The annual GGS New Music Ensemble 21C Afterhours concert, with Brian Current conducting, of course, took place late on Saturday in the Temerty Theatre.  This year it consisted of three concerti; two of them world premieres.  Besides the soloists 26 musicians were used in various combinations during the evening.

First up was the premiere of Alison Yun-Fei Jiang’s piano concerto Shan Shui which apparently translates roughly as “Water in Mountain” and is a nod to classic Chinese calligraphy.  The soloist was Colin Chang.  It’s a fairly tonal piece with a water like, shimmering quality which builds layers of sound getting gradually denser and louder until it sort of fades away.

Next came another piano concerto; The Broken Mirrors of Time by South African Andile Khumalo, with Henry From as soloist.  This is a somewhat more abrasive piece with a virtuosic piano part and constantly changing textures in the orchestra.  Sometimes it’s quite sparse but at other times there’s a very dense layering of strings and winds.

The premiere of Chris Mayo’s Concerto for Saxophone was a bit different because Chris was present and could explain his compositional technique and intent.  Basically, rather than starting by writing notes he plays with each instrument to see what sounds it’s capable of; including when modifications such as an extended mouthpiece or a rubber tube into a Mason jar are used.  It’s probably a good thing that Long and McQuaid don’t know what he’s up to.  He records all this to create a library of sounds which he then combines.

Wallace Hallyday was the soloist in a piece where waves of harmonics were laced with some pretty weird sounds, for a quite “buzzy” effect.  The orchestra kind of washed over the audience while the soloist did complicated conventional and much less conventional things on the saxophone.  At times it got really dense and a bit crazy in a good way though there were sparser patches that offered some relief.  Definitely an interesting piece.

As ever the young musicians of the Ensemble displayed rather amazing skills and versatility and Brian’s intros were to his usual high standard.