Ensemble Offspring is Australia's foremost new music ensemble, dedicated to the performance of innovative new music. The Sydney-based group is committed to a living classical music tradition combining classics of the 20th century with the music of tomorrow from Australia and abroad. Originally called the Spring Ensemble as resident ensemble in Roger Woodward's Sydney Spring Festival, the group has clocked up over 15 years experience. With a reputation for original and unique programming and high quality performances, Ensemble Offspring pursues an agenda of directly shaping the music of our future. Embracing an eclectic and progressive repertoire, the ensemble can be found presenting spectral, minimalist and complexist classics one week to free improvisation, multimedia and cross-genre events the next. Ensemble Offspring's razor-sharp precision, textural clarity, incisive attack and thrilling virtuosity created one of the most stimulating and challenging concerts I've heard in recent years. (Murray Black The Australian, June 2011) Ensemble Offspring's dedication to the presentation of new work is summed up in this latest release. The all-premiere collection of works were commissioned by or written for Ensemble Offspring. Springtime, the groups second CD, sparkles with the energy and vitality that characterise it's live performances. The instruments combined on this disc are flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion and guitar, featuring artists such as Geoffrey Gartner, Claire Edwardes, James Cuddeford and Bernadette Harvey. The CD's namesake, Springtime, was written by renowned English composer Michael Finnissy as a wedding gift for Ensemble Offspring's co-founder Matthew Shlomowitz whose work Slow Flipping Harmony is also featured on the disc. Finnissy and Shlomowitz's work, together with Same Steps by Artistic Director Damien Ricketson, reappraise the tradition of indeterminacy in music whilst new commissions from esteemed Australian composers Bozidar Kos and Michael Smetanin explore facets of spectral harmony. Together the works represent a rich and intricate world of microtonal textures and spacious forms. Introduction to Springtime by Richard Toop A little labyrinth of interconnections underlies the works and performances on this disc, and most of the links involve the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The starting point for Ensemble Offspring was a Sydney Spring Festival created by pianist Roger Woodward (himself a former Conservatorium student). There was no existing ensemble able (or perhaps willing) to engage with the radical repertoire Woodward wanted to advocate - composers like Dillon, Radulescu and Xenakis - so he formed his own. To a large extent, he used recent and current Conservatorium students, and in doing this he drew greatly on the knowledge and enthusiasm of two young undergraduate composers at the Conservatorium: Damien Ricketson and Matthew Shlomowitz. After a few years the Spring Festival folded, but Ricketson and Shlomowitz were determined to maintain the momentum, and in 1995 formed their own Ensemble Offspring (the origins of the name are obvious enough), using many of the same core players. Naturally, they sometimes used this ensemble as a springboard for their own works, but more often they have used it to advocate other composers they admire. On this CD, perhaps untypically, those other composers are primarily their former mentors. Bozidar Kos was Head of Composition at the Conservatorium from 1990-2002, and was then succeeded by Michael Smetanin, who had already been teaching there for many years. Matthew Shlomowitz went on to study in England with Michael Finnissy, whose 'title piece' for this album also pays tribute to the ensemble in it's own title. Shlomowitz also studied in San Diego (with Brian Ferneyhough), as did Perth-based Christopher Tonkin. So what do all these compositions have in common? Stylistically, none of them is conservative, but one could trace all sorts of positions between 'modernism' and 'post-modernism'. And of the Australian composers (which in effect is a
