2022 Calendar of Events COMING SOON

The 2022 JMCCCP Calendar of Events is filled with exciting collaborations, creative projects and innovative student initiatives. A dazzling print and online calendar is coming soon - including an in-person launch event - but here's a peek at some of the event highlights:

• After Kreutzer  

  Monologue and concert, times vary, 8-13 March 2022, Ayers House, 288 North Terrace, Adelaide 

  ‘The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.’  

  Edgar Allan Poe  

  Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata spawned generations of future work, not least Tolstoy’s troubling novella, The Kreutzer Sonata. Drawing on the writings of both Tolstoy and Sofia Tolstoya, writer and pianist Anna Goldsworthy retells this story of male jealousy and violence from the perspective of the murdered wife. Anna’s monologue accompanies a performance of the sonata with celebrated violinist Andrew Haveron. 

  This concert is part of the 2022 Adelaide Festival. For more information and to book visit https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/after-kreutzer/ or phone 1300 393 404. 

• Olive Schreiner Influence  

  Symposium, 2-5 p.m., 18 March 2022, The Writing Studio, Barr Smith South 200, The University of Adelaide +Online 

  This symposium tracks the influence and afterlives of South African author and feminist Olive Schreiner (1855-1920; Cape Colony) across Australian and southern African literatures with a focus on Catherine Edith Macauley Martin (1848-1937; UK/South Australia), Patrick White (1912-1990; UK/Australia), Bessie Head (1937-1986; South Africa/Botswana), and JM Coetzee (1940-; South Africa/Australia). 

• The Waste Land at 100  

  22-23 April 2022 (full program TBA)  

  On Saturday April 23, 2022, at the State Library of SA, the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice will co-host a celebratory event with the University of Adelaide’s Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film to mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. This landmark of Modernist literature has puzzled and awed readers ever since it first appeared in The Dial in November 1922—polyglot, cosmopolitan, formally heterogeneous, recondite, dramatic, epic, intertextual, allusive, enigmatic, satiric, despairing, the poem reaches heights of intensity and feeling few have scaled since. We will conduct a full reading of the poem, feature musical performances of the poem’s musical references, have a round-table discussion by poets of the place of the poem in contemporary poetry, and a discussion by literary scholars of its place in the cultural history of the twentieth century and beyond. Prepare to re-encounter one of the incontestable masterpieces of world literature on its centenary. 

• Provocations #4: Hope is the thing with feathers  

  Public forum, 6 pm, 28 April 2022, The LAB, 63 Light Square/Waumi, Adelaide  

  When Pandora released the evils into the world, hope remained in the jar. Is hope another evil, or is it a fool’s game, or a necessity? Was it being withheld from us, or preserved for safe-keeping? For Emily Dickinson, hope was ‘the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul.’ For Nietzsche, hope was ‘the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.’  

  Are we suffering from a global hope shortage? When all the news is bad news, where can we find it? Against a constant background hum of anxiety, despair looks like proof of rigour. But are we willing ourselves into the cataclysm? Are we settling, collectively, into a death wish? Philosopher Jonathan Lear considers a radical hope that is ‘directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is.’ Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit has called for a ‘revolution of hope.’ 

  Join local artists and provocateurs alongside writer, activist and former Greens senator Scott Ludlam, and Chair of the Commission for the Human Future, Arnagretta Hunter, for a lively evening of radical hope. 

• The Sense of an Ending  

  Chamber Music Festival, 21-22 May 2022, Coriole Winery, McLaren Vale, South Australia 

  ‘Ripeness is all.’ 
  — Edgar, King Lear 

  Curated by Anna Goldsworthy, the 2022 Coriole Music Festival examines late style in its many guises: transcendent, elegiac, concise, expansive, defiant, reconciled, but above all inventive.  

  The JMCCCP is delighted to present the world premiere of ‘The Blessing’ by Andrew Ford, with a new libretto by J.M. Coetzee, based on his celebrated novel Elizabeth Costello. Directed by Mitchell Butel, this exciting new work will be performed by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Campbell and oboist Celia Craig. Other festival highlights include the Australian premiere of Brett Dean’s ‘Imaginary Ballet,’ composed for Seraphim Trio and violist Christopher Moore, alongside late masterworks from composers ranging from Beethoven to Lili Boulanger.  

  We welcome the distinguished American philosopher, Professor Robert Pippin from the University of Chicago, for a presentation, ‘Is “Ripeness All”? On the Problem of Late Life.’ Broadcaster Andrew Ford and JMCCCP member Professor Julian Murphet provide further commentary.  

  Join us as Australia’s finest musicians converge upon the McLaren Vale, including soprano Lorina Gore, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Campbell, pianists Paavali Jumppanen, Konstantin Shamray and Lucinda Collins, violinist Andrew Haveron, and members of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, for this memorable exploration of ‘ripeness’. 

