first performance in the 2006 Brisbane Festival by the Southern Cross Soloists and folk singers Warren Fahey and Dave de Hugard.

Pictured: Southern Cross Soloists with Dave de Hugard (front left), Andrew Ford (front centre) and Warren Fahey back right). Click image for larger view.

Performances and lectures
in the USA

May 2006. Andrew Ford spent most of April in the United States, attending rehearsals
and performances of his music and lecturing on a variety of topics.

At Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he addressed the entire school on the subject of music as an international language, discussed the blues and early jazz with students in classes devoted to the history of American popular music, and worked with the school orchestra rehearsing his 1999 piece, The Furry Dance.

At the end of his week at the Academy, he presented performances of his solo and chamber music and discussed the works with the audience. After New Hampshire, Ford went to Boston where he gave an illustrated lecture about his work to composition students at the Boston Conservatory, and then at the Juilliard School in New York he led a seminar looking at Australian music since 1945. The American visit ended with the successful premiere at New York's Lincoln Center of Scenes from Bruegel, composed for and performed by the New Juilliard Ensemble under conductor Joel Sachs.

Click here to hear Andrew Ford discuss his piece with John Schaefer of WNYC.

New York premiere for
Scenes from Bruegel

March 2006. Andrew Ford's Scenes from Bruegel will receive its first performance by the New Juilliard Ensemble under its conductor Joel Sachs on April 24. Composed during Ford's two-year fellowship from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts (the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body), Scenes from Bruegel is in three movements, each taking as its
starting point one of the most famous paintings by the 16th-century Flemish artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Throughout the work, the orchestral music is supplemented and often inspired by sounds recorded in and around the New South Wales Southern Highlands, where Ford lives. New Juilliard Ensemble's performance is in Alice Tully Hall at New York's Lincoln Center on Monday April 24 at 8pm.

Please follow this link to read a program note of Scenes from Bruegel. You can also read more about the involvement of the Robertson primary school band, pictured here conducted by Andrew Ford.

There is also a concert of Andrew Ford's music by the Music Department of the Phillips Exeter Academy (details) on Friday, 14 April in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Brodsky Quartet plays Ford
in Sydney Festival 2006

January 2006. Making its return to Australia after an absence of eight years, the Brodsky Quartet will perform Andrew Ford's Tales of the Supernatural: folksongs for singer and string quartet in its Sydney Festival concert on January 24 at the City Recital Hall, Angel Place.

The songs, about love and ghosts, are from Finland, Scotland, Sweden, England and the Appalachian Mountains. Soprano Jane Edwards, who sang in the world premiere at the 2004 Adelaide Festival, will again be the singer. Tales of the Supernatural was commissioned by the Ian Potter Foundation and in 2005 won the APRA Award for Best Vocal Piece.

Music and Fashion on ABC Classic FM

January 2006. Music and Fashion is a six-part series commissioned by ABC radio, written and presented by Andrew Ford. The programs can be heard on ABC Classic FM at 2 pm each Sunday from New Year's Day. You can also listen online and read transcripts.

Music and Fashion asks why certain types of music have been fashionable at certain moments in history, and what this might tell us about the way in which human beings hear, appreciate and use music.

Robertson children
in Scenes from Bruegel

December 2005. Andrew Ford's
piece for the New Juilliard Ensemble,
Scenes from Bruegel, includes pre-recorded sounds from his home in Robertson, New South Wales.

Some of these are environmental
sounds (birdsong, for instance), but in the final movement, inspired by Bruegel's famous painting, 'The Peasant's Wedding Dance', the New York players will be joined by the pre-recorded sound of the primary school band at Robertson Public School.

Scenes from Bruegel is being composed
under the terms of a two-year Fellowship from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body.

The New Juilliard Ensemble, under its conductor Joel Sachs, will give the first performance of Scenes from Bruegel at Alice Tully Hall in New York's Lincoln Center on 24 April 2006.

Picture:Recording session of Scenes from Bruegel with the Robertson Public School band.
(Click to enlarge.)

An die Musik premiere in Adelaide

December 2005. On Saturday 10 December, at St Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide, the Adelaide
Chamber Singers will give the world premiere of Andrew Ford's An die Musik, especially composed for the choir's 20th anniversary in 2005. The concert will be broadcast live on ABC Classic FM and and streamed on the internet at 20.30 Eastern Summer Time (Australia) or 09.30 GMT.

Click here to find out more about the piece and to read the texts by David Malouf, Thomas Shapcott and Gwen Harwood, as well as folk poetry from Malaysia, Finland and the Pueblo Indians of America. You can also download the texts as a pdf file (20 KB).

In Defence of Classical Music
in bookshops 16 September

September 2005. In his new book, In Defence of Classical Music, Andrew Ford asks how the symphonies of Beethoven and string quartets of Brahms can possibly be relevant post 9/11. He argues that it is precisely because we live in discordant times that classical music is more valuable than ever.

