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Broadway Boogie is the latest addition to the Michael Kieran Harvey
Collection. In his introduction to the CD in its liner notes, Michael
Kieran Harvey writes the following:
"This assemblage of recent Australian piano music has been
selected for its allusions - sometimes extremely tenuous - to New
York. A major international centre of ideas and creativity, this
city maintains a galvanizing effect on Australian intellectual life
in a way that, say, Washington never could. Andrew Ford's Broadway
Boogie-Woogie finds musical parallels to Mondrian's famous
painting, the epitome of non-symmetrical balance, and itself a paean
to New York's artistic diversity. Andrew Byrne, a resident of New
York, has written an unsentimental exploration of the surreal sounds
of chaos and succour after the destruction of the Twin Towers. Byrne's
mentor, John McCaughey, possibly the most self-effacing and reluctant
Australian composer, yet one of Australia's busiest and most original
musicians, gives us a glimpse into the multi-layered nature of his
thinking with Toccata de Nielico. Nigel Westlake's brilliant
(if brief!) follow-up to the magnificent first sonata contrasts
ethereal improvisations with driving rhythms which would not sound
out of place in downtown Manhattan. Mark Pollard's homage to Euclid
shows his fascination with post-minimalism (a New York hallmark)
and the re-emergence of emotion, and finds fresh stimulus in the
nostalgic language of Chopin. My own sonata is offered in gratitude
to Saxby Pridmore, who in turn owes his inspiration to the great
New York Stoic psychologist Albert Ellis."
All works on this CD are premieres.
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