This event is a collaboration between our Early Music Performance Project led by Anne Levitsky, the UQ Pulse Ensemble led by Doretta Balkizas and Patrick Murphy and a selecion of UQ Singers soloists. They will share Tetrabiblos, a new composition by current Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Mathematics student Aarya Dath.
Event Details
The 1 hour concert will be followed by drinks and canapes on the lawn at 5pm. Refreshments not included in ticket price. All proceeds go to the UQ Opera Society.
Parking is not be available on site however there is ample parking in surrounding streets such as River Terrace. More information on accessing the church can be found here.
Ample public transport options are available. Plan your journey on the Translink Journey Planner.
Program
Moro, lasso - Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 1 - Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)
Stella Splendens in Monte - LlibreVermellde Montserrat (14thcentury)
Aer enimvolat - Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Arr. Anne Levitsky
Tetrabiblos (world premiere) - Aarya Dath
About Tetrabiblos
Tetrabiblos is a series of four books written in the 2nd Century by the Alexandrian scholar Claudius Ptolemy. It contains in great detail the philosophies and practices of astrology that were common place. Some highlights include Discussion on the natures of the planets, zodiac signs, their positions in relation to major weather events and even the nature of children born at certain times.
Tetrabiblos was written in Greek, but has been translated several times into many different languages. The text of this piece is taken from an 1822 English translation by J. M. Ashmand. As such the English is somewhat archaic and provides an interesting lens through which to interpret what Ptolemy might have meant in his prose. Even a present day editor of this edition Prof. Peter J. Clarke agrees that the demeanour can be "at times eccentric". As such, it was easy to take selections of this text and craft them in a kind of black-out poetry into evocative poems united by certain themes. Each poem is set in a movement of this work.
The obscurity and transformation of meaning of this text (through several translations from the original greek to 19th century English and now into poetry) is almost like looking at the original text through a cracked mirror, a sentiment that is echoed in the music. The stylings of the music are familiar and resemble that of composers past; particularly those in the late Renaissance and early Baroque. Though, hopefully it can be agreed that the music is like listening to a distorted memory of these composers rather than any concrete or studied recreation. As such, the performers are encouraged to play the work with this in mind.
Aarya Dath
Aarya Dath (b. 2003) is a Brisbane based, composer, sound designer and vocalist.
Aarya is an avid composer of choral music. He has had and continues to undergo rigorous choral training with Australian conductor Alison Rogers. Most recently, he was commissioned by Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Woolloongabba to contribute to their annual Hildefest celebration of Hildegard von Bingen. His work Feather on the Breath of God was premiered in September 2025 as part of this festival by Alison Rogers' chamber vocal ensemble Exaudi Australis.
Aarya directs and sings in an 8 voice chamber vocal group called the Aura Ensemble. In 2024, they won the Sid Page Memorial Chamber Music Prize performing one of Aarya’s compositions, Rain in the Mountains. The composition itself was shortlisted to the final 4 entries of the 2024 Willgoss Choral Composition prize. Aura makes up a large proportion of the singers in Tetrabiblos. Another of his choral works Fear No More the Heat of the Sun was the runner up for the 2024 University of Queensland Percy Brier Composition Prize, and was performed by the Brisbane Chamber choir under the direction of Graeme Morton.
Aarya has recently worked on the sound design and theatrical composition for shows at Queensland Academies Creative Industries Campus (QACI): Cloudstreet (2024), Medea (2023), Antigone (2023), and Separate Dying Embers (2022), and The Ark Project (2019). He has also sound designed for an original production All the Things I Should Have Said (2024) as part of Vena Cava Freshblood Festival.
Aarya is a 2021 graduate of QACI where he had the opportunity to be mentored in composition by Dr Nicole Murphy and currently studies a BMus(Hons) in composition with Dr Robert Davidson and voice with Dr Shaun Brown and Gregory Massingham. He also studies a Bachelor of Mathematics with a pure mathematics major.
Pulse Ensemble
Pulse Ensemble is an collection of
selected School of Music string students directed by Doretta Balkizas and Patrick Murphy. The group performs unconducted, each member contributing to the artistic vision of the works. Pulse’s eclectic repertoire ranges from masterworks of the string orchestra and string quartet genre, to transcriptions of Bartok’s Mikrokosmos and works of contemporary and past Australian composers.
Pulse also collaborates frequently with choirs and vocalists, most notably with The Choir of Temple Church in 2017, in performing liturgical repertoire including works of Bruckner, Rutter, C.P.E. Bach, J.S. Bach, and Benjamin Britten.