Selby & Friends: Mavericks 2021

Selby & Friends' winter tour features a Grammy award-winning English composer, an icon of France and a national symbol for the American feminist movement. City Recital Hall on 6th July, Southern Highlands on the 10th and Turramurra on the 11th.

Kathryn Selby AM and her preeminent guest artists, violinist and SSO Concertmaster Andrew Haveron, and ACO Principal cellist Timo-Veikko Valve, tour with piano trios by three composers whose activist rigour and individualism made them mavericks who not only carved out a significant place in music history but paved the way for many who would follow.

Selby & Friends performs six Mavericks concerts, in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and two NSW centres, Turramurra and the Southern Highlands, between 4th to 11th July.

All contemporaries of each other, these composers were each a force to be reckoned with. American Amy Beach, who vigorously pushed back against disparaging comments made about 'women in music' at the end of the 19th century, went on to become a national symbol of women's creative power. Ravel, one of France's greatest composers, went against the establishment and public expectations and carved out an unmistakable and individual style fusing classical modes with modern jazz elements. The great Englishwoman Dame Ethyl Smyth, whose music earlier this year won the first-ever Grammy to be awarded to a historical woman composer, was championed and admired by Dvořák and Brahms, and later in life made her mark on women's history as an energetic member of the burgeoning suffragette movement.

Kathy Selby enthuses: 'This remarkable program is an eye-opening journey into a gorgeous sound world with two wonderful colleagues with whom I have worked often. Andrew and Tipi are consummate professionals whose gift for engaging with audiences is well-known. This is an unexpected and beautiful program.'

This event received a City of Sydney CBD activation grant.