Arcadia Winds

Book online and join us for the Season

Arcadia Winds

2023 The Edge

Arcadia Winds are trailblazers for Australian wind music, admired equally for their virtuosity, their charisma and their imagination. Now, fresh from a triumphant regional tour, they invite you to share some morning music with them at The Edge, Fed Square.

Janáček Mladi (Youth) is a touchstone of the wind quintet repertoire, a fond and colourful picture of the composer’s boyhood. Tzigane is a high-charged, passionate journey through Eastern Europe, written by flautist and composer Valerie Colman. Richard Strauss’s Serenade for Wind, written when he was just 17, is a musical homage to Mozart, Mendelssohn and his beloved father.

At the centre of this mid-morning concert is a new work, Sam Wu's I See You, which is inspired by and dedicated to the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who demonstrated incredible courage and selflessness while saving lives during the 2020-2022 pandemic. This work has been commissioned by Carrillo Gantner AC and Ziyin Gantner. As a natural extension to this commission, there will be a collection at the concert for the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Foundation.

Sit down, take a deep breath and relax at this, our final Musica Viva Australia at The Edge concert for 2023.

Event partner: Fed Square

"Captivating from the moment they took to the stage. Playing with great gusto and passion, these five uber talented musicians...stole the hearts of everyone in the crowd."

— The Adelaide Review

View or download the program guide by pressing this button below .
Zoom or view in a full screen using these buttons below .

Arcadia Winds

KATE PROCTOR* Flute
RACHEL BULLEN* Oboe
LLOYD VAN'T HOFF Clarinet
RACHEL SHAW French horn
MATTHEW KNEALE Bassoon
MITCH BERICK* Bass clarinet

*Guest artists

V COLEMAN Tzigane
Sam WU I See You*
R STRAUSS Serenade in E-Flat Major, Op. 7 (arr. Davies)
JANÁČEK Mládí (‘Youth’)

*Commissioned by Carrillo Gantner AC and Ziyin Gantner in honour of all the doctors, nurses, technicians and others who worked tirelessly on the very front line of our healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sam Wu

Sam Wu’s music deals with the beauty in blurred boundaries. Many of his works centre on extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbour life.

From Melbourne, Sam holds degrees from Harvard University and The Juilliard School and is pursuing his DMA in Composition at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. His accolades include Juilliard’s Palmer Dixon Prize, Harvard’s Robert Levin Prize, and First Prize in the Washington International Competition.

Sam’s collaborations span five continents, most notably with New York City Ballet, The Kennedy Center and Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts.

Sam’s new work will be premiered by Arcadia Winds for Viva Edge. It was commissioned by Carrillo Gantner AC and Ziyin Gantner to honour all the doctors, nurses and other health workers who committed themselves with such courage and selflessness to save lives in hospital Intensive Care Units during the pandemic of 2020/21.

Sam Wu, composer of I see you, writes:

I See You is written in honour of the valiant efforts Intensive Care Unit staff undertook to take care of critically ill patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. In preparation for writing this piece, I was fortunate to take a tour of The Alfred’s world-class ICU wing (after pandemic restrictions were relaxed) in Melbourne, and hear from Dr. Dashiell Gantner, as well as some of his colleagues, about their experiences throughout the pandemic.

The work reflects upon and honours ICU frontline workers by portraying the process of healing from a sickness like Covid-19. At first, the music is fragmentary, with melodies interspersed with quiet, breath-only sounds––suggesting that the mere act of breathing is laborious. Then, the material is put through trials and tribulations, as a battle unfolds both on the microscopic (the immune system) and macroscopic (the heroic ICU staff) levels. At last, we arrive at a lyrical, complete presentation of the initial fragments, both a symbol for the restoration of health, as well as the valiant care-taking of patients by ICU healthcare staff throughout the pandemic. We end on a quiet, hopeful note; a moment of gratitude for all our frontline workers.