Media Release: Toccata Classics Releases Complete Piano and Chamber Works of Australian Composer Linda Kouvaras

Media Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 1, 2024

Media Contact: 

Samuel Cairnduff:  samuel.j.cairnduff@gmail.com | +61 (0)401 396 755

Toccata Classics Releases Complete Piano and Chamber Works of Australian Composer Linda Kouvaras

London—Toccata Classics releases the first disc in an eight-CD set featuring the complete piano and chamber works of renowned Australian composer and musicologist Dr Linda Kouvaras. The project, curated and produced by acclaimed pianist Coady Green, showcases Kouvaras' diverse and acclaimed compositional output from 1991 to 2024.

PRESS ARE INVITED TO REVIEW

Coady Green says: Linda Kouvaras is one of Australia's most distinguished and respected composers, with an impressive body of work that deserves wider global recognition. Collaborating with her on this landmark project to document her complete piano and chamber compositions has been a true honour.

Dr Linda Kouvaras is a Professor at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and is recognised as one of Australia's leading scholars in postmodernism and feminist musicology. She has an extensive publication record, including the award-winning monograph Loading the Silence: Australian Sound Art in the Post-Digital Age (Routledge, 2014). Kouvaras has received over 40 grants, residencies, and awards, and her compositions have been widely performed and recorded internationally.

The Toccata Classics release features performances by a stellar lineup of Australian artists, including Green on piano, Divisi Chamber Singers, saxophonist Justin Kenealy, singers Antoinette Halloran, Linda Barcan, Karen van Spall and Jane Magao, trumpeter Joel Brennan, trombonist Don Immel, guitarist Ken Murray, violinists Marianne Rothschild and Sophie Rowell, and flautist Laila Engle, among others. The collection showcases Kouvaras' versatility, from introspective solo piano works to large-scale chamber pieces.

Highlights include the works for narrator, piano and recorded soundscape Herring Island Piano Sonata (2022) and Buluwirri Bugaja Piano Suite (2023), both of which were composed in collaboration with First Nations artists Dr Carolyn Briggs AM and Tiriki Onus. The recipients of awards and grants from Creative Australia, City of Melbourne, Creative Victoria, and APRA/Amcos, and with text by Briggs and Onus, these works tell vivid stories from local Indigenous locations and sites within Melbourne. The album features Kouvaras' acclaimed song cycle Art and Life, a powerful work focusing on domestic violence against women.

Linda Kouvaras says: This 8-CD set represents the culmination of years of dedicated work by Coady Green and the team at Toccata Classics to bring my complete piano and chamber compositions to a global audience. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to share my music with the world.

Coady Green is one of Australia's busiest concert pianists and is acknowledged as a major talent on the international concert circuit. After winning numerous prestigious awards in Australia, including the City of Sydney National Piano Competition, he relocated to London in 2005, becoming a two-time recipient of the Geoffrey Parsons International Prize. Green has performed extensively worldwide, including in leading European, Asian, American, African and Australian concert halls. He is active as a chamber musician and commissions numerous new works from Australian composers annually, including Linda Kouvaras. Green is currently a lecturer in performance at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of Melbourne.

The first Toccata Classics volume of Linda Kouvaras’ music was released in May 2024, with subsequent volumes to follow every four to six months. For more information, please visit www.toccataclassics.com. 

AVAILABLE NOW - LINDA KOUVARAS: INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, CHAMBER WORKS AND SONGS, VOLUME ONE 

As with many other Australian composers, the music of Linda Kouvaras (b. 1960) has a strong sense of wide-open spaces, expressed in lyrical, elegiac melodic lines that soar over freewheeling Lisztian piano textures and atmospheric echoes of French Impressionism. In this first album of a series presenting all of her instrumental works, chamber music and songs written since 1991, she also addresses two major contemporary issues, with a duo for saxophone and piano exploring the human response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a song cycle confronting domestic violence from a woman's viewpoint.

Justin Kenealy, saxophone Linda Barcan, mezzo-soprano Coady Green, piano

For more information, please visit Toccata Classics

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For review copies, contact:

Samuel Cairnduff -  samuel.j.cairnduff@gmail.com | +61 (0)401 396 755

Linda Kouvaras

Linda Kouvaras is a highly acclaimed composer, musicologist, pianist, and educator. She is a Professor at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and is recognized as one of Australia's leading scholars in postmodernism and feminist musicology. Kouvaras has an extensive publication record, including the award-winning monograph "Loading the Silence: Australian Sound Art in the Post-Digital Age." She has received over 40 grants, residencies, and awards, and her compositions have been widely performed and recorded internationally.

Coady Green

Coady Green is one of Australia’s busiest concert pianists and is acknowledged as a major

talent on the international concert circuit. After winning numerous prestigious awards in

Australia, including the City of Sydney National Piano Competition, he relocated to London in

2005, becoming a two-time recipient of the Geoffrey Parsons International Prize.

Green has performed extensively worldwide, including in leading European, Asian,

American, African and Australian concert halls. He is active as a chamber musician and

commissions numerous new works from Australian composers annually. Green is currently a

lecturer in performance at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of

Melbourne.

Media Contact: 

Samuel Cairnduff:  samuel.j.cairnduff@gmail.com | +61 (0)401 396 755