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Lisa Gerrard
With a vision and vocal style that is as unique
as it is precise and all embracing, Lisa Gerrard
has established herself as one of the world’s
most highly acclaimed film composers.
Her musical journey began in the early 1980s
when she and fellow Australian Brendan
Perry formed Dead Can Dance, one of
the world’s most original bands whose
proud boast is that they never fitted into any
neatly manufactured genre or predefined
pigeonhole. In 2012, Dead Can Dance
reunited for a worldwide, sell out tour.
Over nine albums between 1984 and 1995,
the duo’s musical canvas expanded with every
release to take in a timeless mix of world music
influences, medieval chants, folk ballads,
baroque stylings, Celtic flavours, electronics,
samples and anything else that took their fancy.
After several solo and collaborative albums
were well received following Dead Can
Dance, Lisa made a natural progression
to composing for films and was instantly
successful, winning a Golden Globe for her
work on Gladiator with Hans Zimmer.
This was followed by an Oscar
nomination for Gladiator and a further
two more Golden Globe nominations
for her scores to Ali and The Insider.
More recently Lisa’s film work has included
Whale Rider, which received an Oscar
nomination for its lead actress and garnered
Lisa four international awards for her score.
Archie Buchanan
Archie has appeared as treble soloist at all
the major concert halls in London and for The
Royal Opera at Covent Garden and English
National Opera at the Coliseum. At Covent
Garden he has sung in The Cunning Little Vixen
(2010, under Charles Mackerras), Macbeth,
where he sang Third Apparition (2011, under
Pappano) and in this year’s production of
The Magic Flute, where he was First Boy – a
role he also performed for ENO in 2012.
Other solo performances have included the
treble role with full orchestra in a screening of
The Matrix at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011.
Britten Sinfonia
Crouch End Festival Chorus
Violin 1
Thomas Gould (Associate leader)
Marcus Barcham-Stevens
Beatrix Lovejoy
Ruth Erhlirch
Kathy Shave
Gillon Cameron
Marije Johnston
Shana Douglas
Laura Dixon
Louisa Stonehill
Sopranos
Margaret Ellerby
Genevieve Helsby
Alys Metcalf
Davina Ross-Anderson
Rachel Yarham
Flora Cox
Rosamund Bell
Tara Clark
Marianne Rizkallah
Amber Salladin
Natalie Fine
Alice King
He is a former chorister of Her Majesty’s
Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, with whom
he sang at the wedding of Prince William and
Kate Middleton in 2011, and at the Queen’s
Diamond Jubilee service in 2012. He is a keen
member of Finchley Children’s Music Group,
performing in countless concerts from Madonna
at Live Earth in Wembley Stadium in 2007 to the
premiere solo performance of Julian Dawes’
setting of ‘I never saw another butterfly’ in 2011.
Violin 2
Nicola Goldscheider
Marcus Broome
Suzanne Loze
Judith Kelly
Zoe Davies
Bridget Davey
Minn Majoe
Vernon Dean
Ikuko Sunamura
Marciana Buta
Archie has also sung on a number of
soundtracks for film and TV, including a solo
line for L’Odyssée de Cartier. Recent recordings
include for the PlayStation Game Ni no Kuni –
the Wrath of the White Witch; his solo track for
the latter was released earlier this year on CD
across Europe, North America and Australasia.
He is a pupil at City of London School, where
he studies singing with Jennifer Lilleystone.
Violas
Clare Finnimore
Helen Kamminga
Rachel Byrt
Becky Lowe
Felix Tanner
Rebecca Carrington
Katie Wilkinson
Ursula John
Cellos
Ben Chappell
Joy Hawley
Lucy Payne
Cara Berridge
David Bucknall
Chris Allan
Alessandro Sanguineti
David Edmonds
In 2009 Lisa scored the highly acclaimed film
Balibo that won her the 2009 Screen Music
Award for Best Feature Film Score, an Aria
Award and further three nominations.
In 2010 Lisa finished her score for
Oranges and Sunshine and the
controversial film Tears of Gaza.
