Martin Wesley-Smith
Martin Wesley-Smith wrote music audiences actually like: electronic pieces that stay human, choral parables that turn nursery rhymes into environmental inquests, and chamber scores laced with Lewis Carroll fantasy and hard political irony.
Two obsessions run through the work. Lewis Carroll yields Snark-Hunting, White Knight and Beaver, Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers and the music-box charm of pieces that hide menace under nursery tunes. East Timor and West Papua yield Quito, the radiophonic drama built around a young refugee’s own singing; Balibo for flute and tape; Welcome to the Hotel Turismo; Kolele Mai; Papua Merdeka; Morning Star Lament. Who Killed Cock Robin? remains the landmark choral work, sliding from parlour ballad and barbershop into pesticide dissonance that still makes crowds laugh and flinch. The electronic catalogue, from Vietnam Image to Wattamolla Red, proves tape and computer can sound warm, satirical and urgently humane. Chamber music for the Australia Ensemble, guitar quartets, harp septet and singing cellists keeps the same raised eyebrow: tuneful, metamorphic, never abstract for its own sake. Irony and slapstick sit beside real grief so that beauty and anger sharpen each other.
Artist's website: creative.gov.au
Compositions by Martin Wesley-Smith appear on
Jewel
Australian gems for violin and piano. Jewel gathers works by some of Australia’s finest composers, among them Peter Sculthorpe, Margaret Sutherland, Don Banks and Vincent Plush.
