A Fist Full of Wits - for the record - Late Edition - WAITLIST - NO DOOR SALES
Description
The human voice - the most immediate instrument - intimate, vulnerable, and unavoidably honest. Multiply that by 15. Add music. Add text. Activate the 5 wits. Activate you. Let me introduce A Fist Full of Wits – an ensemble that throws text into the air for your reaction.
'for the record' allows you to catalogue the flora and fauna of Handel, Brisotto, Mealor, and a folk song – and there’s a murderer for the record too! Having climbed up Purgatory with space engineer Aurélien Hallopeau, you’ll enter a world of Love, Hope, and Contemplation, but just for the record, there’s no Swedish Chef, rather the incomprehensible Jaakko Mäntyjärvi!
We seek connection between singer and singer, text and colour, performer and audience. Our work may be playful or profound, luminous or unsettling — but it is always deliberate.
Text is our driving force and we sing because the human condition demands expression.
Get up close and personal in the intimacy of the Founders Room with just 80 people at tables of 4. The bar will be open before and during the show.
Two shows only - 5.30pm & 8pm. Be quick.
Composers
Jonathan Dove b.1959
“Dove's fresh, diatonic idiom is coupled with a matchless sense of word-setting… he writes most gratefully for the voice.” —Gramophone Magazine Regarded as a brilliant and sympathetic writer for the voice, Jonathan Dove claims he can’t sing, but that he sings through the voices of the performers and their response to the words. “Not everything is in the notes…” His choral music is approachable yet highly original. He is one of the most performed living opera composers and his works have been translated into many languages and performed on five continents. His commitment to community development through innovative projects has resulted in numerous works combining professionals and amateurs. His confident optimism has made him the natural choice as the composer for big occasions, such as the Last Night of the Proms. Recommended Reading: Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps Learn more here: https://www.jonathandove.com/choral.html
Ysaye M. Barnwell
Dr. Barnwell b.1946 is a composer, author, actress, educator, and a former member of the African American all-female a cappella ensemble ‘Sweet Honey In The Rock’ where she pioneered the use of sign language to make music more accessible and connect all communities. Barnwell sees music as the intermediary between one culture and another and validates the oral tradition of learning through the voice and ear. Dr. Barnwell is extremely multi-talented with degrees in speech pathology, cranio-facial studies and public health. She has been a commissioned composer on choral, film, video, dance and theatrical projects, and is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades recognising both her musical contribution and humanitarian efforts. Recommended thinking: Who will shield the displaced? Learn more here: https://www.singers.com/bio/4160
Ashi Day b.1982
Ashi Day - singer, composer, librettist - is interested in exploring unconventional intersections between music and theatre. Her music is vocally-driven and written with the interplay of the performers and the listeners being forefront. For Ashi, music is something you do, not just listen to - a tool to connect people. Her compositional practice is to respond to text and add music to non-musical ideas. She writes a lot of songs about animals. She has a powerful desire to revitalise operatic stories and gender hierarchy, and alongside composing, she works in arts education administration, allowing people of all ages to experience and explore music and specifically, opera. As a soprano, she sings professionally as a church musician. Recommended reading: William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet Act 2, Scene 2 Learn more here: https://www.ashi-day.com/about
Aurélien Hallopeau b.1995
Aurélien Hallopeau is a French composer who lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. He regularly works with French and Swiss vocal ensembles, and his choral works have been awarded numerous prizes, including the ‘Prix de la Ville de Firminy’ in the FestyVocal competition held on the Le Corbusier site in Firminy, France, with a work for choir and percussion which sets to music astronomical treatises exploring the sun’s trajectory and the equinox. An engineer in the space industry by profession, Hallopeau dedicates his free time to music. He sings as a baritone-bass in several ensembles including the chamber choir Ensemble vocal Évohé in Lausanne. ‘Évohé’, a cry of joy, represents this young dynamic a cappella chamber choir that has commissioned and performed his works. Recommended reading: Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy Part 2, Purgatory Learn more here: https://aurelienhallopeau.wixsite.com/music
Christopher Tin b.1976
Christopher Tin is a two-time Grammy-winning composer. He has written symphonic works, in contrast to world-music infused anthems for choirs, and electro-acoustic and video games scores. A Fulbright Award to study composition was pivotal to him finding his voice. It cemented the idea “that music was uniquely suited to resonating with audiences regardless of language and cultural barriers, and that the most powerful, timeless music is that which speaks to the broadest possible audience and celebrates the best aspects of our shared humanity.” His music has been performed and premiered in many of the world's most prestigious venues, and he is in demand as a collaborator with musicians across many genres. His collaboration with acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8 was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2023. Recommended reading: Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson Learn More here: https://christophertin.com/
Jaakko Mäntyjärvi b.1963
