My Clarinet Concerto No. 1 was received with enthusiasm at its premiere at the Australian National University School of Music in 2002, and the recording of that premiere was frequently broadcast on radio in Australia. Although this work has not yet been performed again live in Australia, it did get its US premiere in San Antonio, Texas featuring Ivan Petruzziello under the direction of Emmanuel Godoy on April 4, 2017 in the Palmetto Theater at the North by Northwest Music Festival. Please find below links to the 3 slideshows on YouTube where I made available the recording of the premiere of my Clarinet Concerto.
As mentioned above it was received with great enthusiasm by the Canberra audience! – to the great annoyance of some arts people. The baleful music apparatchiks who manage Australia’s mainstream symphony orchestras have, for the last years, rebuffed all invitations to include this concerto in concert programming.
Why? Hear the enthusiastic applause of the audience at the close of the 2002 premiere in Canberra (end of 3rd Movement) and I think you may perhaps understand why performance cannot be permitted of such a disgracefully populist work by an Australian composer that dares to provoke such a raucously uninhibited audience response. Oh dear me no! We can’t allow that, can we? Not according to the cliques from academia who control arts support and thus the kind of art that gets created.
My music has always been written with direct support from actual performers who kindly commissioned me to compose for them, thus sidestepping the control of those apparatchiks! Might be need to be toned down a bit? But it’s part of the history of why I stopped composing in 2002 and started writing plays/films, mostly low budget comedies now suitable to be staged at theatre or filmed to be shown online! I always composed music only when commissioned by well-known and distinguished artists who arranged commissions for me.
So the main purpose of my brand new website (thank you!) is to promote my writing, with only a backward glance at my composing years. As part of this backward glance at my CLARINET CONCERTO NO. 1 here are 3 links below to the 3 movements of this work as posted on Youtube.
The images for the 1st Movement were taken by Strahan during a holiday in Latin America, as detailed in the You Tube slideshow.
For the second Movement the images are mostly of Australian countryside.
The 3rd Movement slideshow features Sydney Harbour sights including the Bridge and the Opera House, where this work is unlikely ever to be performed.