Composer’s latest work receives critical acclaim after Melbourne premier
The latest composition by an academic from the School of Humanities’ Department of Music has been praised by audience and critics alike.
A new composition by Professor Matthew Shlomowitz , from the School of Humanities’ Department of Music, has been met with critical acclaim. His latest work, The Big Idea, received its premiere at the Melbourne Recital Centre, before touring to the ACO Studios in Sydney and the Street Theatre in Canberra.
Composed by Professor Shlomowitz, with words from librettist Vid Simoniti, The Big Idea is an hour-long monodrama. Combining spoken word, music and theatrical elements, The Big Idea explores very human themes of ambition, rejection and hope. A lonely figure enters the stage, singing of a beautiful, earth-shattering idea that is forming within her. When the moment finally arrives, she and the ensemble must face the possibility that their lives will be changed forever. The Big Idea stretches out a single ‘eureka moment’ into a musical extravaganza. The piece celebrates both the possibility that we could all reinvent ourselves and stages the crushing realisation when our ambitions collapse. You can hear more in this interview on Australia’s Radio National , where Matthew, together with Vid Simoniti, discuss how philosophy and composition meet in The Big Idea.
The work was performed by the Rubiks Collective, featuring acclaimed Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean in the central role of the unnamed heroine. The premiere received enthusiastic reviews across Australian media:
“And to Shlomowitz and Simoniti — bravo. This piece may appear light-hearted but it’s built on a very real, very recognisable emotional cycle: excitement, ambition, interruption, rejection… and that bittersweet sigh of maybe, somewhere.” (Classik On)
“Once the The Big Idea makes it over the hill, it’s one of those rare pieces that’s so entertaining, you really want more of when it ends.” (Limelight)
Matthew’s also had a three-day residency in November at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, where he gave a paper titled “The Case for Neoclassicism” and one of his chambers works was performed . He will give this paper again in February at University of Pennsylvania , Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, and Princeton University.