Mäntyjärvi is a prominent Finnish composer, and an accredited Finnish to English, English to Finnish translator. A chorister himself and a choral conductor, Mäntyjärvi is one of Finland’s internationally best known composers of choral music, with a catalogue of some 150 works spanning the humorous El Hambo to a sombre Requiem. As a composer, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi describes himself as an eclectic traditionalist adopting influences from various styles and periods alongside a few modernist elements. He has written for the esteemed vocal groups The King’s Singers and Chanticleer and was commissioned to write a 40-part motet for the Tallis Festival in 2006. In his choral works he makes full use of the potential of the choral sound and the registers of the human voice. Recommended viewing: The Muppets Show Learn more: https://giamusic.com/artists/jaakko-mantyjarvi
Roberto Brisotto b.1972
Roberto Brisotto is an Italian pianist, organist, choir conductor and composer. He is the conductor of the Youth and Children Choirs of "Istituto Musicale Opitergium” in Oderzo in the Veneto region, and has directed the “Ensemble InContrà” since its foundation, evolving from a larger institution for choral singing education. Brisotto has won many awards in national competitions both as organist, choir conductor and composer. His ‘Credo’ was awarded the Grand Prize in the 2024 Corovivo competition, performed by Ensemble InContrà. His compositions include choral and instrumental works, chamber music and music for multimedia exhibitions, short films and theatre. In addition to performances in Italy, his works have been performed in England, USA, Switzerland and Thailand. Recommended reading: William Shakespeare: The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1 & Act 5 Scene 1 Learn more here: https://www.choirplace.com/profile/roby
Dr Jeanette Gallant b.1961 d.2025
Canadian musician, Dr. Jeanette Gallant, was a well-respected voice teacher, music lecturer, composer, conductor, adjudicator, performer, and administrator in Canada, S.E. Asia, and the United Kingdom. With a doctorate from the University of Oxford, she held positions at various esteemed academic institutions across the globe. As a vocal pedagogue, she focused on vocal technique for choirs, and in vocal training of singers of all ages she used bel canto and somatic vocal techniques. An accomplished ethnomusicologist, her speciality was folksong. Her research into Acadian folksong examined how European musical forms and tonal conventions were used to construct an image of the nation - a French speaking diasporic community found on Canada’s east coast – but how the performance of Acadian patriotic song aided in the recognition of their identity. Recommended reading: https://jsis.washington.edu/canada/music-collection/acadian-music/ Learn more here: https://www.jeanettegallant.com/about-me
Paul Mealor b.1975
Welsh composer Paul Mealor, is one of the world’s most ‘performed’ living composers and has composed music for some of the most important UK state, national and Royal occasions, gaining international recognition with Ubi Caritas for the wedding of The Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011. His output embraces music for film and television including the score to the BAFTA-Award winning ‘Wonders of the Celtic Deep’, operas, symphonies, concerti, chamber music, much choral music both a cappella and accompanied, and songs, including ‘Wherever You Are’ with text from letters of military wives to their partners serving in Afghanistan. Of his numerous awards and honours, in 2024 he was appointed a Lieutenant of The Royal Victorian Order (LVO) by HM King Charles III for his outstanding contribution to Royal Music, following in the hallowed footsteps of Sir Arthur Bliss (1969) and before him, Sir Arnold Bax and Sir Edward Elgar. Recommended reading: Shakespeare Hamlet Act 4 Scene 5. Learn more here: https://www.paulmealor.com/biography/
Who are we?
A FIST FULL OF WITS
A FIST FULL OF WITS is a new and exciting vocal ensemble bringing a different and stimulating approach to the presentation of contemporary choral music in Tasmania.
Led by Creative Director June Tyzack, A Fist Full of Wits is an ensemble of no more than 20 singers that promises to engage its audience through innovative manipulation of the five inner wits of Common Sense, Imagination, Fantasy, Instinct, and Memory, along with the five outer senses of Sight, Touch, Taste, Smell, and Hearing.
Sung from memory and driven by text, A Fist Full of Wits Happenings will invariably confront and comfort, be interactive or detached experiences, always have a twist that will stay long in your memory. All music is respected, everything is real, challenging to perform, and stimulating to hear.
June Tyzack, Creative Director
Born in Burnie, Tasmania, June started piano lessons at age 10 and later moved to Hobart to study with Beryl Sedivka at the Hobart Conservatorium of Music. Following her graduation in 1975, she moved to London to take up a scholarship to study with Joseph Weingarten at Trinity College of Music. Despite a huge trove of chamber music under her fingers, in London June developed a love of Opera and the human voice.
She returned to Australia in 1980 and took up a position as Chief Vocal Coach, accompanist and repetiteur, for the Opera Studio of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under the mentorship of Myer Fredman. Not restricted to only working with students, these decades included freelance work with Opera Australia and in the Sydney Music Theatre scene, as well as harpsichordist with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and pit orchestra keyboardist.
In 1999, June came back to Tasmania with her husband Gary and daughter Emma to take up residence at The Grange in Campbell Town, essentially to grow a hedge maze. In 2001 however, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra invited her to be Guest Chorus Master for an Opera Gala. From that event, and until she resigned as Chorus Master in 2023, the TSO Chorus developed into the cohesive, reliable, travelling, and spirited chorus we now know. She crafted a group of casual singers, not only into a symphonic chorus respected both nationally and internationally, but also one that embraced the weird and wonderful world of Mona, Mona Foma, Ballet Lab, Dark Mofo, Spiegeltent and others.
As Creative Director of the TSO’s Obscura series, she created some of the best contemporary music concerts ever presented in Hobart.
She now brings all that knowledge and experience into the next chapter:
A FIST FULL OF WITS.
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