What does ecological decay sound like? This profound suite from one of our leading trumpeters
As the title might suggest, Tom Avgenicos' Ghosts Between Streams suite is a dialogue. Most baldly, one side of that dialogue is an improvising quartet and the other a string quartet. More profoundly, one side constitutes a modern pastorale, evoking nature rather than rurality, and the other its opposite.
In a liner note, Avgenicos refers to regularly walking along Stringybark Creek in Cammeraygal Country on Sydney's lower North Shore, and the music referencing this bushland has a deep tranquillity. This doesn't just evoke the peacefulness of the natural world, but also a serenity of the soul and of the composer in the act of composing.
The other side of that dialogue is like gouging a six-lane highway lined by brutalist blocks of flats through the heart of the tranquillity. This first emerges in the suite's second segment, Underpass (Part II), when Avgenicos' trumpet gradually becomes more agitated over a sparse, gentle backdrop of piano (Roshan Kumarage) surrounded by the merest frosting of synths, strings and cymbal scrapes. Then suddenly Ashley Stoneham's drums and Dave Quinn's bass explode from the speakers, the strings roil, and the trumpet blasts. But it's kept brief, a foretaste of things to come.
Avgenicos, one of Sydney's leading trumpeters, has aimed high as a composer here, and Ghosts Between Streams more than matches his ambition. Placing his long-term band, Delay 45 (with Kumarage, Quinn and Stoneham) alongside the string quartet Ensemble Apex, he explores the wealth of textures and moods at his disposal, with Kumarage and Quinn adding synths and Stoneham adding guitar, the latter matched with cello at one point to poignant effect.
Meanwhile, he maintains a through line of the intrinsic conflict between humanity and ecology. His trumpet is the primary voice enunciating this, and he is capable of achieving a rich, full-throated sound, as well as retreating to desolate cries and breathy whispers. But the string-writing is much more than decorative, and dialogue within the strings is used to intensify both sides of the debate.
In metaphorical terms, one might extrapolate that Avgenicos grieves for what we're doing to the planet, while also celebrating natural beauty, understanding the inevitability of urbanisation and, musically, relishing the espousal of the struggle, notably in the rearing drama of Rise.
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