A Different Sort of Brahms has been a project close to Ironwood's heart for some years now. We sit on the leading edge, internationally, of this type of 19th century historically informed performance research. We have been acclaimed internationally for both its performance, and its interpretation - in concert, lecture & book form. We know it's about time it was out there on a recording for even more people to be amazed by just how different Brahms chamber works may have sounded.

We play on instruments of the period - or historic instruments - our violins, viola & cello have gut strings & a set up that Brahms would have been familiar with in the 1860s - for instance, Danny plays his cello without using a spike.
Neal plays a historic pianoforte (yes, you're right - it means 'soft loud' - literally) from the 1860s, which has a wooden frame, and is straight strung, and with hammers covered in calf skin rather than felt. It's as different from a modern piano (a Steinway, Yamaha, Kawai & others) as a fortepiano is different to a harpsichord.



But it's actually not just the historic instruments that make the difference - it's the historic performance practices. Neal Peres Da Costa (piano) & Robin Wilson (violin) have been researching the German romantic performance practices of Brahms & his circle - violinist Joseph Joachim, pianist Fanny Davies and others - and discovering from their letters, their essays, their annotated first manuscript editions, and even some of the first recordings ever made on piano roll & wax cylinder - how this music may have sounded to them.

Brahms revealed in this new sound world is delicate, transparent, heartbreakingly beautiful and describes the 'romantic picturesque' in sound so well it might have jumped out of a Turner painting. We really hope you'll help us to record Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor Op 25 & Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor Op 73 by donating to this campaign.

Mozart Arranged is another leading edge recording project looking at works for natural horn, strings & fortepiano of the late classical & early romantic periods. Anneke Scott, virtuoso natural horn player, made some wonderful discoveries of forgotten 19th century manuscripts in the British Library. Here's us in the recording studio at ABC Melbourne in January, having a giggle about a set of variations by Puzzi, for horn & strings, on an aria by Mozart. Neal, seen here at the foretpiano, adds a new dimension by becoming the 'orchestra' or arpeggiated 16ft bassline for the ensemble. This, along with an 1830s arrangement by Covent Garden entrepreneur & arranger Barham Livius of Mozart's Kegelstatt trio - morphed to a quartet for horn, viola, cello & fortepiano - creates an entirely new take on a late classical sound world. We're really excited about this recording - old music given a new sound by musicians from the new world playing old instruments... And if that brain twister didn't make you laugh, Puzzi surely will - as well as astonish you. Anneke Scott is one of the true virtuosi (or is that virtuose?) of the natural horn, and you will thrill as you hear her create gorgeous colours & sounds on the horn in this recording.

Recording is important - it ensures that new ideas, new research, brilliant performances are captured for generations to come. This is especially poignant for our Brahms recording - much of the research for this project was possible because the earliest recordings - wax cylinder & piano rolls - still exist - with Brahms himself playing the piano. It makes a nice link - new sounds from old sounds - new world musicians speaking to an old world musician across time. We hope you will be excited by this too, and support these recordings.

We are hoping to raise $10,000 in recording fees, to pay the musicians who play on both Brahms & Mozart recordings. This is only a small part of the cost of a professional recording, and we are very grateful to ABC Classics, who are supporting other costs.

Along with recording, it's important for this leading edge work to get out there to the world in concert, live on stage. That's why we tour. This year we have been invited back to several different places in the USA after an acclaimed first US tour of A Different Sort of Brahms in 2012.

This is where our tour will take us in March - April 2014:
* March 23, 2.30pm Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle NSW (farewell concert)
* March 31 University of Colorado, Boulder
• April 5 Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Reactions To The Record Conference 2014
• April 9, 5.30pm Yale University , New Haven, NY - Collection of Musical Instruments
• April 11, 7.30pm NYS Baroque Series - First Unitarian Universalist Church, 109 Waring Rd, Syracuse, NY
• April 12, 7.30pm NYS Baroque Series - First Unitarian Society, Aurora St, Ithaca, NY
• April 13, 4.00pm Pegasus Early Music, Memorial Art Gallery Auditorium, 500 University Ave, Rochester, NY

While we have covered most of the expenses of this US tour ourselves, we'd really love your help getting ourselves there - we're raising the funds for our return airfares - $10,000 for the 5 musicians touring - in this campaign (otherwise we may have to swim, and that's not good for our instruments...). This is only part of the cost of this tour, but the benefits of the tour are huge - increased exposure of our world leading work, both for general and research/academic audiences; networking with other presenters in the USA & Europe, leading to more cultural export opportunities for Australian musicians.