Double Basses
Stephen Williams
Roger Linley
Elena Hull
Lucy Shaw
Richard Pryce
Billy Cole
Archie Buchanan © Simon Weir
Diaries of Hope Programme.indd 1-3
Zbigniew Preisner
& Lisa Gerrard
Diaries of Hope
(UK premiere)
Free programme
Altos
Alison Brister
Tina Burnett
Juliet Dwek-Selley
Carole Elphick
Hannah Leonard
Annemarie O’Callaghan
Anna Stuttard
Rosemarie Ferguson
Ida Griffith
Charlotte Halliday
Kate Turner
Jennifer Weston
Tenors
John Vernon
Robin Green
David Temple
Adrian Warner
Bob Bishop
Steve Wright
John Featherstone
Thomas Halliday
Basses
Tim Ellerby
Vincent Lawlor
Hugh Bowden
Peter West
Stephen Fellowes
Bryn Popham
Christopher Wetherall
Bruce Boyd
John Mindlin
Peter White
Photo © Anna Wloch
Biographies
FRONT
barbican.org.uk
10/10/2013 11:00
Diaries of Hope
Sat 12 Oct 8pm
1. From the Abyss
2. Lament – Lisa Gerrard
3. Dream – Archie Buchanan
(Lyrics: Abram Koplowicz, translation
courtesy of Eliezer Lolek Grynfeld)
4. In a Dark Hour – Archie Buchanan
(Lyrics: Abram Cytryn, translation
from the Polish by B & T Howard)
5. Epitaph – Lisa Gerrard
Poems
At the beginning of the nineties I was in
Jerusalem with Krzysztof Kieslowski for
the opening night of the Jerusalem Film
Festival. I played a concert in the beautiful
scenery of the open amphitheatre lying in
the valley between old and new Jerusalem.
Dream
When I am twenty years old,
I’ll start observing our beautiful world.
I’ll board a huge mechanical bird
And rise heavenward into space,
Flow, fly into the distant beautiful world.
Flow, fly over the rivers and seas.
During that visit we met Shewach Weiss who was
then the Speaker of the Knesset. He showed us
the Museum Yad Vashem. There for the first the
time I saw the exhibition dedicated to children
who were victims of the Holocaust. When I
walked into that dark room, where thousands
of candles were glimmering into the distance,
I heard the names of the murdered children
and the places of their torment, interwoven with
the singing of a Cantor. I was crushed. I felt a
strange fear. It was a cathartic experience.
Music composed and conducted
by Zbigniew Preisner
Britten Sinfonia
Crouch End Festival Chorus,
director David Temple
Lisa Gerrard voice
Archie Buchanan voice
Konrad Mastylo piano
Adam Klocek cello
David Collings reader
When we left the museum, Krzysztof said to
me: ‘You have to describe it musically, you
have to do it.’But how to write about a tragedy
that humans are unable to comprehend?
Years went by.
Produced by the Barbican
Management: Laurence Aston, Eliza Dziedzic Interpreter: Basia Howard
Sound design: David Sheppard
Publisher: Chester Music Ltd.
Album released on CD, vinyl and
digital on Preisner Productions
www.preisner.com
www.zbigniewpreisner.pl
I started to look for materials, diaries, poems
written by children from Poland. I looked for the
Polish equivalent of the Diaries of Anne Frank.
When I read the Diaries of Rutka Laskier,
Dawid Rubinowicz and the poems of Abram
Koplowcz and Abram Cytryn I understood that
all their words have one thing in common.
They are written with hope.
Thanks to Nancy Buchanan,
Maggie Rodford, Richard Jones,
Beth Byrne and everyone involved in
making this production possible.
Some irrational power let them
believe in salvation.
They are dramatic descriptions of daily life,
the history of their families and suffering.
However they also write with a childish
joy about each happy moment, live their
dreams and believe in their future.
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Fri 24 Jan 2014
Max Richter with the BBC
Symphony Orchestra
Memoryhouse
And although these diaries suddenly
just break off, these children didn’t
ever lose their faith. That hope let them
live and sometimes even smile.
Check out our full music programme at
barbican.org.uk/contemporary
Sign up to our email list at
barbican.org.uk/e-updates
Image: Lisa Gerrard
Sun 9 Mar 2014
Jóhann Jóhannsson
The Miners’ Hymns
Diaries of Hope Programme.indd 4-6
About Diaries of Hope
They are diaries of hope.
