Astra

The Astra Choir with Michael Kieran Harvey (piano) and instrumental ensemble, conducted by John McCaughey

This concert centres on the premiere of the final work by Martin Friedel, composed through the pandemic years and completed in early 2022 for solo pianist Michael Kieran Harvey. Friedel's death in late 2022 ended more than three decades of choral and instrumental contributions to Astra concerts, embracing many domains of thought and art, science and poetry, nature and politics.

This final work, made up of 10 short pieces, seeks out a new and original engagement with piano performance, and takes its title from a sentence of the Tibetan Buddhist Siddha Milarepa (1040-1123):

Regard as one, this life, the next life, and the life in between.

Pathways in the space 'in between' one time and another are further explored in other works of the concert, where composers write music 'after' other music.