Welcome to this week’s blog. This week’s featured music is ‘Lullaby for Alina’, written for my friends Maria and Francesco Placanica on the birth of their second daughter, Alina. Originally written for voices and piano, I have re-arranged it for my new CD, ‘Places with high levels of natural beauty’, with the violin now taking the lead, with the voices sitting behind it. It is in the form of a ‘theme and variations’, whereby the stated theme at the beginning is then re-stated in a series of variations. I think it works as both a lullaby for children and as music for reflection and quiet time for people of all ages. I hope you think so, too.
It is ANZAC Day in Australia today. ‘ANZAC’ stands for ‘Australian & New Zealand Army Corps’, and our tradition has it that Australia ‘came of age’ as a nation when the ANZACs landed on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Although this was a disastrous campaign in every way, and only a part of the significant economic, social and human cost to Australia in our involvement in the First World War, it is now accepted that by the end of World War 1 Australia’s identity as a nation in its own right was beginning to emerge.
I talked in my blog of 4 April 2016 of the show ‘A Kitbag of Memories’, a show co-created last year by me with my musician colleagues Mara and Llew Kiek of Mara Music (http://www.maramusic.com.au/) for the Lower Mountains Neighbourhood Centre, where I work. We re-presented this show last Saturday to commemorate ANZAC Day, and I would like to thank all of you who were able to attend, and support us in this multi-level performance. The show concludes with a quote from the singers Coope Boyes and Simpson, and on this day, ANZAC Day 2016, I would like to leave you with it:
‘The more we learn about war, the more important it becomes to sing about peace.’
Until next time,
Peta