Raymond Chapman Smith

Featuring: Amir Farid

Nachschriften: A set of 26 short pieces that cycle through all the major and minor tonalities, Nachschriften are a series of reflections and variations on themes - sometimes, variations on variations. For the most part they are simple dances - minuets, mazurkas, waltzes and ländler. Ländler: The references, the paying of homage to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf and Zemlinsky are so obvious as to hardly need comment. They are heard through lenses polished by a later, more reductive aesthetic and a somewhat fortuitous arrival at a kind of diatonic serialism. As a teenager in 1970 Chapman Smith began performing in AZ Music in Sydney with the recently returned Australian assistant to Cardew and Stockhausen, David Ahern, feeding new ideas into the local music scene, and fielding phoned-in performance instructions from La Monte Young for their improvisations at Brett Whiteley's gallery. After moving to Adelaide to study with Richard Meale, through the '80s and '90s Chapman Smith founded and co-helmed loosely Cageian composer-performer collectives. Since 1996 he has co-directed new music organisation The Firm, revelling in the poetic aesthetic of 19th Century German romanticism.