'Classical music is not escapism,' Ford maintains, 'it is a form of consolation. A retreat, certainly, but a retreat into reality rather than away from it.'

Following the essay which gives the book its title, there are ten shorter essays on individual composers: Dowland, Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Sibelius, Ravel, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho and Ross Bolleter. Finally, in an attempt to take the reader into the mind of a composer, Ford turns to his own music, with discussions of The Waltz Book, Learning to Howl, and Manhattan Epiphanies.

All details and a sample of the book are available on the books page.

Tales of the Supernatural
wins APRA award

July 2005. Andrew Ford's Tales of the Supernatural has been named Vocal Work of the Year by the Australasian Performing Right Association. The prize was announced on Monday 18 July 2005, at the annual Australian Music Centre/APRA Awards held at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Subtitled 'folk songs for singer and string quartet', Tales of the Supernatural was composed in 2002 for the Australian String Quartet with funds provided by the Ian Potter Foundation. The piece weaves songs from various folk traditions (Finnish, Swedish, Scottish, English and American) into a continuous musical fabric lasting some 30 – 35 minutes. The six songs share the twin themes of love and the supernatural – ghosts, demons and other shape shifters.
Tales of the Supernatural received its first performance at the 2004 Adelaide Festival by the ASQ with Jane Edwards. In a message read out at the awards in the composer's absence, Ford thanked them for their 'magical' first performance, and paid tribute to the 'anonymous men and women' who had made up the original folk songs.
This is the fourth national award for Ford's music in just over two years. In March 2003 The Waltz Book won the Jean Bogan Memorial Award, and in 2004 Learning to Howl won both the AMC Award for Best Work by an Australian Composer and the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize.

New radio series scheduled

July 2005. Music and Fashion is a six-part series commissioned by ABC radio, written and presented by Andrew Ford. It asks why certain types of music have been fashionable at certain moments in history, and what this might tell us about the way in which human beings hear, appreciate and use music. Beginning with the most visible of musical fashions – dance crazes – Ford moves on to the role of religion in both inspiring and denying novelty in music, to musical entrepreneurs, the transitory (and often non-musical) nature of fame, the rise and decline of the recording industry and finally to nostalgia – the fashion that keeps on renewing itself.
Episode 1, 'Dirty Dancing' airs on ABC Radio National in the Big Ideas slot at 5.05 pm on Sunday 17 July. More information about the programs is available on the Music and Fashion website .

Sad Jigs and Dance Maze
in Sydney Symphony Orchestra's
Contemporary Music Festival

June 2005. Two pieces by Andrew Ford will be showcased during the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's 2005 Contemporary Music Festival. On Sunday 10 July, Sad Jigs (2005) will receive its world premiere by participants in the SSO's string fellowship program for whom the piece was commissioned. Earlier that same day, festival director Reinbert de Leeuw will conduct members of the SSO in a performance of Ford's 1996 composition, Dance Maze.
Commissioned by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and first performed by the group in January 1997, Dance Maze has since received several performances by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra's New Music Ensemble under Roger Smalley and by the Sydney Alpha Ensemble under Carl Rosman. In 2003 it was given a second US performance by the New Juilliard Ensemble under Joel Sachs.
All performances in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's Contemporary Music Festival will take place at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The performance of Dance Maze will be preceded by a talk by the composer. Also, at the invitation of the festival, The Music Show will broadcast live from the Conservatorium on Saturday July 9. Further details are available on the SSO website.

'Speaking in Tongues: the songs
of Van Morrison' out now

May 2005. Speaking in Tongues: the songs of Van Morrison (ABC Books 2005) is now out.
Authors Andrew Ford and Martin Buzacott will discuss their book in a session at Sydney Writers' Festival 29 May at 10 am.

Speaking in Tongues is not yet another biography but a book about Van Morrison's music and lyrics. It falls into two main parts. Part One, 'A Sense of Wonder', examines the themes and variations in his songs: images of childhood; musical heroes; transcendence and religion; responses to nature and literature; and Morrison's consistently truculent relationship with the rest of the world's population.

Building on this exploration of the building blocks of Morrison's work, Part Two, 'A Working Man in His Prime', looks at Morrison's studio work album by album, song by song. Finally the book returns the reader to the central concern in any Morrison song – the sound of his voice.
See also: the books page.

Photo: Andrew Ford (left) & Martin Buzacott.

Fellowship produces
new pieces

April 2005. Andrew Ford has completed three new works so far in 2005. These are the piano solo Broadway Boogie-Woogie for Dutch pianist Marcel Worms, the vibraphone and marimba duo Soave sia il vento for West Australian percussionist Callum Moncrieff, and a string quintet entitled Sad Jigs. The quintet—for string quartet plus double bass—was commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for its 2005 string fellows. It will also exist in a version for string orchestra. It is dedicated to the memory of Ford’s former teacher, John Buller, and its title is a cast-off from Debussy. Gigues tristes was Debussy’s first idea for a title for the first movement of his orchestral Images. He ended up calling it simply Gigues.

