Acacia Quartet- Music By The Sea Concert Series 2016

For Acacia’s Music By The Sea concert ‘The Harp & The Harpoon’, they will perform Beethoven’s famous ‘Harp’ String Quartet in Eb Op 74 (nicknamed for the arpeggiated pizzicato passages in the first movement) alongside two compositions that reflect Australia’s unique landscape.

The first of these Australian works, ‘Kudikynah Cave’, is by Moya Henderson, one of Australia’s most established composers with a career spanning four decades. This single movement work, with its beautiful and stirring harmonies, takes its name from a cave hidden along the banks of the Franklin River in the rainforests of Tasmania. It is typical of the strong sensory images Moya likes to create through her music.

The second Australian work is titled ‘Law Of The Tongue’ and is written by one of Australia’s new generation composers, Nicholas Vines. Music By The Sea’s audience will be hearing the world premiere performance of this intriguing work! (This is not the first world premiere performance Acacia has presented in Sandgate. Two years ago Acacia performed Lyle Chan’s incredible musical diary ‘An AIDS Activist’s Memoir’ which they have just performed in Vancouver, Canada). This year’s world premiere The Law of the Tongue is inspired by a unique piece of Australian history from the small whaling town of Eden on the New South Wales south coast. It tells the extraordinary tale of the collaboration between man and orca whales in their hunt of baleen whales. The particulars of the hunt are in themselves fascinating. The orcas would herd a baleen into the deep waters of Eden’s Twofold Bay, then alert the whalers by slapping the water with their tails. Joining forces they would hunt together. Dividing up the carcass the much sought-after tongue would be thrown back to the orcas as the reward. This ritual became known by the locals as ‘the law of the tongue.’ Vines’ composition mimics different whale songs, an Aboriginal corrobboree, the orca’s tail slaps, the exhilarating hunt and the whaler’s final thrust of the harpoon.

“four extraordinary musicians gave it everything they had… It was playing of the highest order” – ClassikOn, 2014

“Sometimes words can fail to adequately describe what one witnesses… the Acacia Quartet illustrated each movement with an incredible depth of understanding” – The Age, 2014

Click Here for more Information