Our Pozible campaign for funds will be used in two ways:

Firstly, to pay the musicians - us - for their hard work, expertise & time in preparing for and making the two recordings. While ABC Classics very generously provides the studio, studio time, producer & engineer; these days making a recording is a risky & expensive business, and we are lucky to be sharing the risk with the ABC, and providing part of the funding to make these two recordings. All the Ironwood musicians are professionals, freelancers, who make their sole income from music - combining playing or teaching. None of us has other non-music jobs which support our HIP habit!

For the Mozart Arranged recording, with Anneke Scott, natural horn, there are 7 musicians involved; & for A Different Sort of Brahms there are 5 musicians involved. Each recording takes roughly a week to do. So we've budgeted $1000 per musician for their time in the recording studios.
So $7000 for the Mozart recording & $5000 for the Brahms recording, equalling $12,000 in recording fees.
(BTW This is actually not NEARLY enough - for every 7 mins of recorded music in a western art music disc, the musician has spent approximately 100+ hours in practice and preparation - and that's EACH musician! But this is where we figured we'd start ;)


Secondly, to pay our airfares to and from the USA to tour A Different Sort of Brahms before we record it for ABC Classics.
We have 5 musicians going on tour - Robin Wilson & Rachael Beesley, violin; Nicole Forsyth, viola; Daniel Yeadon, cello & Neal Peres Da Costa, historic pianoforte (usually an 1860s Streicher, which Brahms preferred, or an 1860s Erard).

Touring is an essential part of preparation for a classical recording. We have already been touring A Different Sort of Brahms through NSW & Victoria in 2013, presenting it at the Musica Viva Chamber Music Festival & at Melbourne Recital Centre in their 'Local Heroes' series. It's also been to a world wide conference in New York in 2012 for the American Brahms Society & to Eastman School of Music, The University of Rochester. It was such a hit there, & lots of people asked us to go back and present it in other places, we couldn't say no - so off to the USA again in 2014. The USA represents a great market for cutting edge performance, world leading research, and to say that Aussie musicians are completely brilliant at all of it.

We also get asked EVERYWHERE about a recording - so YOU are making it possible for us to say "Yes - here it is" at concerts in future!

Airfares are $2000 return per musician, so in total the cost for getting to and from the USA is $10,000.
You can see where we're going on tour by going back to the Project Description above.

So in total, our Pozible recording & touring the USA campaign aims to raise $20,000

If you can't pledge online, please ring 0419 484 323 and we will pledge on your behalf.

If you climb a cliff you may die on the cliff. So what? - Maori proverb.
Musicians risk all every time we go out there to perform. That's not to say we don't have planning and preparation behind us - hundreds of hours of it - when we do so.
So of course, when we are doing administration we have a plan B, C, D... all the way to Z if this campaign is not successful.

The recordings will go ahead for ABC Classics anyway - it just means we don't pay the musicians who actually made the recording. Not such a great situation - it reinforces the old idea that great art is an 'add on' - not an essential part of every worthwhile society. Wouldn't it be great if everyone felt they owned a little bit of Ironwood - through our recordings, through successful export of music to the world - to be able to say "Yep, they're Australian - and this is some of the best music we know. We helped them make this recording and tour it. We have great artists who can make a living doing something they've studied for more than 25 years. We have great artists who tell the story of us through music; and though it may have been written elsewhere-or here -, are still uniquely Australian, and contribute hugely to Australia's intellectual and cultural life"

Ironwood is kindly supported, in part, for its domestic - Australian - performance work - by grants from ArtsNSW & the Australia Council for the Arts. Our Education programs are kindly supported by the Skellern Family Educational Trust. We make approximately 1/3 of what we need through box office, but it goes only part way towards providing concerts, education programs, tours and recordings all over Australia. Not just in capital cities, but also in regional and remote areas. We think everyone - big and small, well off or not so well off, living either in a city or in a really remote area, should have access to good music, and mind expanding ideas. For the support to do this, and make it affordable to our audiences, we are really incredibly grateful to government agencies and to our philanthropic donors.

Our international touring, and our own fees for recording are not supported by any of this, though. We thought the natural solution was to give you - our audiences & our friends & great supporters of art - the opportunity to own this & proudly say you'd supported this arm of our work. For this we thank you. Give yourselves a mighty big BRAVO!!!!! YOU are the Australian music industry.