  The full program is available here: 
  https://www.coriolemusicfestival.com/program/ 

• Bedtime stories  

  Public forum, 6 pm, 2 June 2022, Ira Raymond Room, The University of Adelaide 

  From the feverish imaginings of the romantic consumptives to Susan Sontag’s provocative treatise Illness as Metaphor, illness has always been a catalyst for thought. When writer Chloe Hooper’s partner was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive illness, she had to find a way to tell their two young sons. By instinct, she turns to the bookshelf. In her new Bedtime Story – part memoir, part manual – she asks whether such news can be broken as a bedtime tale. Is there a perfect book to prepare children for loss? At around the same time, writer, doctor and JMCCCP member Peter Goldsworthy was diagnosed with myeloma. He asked himself what sort of lessons cancer could teach him. In his memoir-in-progress, The Cancer Finishing School, Goldsworthy draws on tragic, comic and transcendent stories from his patients who had been there first.  

  JMCCCP title holder Heather Taylor Johnson has written lucidly about her own chronic illness, and in this public forum she draws two of Australia’s most celebrated writers, Hooper and Goldsworthy, into conversation about the biggest subject of them all. 

• She Speaks  

  Multiple programs and venues, 1-2 July 2022 

  The inaugural She Speaks in 2021 was a celebration of the past, present and future of women composers in Australia and beyond: exciting, path-breaking and thought-provoking. In 2022, the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice joins the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to invite you to a bigger, bolder event: a weekend of performance and discussion that shines a light on a huge world of music, some of which is gradually being re-discovered, and some of which is being created right before our ears. Join us for an event of national significance, as female voices take centre stage. 

  Co-curated by composer Anne Cawrse and pianist and writer Anna Goldsworthy, She Speaks is a celebration of women in music, ranging from Barbara Strozzi of the Venetian Baroque to contemporary Australian composers Liza Lim and Natalie Williams. Staff and students of the Elder Conservatorium of Music join the musicians of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and guest artists soprano Kate Macfarlane and the Seraphim Trio for an enlivening weekend of conversation, chamber music, symphonies and song.  

  A full program is available at the ASO website: https://www.aso.com.au/ 

• PianoLab  

  Music festival, Times TBA, 21-25 September 2022, The LAB, 63 Light Square/Waumi, Adelaide 

  A five-day mini-festival bringing together the nineteenth-century technology of the piano and immersive digital technology at the new multi-functional venue The Lab. Co-curated by Anne Wiberg, Artistic Director of the Lab, and Anna Goldsworthy, this festival showcases the Elder Piano School and J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice members and affiliates, such as Konstantin Shamray, Stephen Whittington and Lucinda Collins, with distinguished visitors including Paavali Jumppanen, director of the Australian National Academy of Music; multi-faceted pianist and composer Paul Grabowsky; and Professor Nicholas Mathew from the University of California at Berkeley. Classical, jazz and contemporary pianists develop innovative collaborations with LAB content creator Max Brading and local digital artists. The festival also incorporates community outreach activities such as masterclasses for amateurs and a young artists’ platform supported by Recitals Australia. 

• Music, Memory, Patrimony 

  Conversation, 6 pm, Tuesday 27 September 2022, Ira Raymond Room, The University of Adelaide 

  A special conversation featuring visiting scholar Nicholas Mathew, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley.  

  Music reminds us of our history and invites us to escape from it. Music binds us to our origins, but also encourages the fantasy that we can be free from them.  Beginning with a dramatic revelation about his own family history -- a newly discovered father, and his subsequent inheritance of alternative musical past -- Nicholas Mathew discusses the politics of musical patrimony, memory, and forgetfulness. 

• Rupture 

  Multimedia performance, Saturday 8 October 2022, The LAB, 63 Light Square/Waumi, Adelaide 
  Multimedia installation open daily throughout October.  

  Rupture and its iterative manifestations was born of an interdisciplinary and collaborative process bringing together photo, video and sound artist Jessie Boylan, researcher, writer and performer Virginia Barratt, digital media artist Linda Dement and trauma-informed psychotherapist Jenna Tuke. Composer Luke Harrald and musicians from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra join them an intimate and immersive performance. 

  Rupture examines the ways in which the body and the world mimic each other in modes of panic and crisis. Through a performance of vocalities and gestures sited within a multi-channel video and sound installation, this work interprets how symptoms of environmental and human ‘disorder’ can be seen as an appropriate response to personal traumas and global catastrophe. In our current age of anxiety; global politics, ecological devastation, insecurity and instability pervade our daily lives; we are constantly faced with present and imminent environmental and psychological ‘rupture’. By considering this human panic as both urgency and agency, can we begin to develop ways of engaging with, and exiting from, catastrophe? 

• The Colour of Fire  

  Conference, Times TBA, 3-4 November 2022, The University of Adelaide 

  Anne Pender, Tsan-Huang Tsai and Jonathan Bollen will host a conference ‘The Colour of Fire: Sinophone Performance across Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand’ to explore the rich history of Sinophone performance in the two countries from contact times to the present.