This concentration on composing has been made possible by the awarding of a two-year fellowship from the Music Board of the Australia Council. Between now and the end of 2006, Ford will compose the large ensemble piece Scenes from Bruegel for the New Juilliard Ensemble and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra New Music Ensemble, a symphony for the Australia Youth Orchestra, and Barleycorn, a second folk-song cycle following on from Tales of the Supernatural, for the Southern Cross soloists. There will also be a solo piano work, Folly, for Michael Kieran Harvey, and Domestic Advice, a new song cycle for soprano Jane Edwards and pianist Ian Munro. Other works in the pipeline include the choral piece An die Musik for the 20 th anniverary of the Adelaide Chamber Singers. The sung texts are poems on the subject of music by David Malouf, Thomas Shapcott and Gwen Harwood. Ford is also planning a piece entitled Elegy in a Country Graveyard which will exist in two forms, one radiophonic, the other a live performance piece for singers and players incorporating taped voices and environmental sounds. This work has been made possible by a grant from the NSW Ministry for the Arts.

Meanwhile before the end of 2005, the writing about music which has occupied Ford over the past two years will bear fruit in the form of two books and a new radio series.

Ananda Sukarlan plays
Fear no more . . . in Sydney and Jakarta

July 2004. In 2002, following the terrorist bomb that killed more than 200 people in a Bali nightclub, the Indonesian pianist Ananda Sukarlan asked 20 composers to write short memorial pieces. The Australian composers who contributed works were Betty Beath, Barry Conyngham, Elena Kats-Chernin, Peter Sculthorpe and Andrew Ford, and these pieces have now been heard in many countries around the world.

In July 2004, Sukarlan, who lives in Spain, will bring the In memoriam concert to Australia for the first time, before taking it on to Indonesia itself. He plays the complete concert at the Eugene Goossens Hall on Sunday July 18, and will also perform the pieces by Kats-Chernin, Sculthorpe and Ford at the Australian Music Centre/APRA awards night in Sydney (and live on ABC Classic FM) on Monday July 12. Andrew Ford's piece, Fear no more . . . takes its title from the funeral oration in Shakespeare's Cymbeline:

2004 Adelaide Festival

February 2004. The Adelaide Festival of the Arts (27 February-14 March) will present the world premiere of Andrew Ford's Tales of the Supernatural. Subtitled "folk songs for voice and string quartet", the half-hour cycle draws on songs from Finland, Scotland, England and the Appalachian Mountains to explore the world of love and ghosts. The piece was commissioned by the Ian Potter Cultural Foundation in 2001 and composed the following year. The Adelaide premiere will be given by the Australian String Quartet together with soprano Jane Edwards. Also in the festival, Gerard Willems will play selections from The Waltz Book (see also The Waltz Book page by Ian Munro) and the Elder Conservatorium Mallet Ensemble will play After the Ball Was Over, Ford's new arrangement of five of the waltzes for a quartet of tuned percussion. See below for details. The performance of After the Ball will be part of Writers' Week, where Ford will be the focus of one of the Meet the Author sessions.

More performances and performers
for The Waltz Book

January 2004. The Waltz Book is steadily being taken up by pianists. Ian Munro commissioned the work and gave the first complete performance in March 2003 (see also The Waltz Book page by Munro). He played it again at the Sydney Opera House Studio on October 20 and at the Melbourne Festival on October 25 (see details below). Simon Docking played the first 24 waltzes at a concert in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in April 2003, and a complete Canadian performance is planned for 2005. In the meantime, both Lisa Moore and Gerard Willems will take up the piece in 2004. Andrew Ford's most recent work for solo piano, Fear no more . . ., dedicated to the victims of the Bali bombing "and all innocent victims of violent men", has received performances in New Zealand, Spain, Norway and Denmark from its commissioner, Ananda Sukarlan. Diana Blom has been playing the piece Australia and Simon Docking gave the Canadian premiere in October 2003. Scores of The Waltz Book and Fear no more . . . are available from the Australian Music Centre.

The Waltz Book
wins the Bogan Prize

April 2003. Andrew Ford's monumental work for solo piano, The Waltz Book, has won the 2002 Jean Bogan Memorial Prize, Australia's national prize for piano compositions. Announced in March 2003, this is the first time the prize has been awarded to a sequence of pieces. The Waltz Book, which coincidentally received its complete world premiere in Hobart, Tasmania, two days before the prize was announced, was commissioned by the pianist and composer, Ian Munro, with financial support from the Australia Council. Comprising 60 minute-long waltzes, ranging in mood 'from frenetic aggression to lilting calm', The Waltz Book takes an hour to play complete. But it was always intended that individual waltzes would have lives of their own, and that pianists might also make selections from The Waltz Book, presenting these groups of pieces as ad hoc suites. Visit the special website for The Waltz Book and listen to extracts.