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Those who follow the creation of new vocal music in Australia know of the great contribution of Jenny Duck-Chong and cellist Geoffrey Gartner in premiering new works…building the foundations for other performers to follow and for composers to have a beacon in front of them…
The performing artists on this CD are completely in tune with each other’s approach to the music… there seems to be a joy in the music-making that leaps out of the speakers!
Alan Holley, Classikon, April 2025
“Jenny Duck-Chong spoke about vocal chamber music as music that opens your ears. That has certainly been true for me, but it also opens the heart. The proximity of the performers allows for a personal connection that transcends the confines of larger concert settings…if you get a chance to see Halcyon, go, you will be enriched.”
Pepe Newton, Classikon October 2023
Read more“An invaluable collection of works celebrating a composer who should be a household name in this country’s music.”
Gordon Kerry, Loudmouth, September 2023
Read moreThis is an excellent disc of wonderful performances by Jenny Duck-Chong and the Geist String Quartet performing Cameron Lam’s gripping and emotional song cycle The Art of Disappearing. Highly recommended listening for all curious ears!
Alex Rainieri, Loudmouth, March 2023
“The composer has assembled a brilliant cast of performers for this project. It is difficult to find any fault with any of the players. The singing and instrumental performances are simply superb…All in all, Threading the Light is a tour de force of composition and performance, combining extraordinary sonorities with a passionate expression of spirituality.
Read more“Tirade (1968) is in many respects the highlight of this recording…A massive array of percussion, harp and piano support the solo voice. It’s a gripping piece, and worth the price of the physical disc on its own. Performances throughout are excellent.”
Ivan Moody, Gramophone, October 2022
“a totally committed and wonderful performance from Duck-Chong and Larsen”
Alan Holley, Classikon, Sept 2022
Read moreFour Short Songs (2017) for piano and voice are settings of texts by modernist American poet William Carlos Williams. These miniatures, each about one minute’s duration, are economical, exquisite and subtle. Jenny Duck-Chong’s elegant performances are exemplary…
Gwen Bennett, Loudmouth, February 2022
“How fortunate for any composer, young or old, to have one of the doyen of Australian art song performers, Jenny Duck-Chong as your musical protagonist.”
Alan Holley, Classikon, February 2020
Read more“Finely wrought by artistic director Jenny Duck-Chong … [the] programme’s diversity of composers and sonic forces presented many different colours of nature and the human predicaments enveloped by its power”
Paul Nolan, Sydney Arts Guide, October 2019
Read moreHolland-Batt’s words are given life by mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong, co-founder of Halcyon. Her beautifully measured delivery and bell-like purity works with the strings so well that at times it seems all might be emanating from the same breath.
Lisa MacKinney, Limelight October 2019
Read more“Lam writes with assured confidence for Duck-Chong’s clear warm mezzo-soprano voice and the result is a perfect partnership of words, melody, emotion and cerebral contemplation.”
Victoria Watson, Sounds Like Sydney, June 2019
Read more“The soundscape is minimalist. Duck-Chong’s beautifully rounded voice is incisive yet gentle and she sings with impeccable diction. Amply suited to contemporary style, her voice joins the quartet as another instrument, straddling wild leaps in register and unerring in pitch.”
Shamistha de Soysa, Sounds Like Sydney, June 2019
Read more“I would encourage even those disinclined to engage with unfamiliar contemporary work to challenge yourselves with this strikingly lush collection of vocal chamber works by Elliott Gyger, performed masterfully by Halcyon.”
Alex Rainieri, Loudmouth e-zine, May 2019
Read more“Singers Jenny Duck-Chong and Alison Morgan, aka Halcyon, have been quietly getting on with making tricky and beautiful things for two decades now. For this, their latest CD, they return to the music of Elliot Gyger, a composer, colleague and co-creator who has been with them throughout their journey. It is a potent combination: Gyger juggles words, notes, jokes and observations, meanings and warnings with uncanny skill, creating something at once complex and as clear as still water; Duck-Chong and Morgan take his ideas and make them dance with deceptive ease. “
Harriet Cunningham, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 2019
Read more“Hardly surprising for the composer of the acclaimed chamber opera version of David Malouf’s Fly Away Peter (2015), this album presents some of the most virtuosic and uplifting vocal music ever created by an Australian composer.”
Vincent Plush, The Australian, December 2018
Read more“For Halcyon, their last concert for 2018 could be considered something of a landmark for the vocal chamber group. Formed in 1998 by mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong and soprano Alison Morgan, the ensemble has been a leading light in the fostering of new Australian art music, especially for voice. With Duck-Chong now at the helm as Artistic Director, the group celebrates their 20th year of enthralling and engaging music-making with their program, Shining Shores.”
Heath Auchinachie, Classikon, December 2018
Read more“As a collection of contemporary compositions, it is a testament to the substantial history of collaborative performances by Halcyon and their colleagues. The voices blend beautifully, with a purity of tone and little vibrato, well matched in timbre and style. The vocal writing is adventurous; the complex rhythms with explorations of tonality and harmony are formidable and are ably achieved by the performers who make up an experienced and tightly knit ensemble, exploring 21st century music, its ability to engage and the power of its messages.”
Shamistha de Soysa, Sounds Like Sydney, November 2018
Read more“This moment must be sung is an important snapshot of contemporary Australian chamber song writing and performance.”
Shamistha de Soysa, SoundslikeSydney, October 2018
Read moreSTEVE REICH: A CELEBRATION
Opera House Concert Hall
April 29
Reviewed by Peter McCallum, May 2012
THE term ''minimalism'' in music is a useful one because it instantly identifies a style based on repetition, patterns moving in and out of phase, and harmonic stasis. Yet as shown by this well-conceived program, featuring some of Steve Reich's major works since minimalism first gained traction in the 1960s, it is also inadequate to describe the range of textures this style has grown to encompass.
Although Reich developed the style from playing tape loops against one another, his style quickly consolidated around live performance, culminating in the major work from his first phase, Drumming (1971). Part One, played here, explored the phase possibilities of a simple rhythm with six players from Synergy Percussion on bongos, allowing the listener to pick out myriad resultant rhythms. Synergy juxtaposed this with Mallet Quartet (2009), showing how, in Reich's more recent music, the phases have become shorter, less hypnotic and more artefact than process.
Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings (2005), under Roland Peelman conducting players from Sydney Symphony and ACO young performer programs, has an assertive spiky first movement of stubborn intensity and rising excitement, a slower section achieving a certain serenity and return to quick music to close.
The American ensemble eighth blackbird took the second bracket, starting with another early work, Four Organs (1970), which builds and elongates a harmonic progression until it seems to cover everything with a single note. Tim Munro gave a brilliantly clear and beautifully balanced performance from memory of Vermont Counterpoint (1982). Double Sextet (2007) was played with brilliant edginess against their recorded doppelganger.
The celebration ended with an hour-long masterwork from Reich's middle years, Music for 18 Musicians, which unfolds complex layered patterns with the timeless wavelike grandeur, rolling and receding, each micro-pattern different, each macro-rhythm the same.
This review appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald