By kammerklang Posted on

HIVE

What can we find in the activities of bees to learn more about ourselves?

– Peggy Polias

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Hive takes a tour around a beehive and honeybee colony to explore some of the behaviours and activities of bees. The question is not so much “What do bees do all day?” but “What can we find in the activities of bees to learn more about ourselves?”

“In recent years I found myself stumbling upon news of Colony Collapse Disorder, an eerie and initially inexplicable phenomenon that kept haunting my feed as a reminder that the environment is very fragile, and the loss of something so small as bees could have huge and devastating effects on food supply for people. I started to read a little about bees, and while I’m just scratching the surface, the information I discovered about roles and social structures in the colony, gender and genetics, and about activities such as “dances” and the building of honeycomb, were fascinating and profoundly inspiring.

“The theme wove itself organically into the activities around it: chatting with Neil and Catherine about the amazing properties of honey from the Greek island of Ikaria; the chance to finally collaborate with my husband Kieren Paynter, an artist (oil painter) who has been painting bees for many years, and who has created the cover image for this album recording; watching TED videos with our four-year-old daughter who learnt about the lifecycle of the bee at daycare.” -Peggy Polias

Hive is in 13 movements, including solos and duos as well as electronics only, and each movement hones in on an aspect of the colony or the hive, but also departing from this core to reflect on migration, heritage and lineage, community, socioeconomic class, geometry, serialism and the classical tradition of the cl/vla/pno trio format.

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TRACKLIST

  1. Honeycomb I
  2. Queen Bee
  3. Drone Bees
  4. Worker Bees
  5. ElectroSwarm I
  6. Melissa
  7. Colony
  8. Buzzing
  9. ElectroSwarm II
  10. Drones and Workers
  11. Queen and Drones
  12. Queen and Workers
  13. Honeycomb II

THE TEAM

ComposerPeggy Polias
The Nano Symphony:
ViolaNeil Thompson
ClarinetCatherine Thompson
PianoLee Akinsanya
Sound EngineerJayson McBride
ProducerCameron Lam
Cover ArtKieran Paynter
Graphic DesignLuke Moseley
<strong>PEGGY POLIAS</strong>
PEGGY POLIAS

Peggy Polias is a composer and music typesetter based in Sydney. Polias prepares scores, instrumental parts and other print music materials for some of Australia’s leading composers.

In 2010 she graduated with a Master of Music (Composition), supervised by Professor Anne Boyd at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Polias has had works performed and workshopped by Kammerklang, Ku-Ring-Gai Philharmonic Orchestra, Halcyon, Chronology Arts, and at the Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp and Canberra International Music Festival. She is an Associate Represented Artist with the Australian Music Centre.

In 2015 recordings of her works Electro Fractal Gamelan (2011) and Phlogiston (2014) were released on the digital album BETA by Kammerklang. 2015 has also seen the commencement of a collaboration with composer Lisa Cheney on the project Making Waves, an online listening project focusing on early-career Australian composers.

Polias explores the influences of Javanese Gamelan, minimalism, feminism, fractals and handicrafts in her music, and takes a keen interest in the possibilities for music in the online space.

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<strong>THE NANO SYMPHONY</strong>
THE NANO SYMPHONY

Already being labelled a “brilliant chamber trio”, The Nano Symphony exists to explore the expansion of possibilities in expressive performance regardless of style or ‘genre’. Composed of accomplished performers, this multi-faceted ensemble is of the highest calibre and has an ever-fresh-approach.

Founded in 2015, their mission is to erode the barrier between performer and audience. We believe that performances are a dual-carriage-way for communication, and, importantly, that they are for everyone. There are no prerequisites for anybody to experience the joy that comes from music-making.

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