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Orpheus with Lyre Bird (2004) |
solo harp – 6'
The Australian Lyrebird is one of the most virtuosic of bird-songsters in the world. It has a repertoire of liquid and mellifluous chants interspersed with white-noise hisses and clicks, and is also a superb mimic of any indigenous sounds that exist in the area where the singing males ‘perform’.
The songs are delivered from a specially constructed clearing and earth-mound usually deep in shaded cover in wet rainforest habitats.
But this work also weaves the songs into a sense of a velvet evening light in the forests of southern Victoria in Australia. It also treats on aspects of colour and form found in a habitat of great beauty and calm…
Edward Cowie, September 2004.