About
How can anyone accurately draw a line between the careers of the hugely successful Australian rock/pop group Icehouse and its lead singer/songwriter/creative driving force, Iva Davies?
Davies is a musician who constantly pushes his own creative limits by searching for new and challenging projects. Confronted with turning 'Great Southern Land', his seminal song about the nature of Australia, into a 40 minute composition he developed the idea (something which could only ever work in an age of e-mails, electronic communication and the internet) of drawing together composers and musicians from all over the world to produce a complex collaborative work.
The idea was to turn 'Great Southern Land' into a piece of music which, in the minutes before midnight when the clock turns over from 1999 to 2000, would be performed on the northern forecourt of Sydney's Opera House. It was broadcast around Australia on the Millennium Eve and became a part of Australia's contribution to the vast international Millennium Eve celebration.
Using a rewritten and expanded version of 'Great Southern Land' as the composition's centerpiece, Davies has called upon a number of musician-composers to develop the larger work "Music for the Great South Land'. Richard Tognetti, virtuoso violinist and Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, has collaborated extensively on the piece. Award winning Australian composer Christopher Gordon has written a ten minute composition inspired by the long, 'endless horizon' opening to the original song. The Japanese avant techno unit Rom+Pari is contributing as is old Icehouse and Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and a group of Taiko drummers.
The composition was performed on Millennium Eve by a musical 'group' comprising the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Richard Tognetti on electric violin, Guy Pratt on electronic bass, a group of Taiko drummers and Iva Davies on vocal s and electric guitar. It was also released as a CD in the weeks prior to the end of the year.
Music for THE GHOST OF TIME gives notice that Iva Davies is moving into a new phase in his career. Early in the new millennium he will release a new single and CD.
The Millennium heralds the emergence of Iva Davies as a major solo talent who, as his work matures and as his musical palette expands, is looking beyond the neat landscape of sharp pop and finding new worlds of greater complexity, subtlety and innovation which he is eager to explore and conquer.
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