Photos courtesy of Ray Joyce Photography
Helen Thomson is a performer, recording artist, composer, arranger, sound designer, musical director and vocal coach. Her musical career spans thirty years (beginning with a solo debut in Donald Hollierʼs contemporary opera, In Dulci Jubilo, at the age of 10) and several countries.
PERFORMANCE / RECORDING
In Australia, Helen has performed with the Song Company and e21, and, during an eight year stint in Europe, with Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, the Netherlands Bach Society, the Egidius College (including on their Leiden Choir Book CD series) the Netherlands Radio Choir, Trigon, Musica Poetica (including on the CD “Musicalische Frühlings-Früchte”, released on the Challenge label) and Musica Universalis.
Since her return to Australia in 2011, Helen has appeared on ABC FM and Compass, in various performances with baroque ensemble Nuove Musiche, as a solo act performing original work at the Cygnet Festival, in the Australian premiere of Carl Rütti‘s Requiem performed by Loose Canon and the Hobart Chamber Orchestra, in the world premiere of Ralph Middenway’s Sun of Umbria, in Haydn’s Creation as part of the Festival of Voices 2015, in a contemporary program at the Spiegeltent with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Chorus, as well as further afield at the Ballarat Goldfields and Newman College Advent Festivals. Forthcoming projects include a partnership with Loose Canon chamber singers, and a groundbreaking new work project entitled A Tasmanian Requiem, further details of which can be found under “Composition” below.
COMPOSITION
Helen’s debut CD, meditatio / xv, attracted Australia Council New Work funding – with Grand Master of Shakuhachi, Riley Lee, Helen created a CD of Gregorian Chant, Zen Meditations, and new works with a found-sound-based live electroacoustic element forming a “third voice” informed by the intersection of these two different but complementary traditions. A mass setting composed by Helen also appears on women’s trio Triptych’s inaugural CD, described in Limelight Magazine as “exquisite, near-flawless performances”.
Since returning to Australia, Helen has resumed composing, with new compositions for ensemble Sequenza, to open the Bonfire Ceremony at the 2015 Festival of Voices (performed by CoCheol), as part of the Queer Narratives: Story to Song project with support from Tasmanian Regional Arts and Events Tasmania. In 2016 Helen will compose A Tasmanian Requiem, a full-length work for brass and vocal double quintet, in collaboration with Tasmanian Aboriginal artists Greg Lehman (libretto) and Julie Gough (audio-visual component), produced by Frances Butler with generous support through Arts Tasmania’s Artist Investment program.
MUSICAL DIRECTION
Helen also directs the Sing Australia Kingston and Hobart choirs and QTas choir, which received funding in 2015 from Tasmanian Regional Arts and Events Tasmania to put together “Queer Narratives: Story to Song”, a groundbreaking project incorporating stories of the Tasmanian LGBTIQ community’s lived experience in newly composed works by Tasmanian composers and songwriters.
Brett Rutherford began his professional career as a full time cellist with the Sydney Elizabethan Orchestra, now known as the AOBO. In 1984 he spent a year of study in London with Alexander Baillie and William Pleeth and soon after returning, accepted a full time position in the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
Brett, with his wife Janet and Barbara Jane Gilby, formed the Trigon ensemble which performed regularly around Tasmania and interstate and featured on ABC television and classic FM. Brett is also a founding member of the the Kettering Piano Quartet, which has a regular concert series at the Town Hall and has also performed for classic FM and around the state.
Brett also plays the Viola Da Gamba and has been a member of the early music group, Backgammon. Brett is a founding member of Sequenza, formerly Nuove Musiche Ensemble.
Matthew Goddard commenced his musical journey as a drum kit player in Hobart, his musical interests eventually broadening into orchestral percussion. He studied percussion and timpani at the Victorian College of the Arts, graduating with an honours degree in Music Performance in 1997. Matthew maintained a busy freelance career in Melbourne, working primarily with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He was also a founding member of the percussion quartet Woof! which performed many concerts of new and established percussion quartet repertoire, recorded an ARIA-nominated CS of the Tuneful Percussion Works of Percy Grainger and was part of the Musica Viva In Schools programme in Victoria.
In 1998 Matthew worked in Japan as Guest Timpanist and Percussionist with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa before returning to his hometown of Hobart in 1999 to take up his current position as Principal Timpanist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Matthew also performs with Tracey Patten in the percussion duo MATTRA and is percussionist with the ensemble Sequenza.
Matthew maintains a keen interest in new music and in recent years has premiered Sudhana’s Steps by Phil Treloar, a set of six pieces for solo timpani which he performed as part of MONA FOMA 2014 and in the Synaesthesia+ festival at MONA later in the same year. In January 2016 he performed a solo programme at MONA FOMA which included Elliot Carter’s Eight Pieces for Four Timpani. Future projects will include performing the recently completed Diaphonous Nebulosities for solo timpanist, written for him by Scott McIntyre.
David Malone performs throughout Australia as a solo recitalist and chamber musician as a classical guitarist. He performs on lute and guitar with the Sequenza ensemble and is a member of the Australian Guitar Trio. He has performed with the Adelaide, Tasmanian and Canberra Symphony Orchestras in Australia and the Northern Sinfonia of England and the Cambridge University Jazz Orchestra in the UK.
He enjoys collaborating with composers and performing new music. Pieces have been written for him by composers Maria Grenfell, Russell Gilmour, Don Kay and Raffaele Marcellino amongst others.
David’s solo CD Fretsongs, released on the Tall Poppies label, featured premiere recordings of new works by composers resident in Tasmania, many of which had been composed for him. It received an Australian Art Music Award in 2007 and a fivestar rating in Limelight, Australia’s classical music magazine.
David was a featured artist in the SBS program A Fork in Australia and his performances have been broadcast by ABC Classic FM and ABC Radio National.
David Malone began his guitar studies in Sydney and completed his undergraduate music studies as a student of Timothy Kain at the Canberra School of Music. He attended masterclasses in Finland with Leo Brouwer, Sharon Isbin and Costas Cotsiolis and in England with John Duarte and Stepan Rak. With a Spanish Government scholarship he attended the 30th annual course for the performance of Spanish Music in Santiago de Compostela. David holds undergraduate degrees in Music (CSM) and Commerce (UNSW) and Masters degrees in Music (Tas) and Tertiary Education Management (Melb).
A committed teacher, David Malone has given masterclasses at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts. He currently teaches at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music at the University of Tasmania. David is married to composer Maria Grenfell and they live with their two children in Hobart, Tasmania.