Media Release: July 2018
Selby & Friends presents a program exploring how composers dealt with their own demons
Natalie Chee – Violin | Lloyd Van’t Hoff – Clarinet | Julian Smiles – Cello | Kathryn Selby – Piano
▪ Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Trio in G major, Op. 121a ‘Kakadu Variations’
▪ Robert Schumann Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor, Op. 110
▪ Olivier Messiaen Quatour pour la fin du temps
Selby & Friends welcomes back violinist Natalie Chee and cellist Julian Smiles, and new guest artist, clarinetist Lloyd Van’t Hoff, for a concert program exploring how composers suffering from depression and grief express themselves through their music. These remarkable concerts are devoted to piano trios by Beethoven and Schumann, and culminate in Olivier Messiaen’s groundbreaking Quartet for the End of Time.
Of the programming concept for this concert, Artistic Director and pre-eminent Australian pianist Kathryn Selby AM says, “I have always been fascinated by the ability of composers to express their innermost pain through their music in so many extraordinary ways. This program features three stunning examples of truly masterful composers reaching out, through music, to the world in which they lived for solace.”
Australian violinist Natalie Chee returns for these Selby & Friends concerts from Stuttgart, Germany, where she is First Concertmaster of the Radio Symphony Orchestra. She is also a founder of the Hegel String Quartet. Cellist Julian Smiles, member of the international award-winning Goldner Quartet and the Australia Ensemble, is in great demand as a teacher and coach, having worked with Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM), Australian Youth Orchestra and Sydney Conservatorium student musicians.
The Chee-/Smiles/Selby artistic partnership garnered reviewer’s praise with their 2017 Selby & Friends concerts, in which Limelight magazine gushed: “Selby and Friends deftly navigated the shifting moods with an organic ease – Chee and Smiles perfectly matching each other’s intensity against the piano … This was a beautiful, neatly packaged concert – three fine, distinctive players bringing to life the works of three distinctive compositional voices.”
Brilliant Australian clarinetist Lloyd Van’t Hoff performs for the first time with Selby & Friends in Messiaen’s beautiful and haunting Quartet for the End of Time. He is the 2015 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year recipient, and a winner of the ANAM Chamber Music Competition as part of the Arcadia Quintet, of which he is a founding member. He is also of Musica Viva Australia’s inaugural FutureMakers. A versatile musician on a global scale, he has performed at festivals all over the world, from China to Austria, from Canada to Germany and Switzerland.
Tickets to Selby & Friends’ Tormented Souls tour are on sale now via the Selby & Friends website or by calling 1300 511 099.
Tormented Souls tours the following dates and venues:
Saturday, August 18 – 5:00pm, Mittagong Playhouse, Southern Highlands
Sunday, August 19 – 2:15pm, Turramurra Uniting Church, Turramurra
Monday, August 20 – 7:30pm, Fairfax Theatre, NGA, Canberra
Wednesday, August 22 – 7:30pm, Tatoulis Auditorium, Methodist Ladies’ College, Kew, Melbourne
Thursday, August 24 – 7:00pm, City Recital Hall, Sydney
Sunday, August 26 – 2:30pm, Elder Hall, University of Adelaide, Adelaide
Media Contact:
Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide: Di Rolle – 0419 001 068 e: di@dirolle.com.au
** Hi-res images available
[AC1]Need to qualify this headline somehow – can otherwise be misinterpreted or mis-read as a negative, e.g. your artists are tormented souls, or the music somehow is tormenting its listeners. Suggest “S&F presents next concert: Tormented Souls” or similar