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Performer: Brooke Green
Treble viol player Brooke Green presents a programme about the symbolism of a 14th century Estampie Isabella and the mute princess in Elena Kats-Chernin’s Eliza Aria. This recital is inspired by the notion of palimpsest in music about women. (A palimpsest is a manuscript where the original text has been partially scraped off and/or covered by new writing.) In medieval Europe there were several famous Isabellas, two of whom were possible contenders for the title: one died young in childbirth; the other had a tumultuous life as Queen, then regent of England after overthrowing her husband Edward II and possibly commanding his murder. Can we glimpse traces of their personalities and the trials they endured in this long estampie? Is there an analogy here to lost women’s history, a tribute to the many Isabellas of these times?
Brooke Green is an Australian composer, a performer specialising in the treble viol, and artistic director of the chamber ensemble Josie and the Emeralds. She has been studying and performing Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music for many years, and this is the springboard for much of her work as a composer. Brooke is a recipient of the 2023 APRA/AMCOS Art Music Fund, the 2019 Jonathan Blakeman National Composition Prize, and a winner of the Viola da Gamba Society of America’s Traynor Competition for New Viol Music (2013). Brooke is an associate composer with the Australian Music Centre and is a graduate of the University of Sydney Music Department where she was awarded the Donald Peart Prize. With a Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee Scholarship, she studied baroque violin at Royal Conservatory in The Hague and in London with Michaela Comberti. In 2010, after studying viol and vielle with Wendy Gillespie, Brooke graduated with a master's degree in Early Music Performance from the Historical Performance Institute at Indiana University where she also was a performer of contemporary music on historical instruments.