Rebecca Lagos
Rebecca Lagos brings precise, colourful percussion to Australian chamber and film scores, from the icy landscapes of Westlake's Antarctica to the star-cluster cymbals of Georges Lentz and the dance energy of Ross Edwards.
Her playing sits inside music that needs colour and bite more than solo display. In Westlake she helps drive the penguin scherzos and the brittle glitter of ice and glass, locking into scores that swing between yearning lyricism and real force. With Synergy she digs into the bright, elated rhythms of Malachite Glass and the tougher constructions of Cage and Samuels. Lentz's Caeli enarrant IV asks something else again: four cymbals with string quartet, slow and astronomical, more resonance and silence than attack. Edwards's Laikan pulls her into the dance-song pulse that runs through his chamber writing. Across these discs the percussion is never padding; it is part of how the music breathes and moves.
Performing as Synergy Percussion
Marimbas lock and skins crackle as Synergy Percussion drives Edwards's Dragonfly Dance, Westlake's Kalabash and Malachite Glass, and Pratt's hocketing Fantasy. Australian percussion writing at full tilt.
Synergy With Samuels
This CD grew from a concert collaboration between Australia’s best-known percussion quartet and America’s finest vibraphonist, Dave Samuels. Together they cook up a storm.
Rebecca Lagos also appears on
Raft Song at Sunrise: Chamber Music, Vol. 2
Following the best-selling first volume of Ross Edwards’s chamber music (TP051), this disc gathers some of his most enduring works, recorded here for the first time.
Onomatopoeia
Long-awaited performances of Nigel Westlake’s most acclaimed chamber works, with outstanding Australian players. One of Tall Poppies’ most successful releases.
"Caeli enarrant..." IV & V
Georges Lentz, then a violinist in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, had already won the Paul Lowin Award for Orchestral Composition for another work in this series. His music draws on astronomy and carries a vast sense of space.
Antarctica: The Film Music
Australia's first IMAX film, scored by Nigel Westlake with music that captures the awesome spaces of the ice and the delights of the local fauna. Soloists include David Pereira (cello), Dene Olding (violin), Timothy Kain (guitar) and Christine Douglas (soprano).
