Jessica Wells: A 50th Birthday Celebration

Composer Jessica Wells presents chamber works from her wide-ranging catalogue featuring eleven musicians and a silent film from 1914.

To celebrate her 50th birthday, composer Jessica Wells presents a selection of chamber works and a 1914 silent film score, featuring eleven of Australia’s finest musicians in a once-only, not to be missed evening of musical gems.

The 1914 silent film Neptune’s Daughter is scored with the permission of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, and features Australian professional swimmer and vaudevillian star, Annette Kellerman as a mermaid who ventures onto land to fall in love with a Prince.

7 Pieces for Wind Quintet was written in 1996 when Jessica was just 21, and was the catalyst for the composer receiving two favourable newspaper reviews by Gordon Kerry: “The music is constantly engaging, indulging by turns in gestures of extreme beauty and passages of good-natured wit,” and John Carmody: “the variety and poise of her writing stamp her as a composer of real promise.”

This will be the third performance of the work, the first in 28 years!

Other treats on the programme include Portrait of Row commissioned by Alfred Hospital to replace it’s on-hold music and Heartbeat originally commissioned by The Australia Ensemble.