Zbigniew Preisner
Translation by Eliza Dziedzic
Adapted by Laurence Aston
When I am twenty years old
When I am twenty years old.
The cloud is my sister, the wind is my brother.
I will marvel at the Nile and Euphrates.
See the sphinxes and pyramids
In the ancient land of the divine Isis.
Flow over the colossal waters of Niagara.
Bathe in the Sahara sun.
When I am twenty years old,
When I am twenty years old.
Over the Tibetan peaks hidden in the haze
Above the wondrous, mystical
ground of the magi.
And having escaped from the oppressive heat
Glide over the ice of the North.
Flutter over the enormous island of kangaroos
And over the remains of Pompeii’s walls.
Over the sacred soil of the Ancient Order
And the homeland of the renowned Homer.
I’ll marvel at the beautiful world
The cloud is my sister, the wind is my brother.
When I am twenty years old
When I am...
Lyrics Abram Koplowicz
Translation courtesy of Eliezer Lolek Grynfeld
In A Dark Hour
In a dark hour I am lost in thinking,
Staring at the fading past.
Into my life nightmare shades are sinking,
In my mind chaos, teeming, vast.
Far off, beyond this abyss the sun once shone,
The light of living glowed in a bright flood.
But now extinguished, bitter and gone
The sun is a handful of mud.
The sun is a handful of mud.
But now extinguished, bitter and gone.
In a dark hour I am lost in thinking,
Staring at the fading past.
Into my life nightmare shades are sinking,
In my mind chaos, teeming, vast.
“I spend each day with the machine.
My dull stare is glued to it.”
It’s sad to be with such a girl,
Trapped in the dark pit.
To find the path into the past
My sad soul strives.
Joy lived here once, but darkness smothered it.
Why must I drag my poor life?
Why must I drag my poor life?
Why must I drag my poor life?
Better a murky pit.
“But I want to live! Yes – to live!
The blood within me is still young!
I will not stay inside this dream.
I will wake when the first call comes.
Far off, beyond this abyss the sun once shone,
The light of living glowed in a bright flood.
But now, extinguished, bitter and gone
The sun is a handful of mud.
The sun is a handful of mud.
But now extinguished, bitter and gone.
Lyrics Abram Cytryn
Translated from the Polish by B&T Howard
My Life Begins in the Morning
“My life begins in the morning.
My life gets up, and the torment starts.”
Oh think. A girl so young.
It breaks – it just breaks your heart.
“My one companion is a machine
Black, and cold as ice to touch.”
Oh think. A girl so young
To feel hunger so much.
She looks like the petal of a rose
Withered too soon by suffering.
Like a tall ship after a storm.
Like a butterfly, burning.
“My life begins in the morning.
My life gets up – and the torment starts.”
Oh think. A girl so young.
It breaks – it just breaks your heart.
Lyrics Abram Cytryn
Translated from the Polish by B&T Howard
The Frozen Ghetto
The victors will be met by collapsed walls,
With rubble blocking their triumphal way.
No fanfares will blare out in praise of them
Over this vista of a new Pompeii.
They will dig under the ruins, inside houses,
The frozen ghetto will materialise.
A vast cemetery of the Jewish people,
The past uncovered, to unseeing eyes.
These modern heroes will not grasp the terror,
The overcrowding, the despair, the dark,
They will not feel the acid of starvation.
Meaningless tortures will not touch their hearts.
Silence will be their tribute to the dead.
And then they’ll revel in their bravery.
Faced with a petrified image of horror,
They’ll drown their senses in their victory.
Lyrics Abram Cytryn
Translated from the Polish by B&T Howard
They are so young, these girls, so pale.
They play out the melody of their days.
They only live for the black machine
Come the snow, come the sun, come the rain.
For them, drab goods and stinging machines
Drowning the sound of their pain.
And they fall like bullet-struck soldiers
In a mass on a grey ghetto day.
A livid blue, she taps at the machine.
She is tapping out her pain.
The long hour is passing.
Like a shadow, her life is passing.
10/10/2013 11:00