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A Unifying Mood
A new song cycle by Julian Dawes,
heard by MALCOLM MILLER
Be the change you want to see, a new song cycle on the theme of peace by Julian Dawes, received a stirring world première on 9 May 2010 at a capacity-filled Lauderdale House, Highgate, London UK. The cycle was dedicated to Nitza and Robin Spiro, directors of the Spiro Ark, a cultural educational organisation which presented the concert. The title is a quotation by Mahatma Ghandi, one of the eclectic ancient and modern texts which Dawes sets, on the theme of war and peace, including biblical and modern Israeli poetry in Hebrew, as well as ancient Greek verses, Kipling, Belloc, H G Wells, Robert E Lee, H H The Dalai Lama and others. The style of the twenty-three songs, duets and recitations, is in turn elegiac and theatrical, highly-charged and lyrical, ever responsive to the mood of the words.
A prolific composer of music for theatre and voice, Dawes' style distils the influences of his mentor Howells, as of Stravinsky and Weill, into a distinctive tonal-modal idiom, full of piquancy and rhythmic subtlety...
Copyright © 17 May 2010
Malcolm Miller,
London UK
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