Happy Halloween from Ensemble Q

Trish Dean (TD): It’s been a massive year for Ensemble Q and it’s all been wonderful, but I would have to single out the Musica Viva tour – it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and incredible to play in all the major concert halls in Australia and see every one of them full! We were given so much love and support by the audiences, with standing ovations – it was very exciting, especially working with William Barton and playing his new piece, a world premiere of his ‘Journey to the Edge of the Horizon’. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

For a smaller audience, our Whiskey Bar series feels like the jewel in the crown of our season. Those performances sell out within minutes, leaving us with long waiting lists. The audience sits in a circle around us, and people have said “We’re so close we could actually touch the instruments!” Our QPAC residency was also up-close-and-personal, with the Concert Hall reconfigured with special reverse seating to allow the audience a closer view of the musicians and their instruments. And that’s where we’ll be performing our final concert for our 2024 season. We’ve put together a family concert that is a mix of fun pieces for Halloween – Frankenstein!! & The Goose’s Mum!

BK: What can audiences expect?

TD: We have a wonderful fun piece, ‘Frankenstein!!’ By HK Gruber, ‘Poltergeist’ by William Bolcom, the ‘Mother Goose Suite’ by Ravel, and ‘Danse Macabre’ by Saint-Saëns. As well as the past, we celebrate the new: two of our composers – Gruber and Bolcom – are very much alive. And Cicely Parnas, the composer and cellist who arranged ‘Danse Macabre’ is only 31. She is a something of a child prodigy, having made her orchestral debut at age 11, a trait she shares with Ravel and Saint-Saëns who also started very early in music.

BK: I’ve previewed the selection and it’s an intriguing and unexpected mix. Even though they sound like pieces for children, that’s not the case. ‘Frankenstein!!’ seems like a mini-opera – for all ages – and ‘Mother Goose’ is certainly not dumbed down!

TD: These are sophisticated and complex musical experiences. ‘Frankenstein!!’ is an incredibly difficult work to play, but it is really fun. We have to play kazoos and harmonicas and slide whistles and all sorts of crazy toy instruments mixed in with these virtuosic passages. Plus we have the added bonus of Jason Barry-Smith lending his voice – and athleticism – to the show. He does a lot of running around the stage! There are 13 musicians on stage, including plenty of percussion – so it will be the full Ensemble Q having a lot of fun – a big end-of-year party!

BK: Trish, with 13 musicians on call, I’m glad your playlist doesn’t include anything by Schoenberg, since he was famously obsessively fearful of the number 13 – which proved prescient as he died on a Friday the 13th!  Musicians can be superstitious and become attached to mysterious legends. I suppose the most famous is Mozart seemingly writing his own ‘Requiem’ in 1791. And Haydn’s stolen head is positively macabre. At the sweeter end of the scale is Grieg with his tiny rubber frog – always in his pocket for luck at gigs. Are there any spooky stories about your composers to get us in a Halloween mood?

TD: Ensemble Q’s Frankenstein!! composers do have some chilling facts:

When he was young, Saint-Saëns was organist at the Gothic 16th-century Saint-Merri church in Paris and played at hundreds of funerals!

Ravel’s father was an engineer who invented the Whirlwind of Death, a major circus attraction until a fatal accident at Barnum and Bailey's Circus in 1903. I also heard a rumour that Ravel once applied to be Director of the NSW Conservatorium, but was rejected – now that’s a horror story if ever I heard one!

Find out more about Ensemble Q: www.ensembleqaustralia.com

Photographer: Peter Wallis