2022
Swerve
FOR VOCAL ENSEMBLE AND STRING QUINTET
Commissioned by Homophonic!
Supported by Creative Victoria
COMPOSER / Meta Cohen
TEXT / Leona Cohen, Meta Cohen, and text from verbatim interviews
PERFORMERS / The Consort of Melbourne (Musical dir. Steven Hodgson) and Homophonic! (Musical dir. Miranda Hill)
Swerve is a work for voices and strings inspired by conversations with long-term Goulburn Valley Pride Shepparton volunteer Jenni George. With text by poet Leona Cohen, as well as verbatim interviews and additional text by the composer, the piece takes inspiration from Jenni's life as a driver of all manner of vehicles and as a community support worker. Swerve uses the metaphor of chance encounters on the road to explore the self-realisation of coming into your queerness, and the losses and joys that might be found along the way. It was commissioned as part of the RESPECT project, which pairs queer composers with LGBTQIA+ elders in order to 'write our queer histories down and sing them out loud!'
Swerve was a finalist in the APRA AMCOS/Australian Music Centre Art Music Awards 2023 (Work of the Year: Choral)
WORK DETAILS:
DURATION:
6 minutes
DIFFICULTY:
advanced
INSTRUMENTATION:
SSATTB vocal ensemble and string quintet:
‘Cohen's handling of the ideas in Swerve is masterful. The opening sections are frenetic, chaotic - life on the road with no time for self reflection, interrupted by an encounter that transforms the story and Cohen’s music; initial moments of doubt and fear give way to repose, joy and the delightful flittering of butterflies, although the fast-paced freneticism of a driving career remains as a back-drop! I believe this work deserves to be recognised for its multi-dimensional accomplishment’
- Steven Hodgson
P E R F O R M A N C E S
M E D I A
‘Swerve is an important work drawn from oral history. The panel noted how the sometimes frenzied sound world of voices and strings appropriately depicted the subject's career as a driver and life on the road.’
- Judging panel, APRA AMCOS/Australian Music Centre Art Music Awards
