Threading The Light Launch And Premiere

Composer Felicity Wilcox’s Threading the Light will be launched and premiered in two live performances in Sydney this weekend.

The CD is already available through Move Records or to download or stream from your favourite digital music provider.

Threading the Light was composed between 2008 and 2012, as the the cornerstone of a PhD in composition. Motivated by its world premiere in 2022 and having waited 10 years for its release, Felicity Wilcox now presents this very personal, ethereal, strongly symbolic, and emotionally charged work.

Threading the Light refers to the universal phenomenon of ritual, a constant in human culture that is designed to transcend worldly concerns through spirituality. The titles of its four movements, Light, Water, Blood and Fire, refer to elements commonly associated with ritual practices. There are also Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Vedic source prayers.

On a very personal note, Threading the Light is dedicated to Wilcox’s, the Reverend Dr Gavin Wilcox (1962-2008), whose prayers
“Walk in His Ways” and “Breath of Wind” are included in tracks II. Water and IV Fire. Wilcox created an electronic instrument for Threading the Light sourced from Himalayan singing bowl, with tones of various pitches, digitised and retuned in Just Intonation, becoming a virtual electronic instrument that weaves throughout the work.

Blended seamlessly with the voices of Jenny Duck Chong, Alison Morgan, and Mark Donnelly, and contrasting with the timbre and tuning of string and percussion ensemble conducted by Sada Muramatsu, and featuring soloists Anna McMichael, Luke
Spicer and Anthea Cottee, the result is an ethereal, atmospheric masterpiece.

Read our review of Felicity Wilcox’s CD Uncovered Ground.