We spoke to guitarist Andrew Blanch from Ensemble Offspring about The Surge, ahead of their performance at Bundanon.
Interview Kirra Davey @k.m.d__
How did the ensemble come together?
It probably starts with a little bit about Ensemble Offspring, which is a new music ensemble based in Sydney. They play a lot of contemporary music and they have a very sort of forward looking vision with their programming. They also think about diversity, in composers and everything.
I'm a freelance classical guitarist, and there were some interesting pieces written in the early 1990s for another group. It had two guitars and many of the instruments in Ensemble Offspring’s lineup.
It’s an unusual combination of instruments, which is two guitars, bass, clarinet, double bass, piano, percussion and violin. So, I approached Claire Edwards, who’s the artistic director of the group, and I suggested doing these pieces again. Then we've also commissioned three Australian composers to write us new works.
It’s interesting looking back at the nineties and seeing the ways in which things are different and how it's informed the world we live in today. The nineties don’t feel like that long ago, but so much has changed since. The internet was basically invented in the very early nineties, and it became like consumer, in the household you could access the internet in your home during the 1990s which we take for granted, for example.
The performance is described as reflecting on the cultural, environmental, and political situations of Australia. Can you tell us more about that?
In the realm of technology, it looks back into the early days of the internet and digital technology as well. And it used some sort of sampling ideas. We've got old ring tones that appear, old computer noises that you would've been so familiar with back in the nineties, but we've now completely forgotten them. Like the sound of a modem starting up or an analogue keyboard. You remember how those keys used to make a lot of noise. Now it's all completely very quiet. The Nokia ringtone, all that stuff.
We’re bringing back these sounds that used to just be a background to our lives, and they sounded normal, and then we completely forgot that we're now living without them. We show how technology has played along in our lives. And then environmentally, I think really the main story is climate change and extinction.
Politically, we’re not necessarily trying to make a stance on anything with this concert, however, we start with a work by Paul Mac, an electronic musical work that runs alongside an inspiring speech that Paul Keating gave in the early nineties called The Red Fern Address.
And he speaks on issues of Indigenous Australians, and he talks with profound empathy and vision and kind of courage. He comes out and he really lays out what he feels Australia has done wrong and what it should be doing better. It’s really quite an inspiring event. And you can hear the crowd sort of chanting in agreement. And it's quite interesting because now of course we've got the referendum, it is extremely topical. These issues are always relevant, but maybe not quite as relevant as they seem right now.
Do you have a favourite piece?
I like them all and I think the overall trajectory of the concert works really nicely. My favourite is what we finish with, ‘Net Surf’ by Robert Davidson. He takes us back to the nineties when the internet sort of promised so much hope and what it actually can do. It could connect us all and provide us with information and a reminder of how amazing this technology is. It's a great piece. It's very catchy and uplifting.
What do you enjoy about performing with Ensemble Offspring?
It feels like a real privilege to play with just these incredible Australian musicians, all of them experienced as solo [performers] and members of this ensemble, [and] they all have very exciting projects and collaborations outside of this ensemble. It's a lot of fun. All of us coming and playing together and putting this show together. I'm thrilled to be involved.
We have a lot of fun playing on stage together, playing this programme. It has its darker moments particularly in the middle, and at the beginning more seriousness. By the end of the show, it becomes more uplifting and more optimistic. And I think we all feel that as we play.
I really enjoy the live concerts that we do. Also, there's always a bit of spontaneity and a bit of the unknown when you play live, and I really enjoy that.
See Offspring Ensemble perform at Bundanon on Sunday 15 October
170 Riversdale Road, Illaroo
Book tickets online