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March 2000   7
January 16-18 and January 20-22, and an
international competition held its finals
during the last three days. The teaching
was organized so that each tutor had two
“streams” (home groups), one for each
three-day period, and two electives.
Streams included not only recorder, but al-
so bansuri, panpipes, pipe and tabor, que-
na, shakuhachi, Irish whistle, composi-
tion, harpsichord, introduction to impro-
visation, choir, “rhythm in the bones,”
Renaissance court dance, and recorder
making. 
Electives included captivating subjects
and titles such as Medieval music, Renais-
sance music, Baroque performance prac-
tice, contemporary music, ensemble play-
ing, “recorder and all that jazz,” Eastern
European music, Venezuelan music, re-
corder technique, teaching the recorder,
beginner’s whistle, Australian folk band,
history and philosophy of shakuhachi, be-
ginner shakuhachi, panpipe making, be-
ginner quena, West Asian music, West
African ensemble drumming, global trends
in the music of North India, frame drum,
beginner recorder, singing for pleasure,
THE CALL OF THE FOUR WINDS: 
AN AUSTRALIAN DIARY
by David Bellugi
Why so many traveled so far 
to share so much 
and to have so much fun
I
FIRST READ ABOUT THE
“Call of the Four
Winds,” Australia’s Fifth National Re-
corder Festival, in an article by Nick Horn,
“Recorders in Borderland: The Recorder
and World Music in Australia,” posted on
Nicholas Lander’s Recorder Home Page,
<www.iinet.net.au/~nickl/fusion.html>
(subsequently published in Recorder and
Early Music, No. 22, 1998).
I was pleasantly surprised to find that
the author had quoted from the liner notes
of my Landscapes CD:
The recorder has a close relationship to certain
folk and ethnic instruments whose music stems
from an oral tradition: indeed, much of Early
Music either re-elaborates aspects of popular
culture or becomes synonymous with it.
The article suggested that the recorder
is establishing a territory within the realm
of “world music” and described the work
of several Australian recorder players, in-
cluding Greg Dikmans, Rodney Water-
man, Zana Clarke, and Racheal Cogan,
who (with others) exemplify “a growing
trend to expand the musical world of the
recorder through collaboration and syn-
thesis with other instruments and tradi-
tions.”
It then described plans for the Festival,
quoting from the stated objectives pub-
lished by its producer, Orpheus 2000, Inc.:
[The festival] aims to explore the recorder with
a variety of activities to enhance its profile and
performance possibilities. The festival will also
include other woodwinds such as the Japanese
flute (Shakuhachi), the South American flutes
(Quena and Panpipes), the Indian flute
(Bansuri) and the Whistle, giving participants
an opportunity to specialize or integrate the
many similar techniques employed by those in-
struments. 
Later, as an invited participant, I
learned that the Festival was the brainchild
of Zana Clarke and Caroline Downer, co-
directors of Orpheus 2000, Inc. It took
place from January 15 to 22 and was at-
tended by well over 400 participants and
40 tutors. During the Festival, there were
seven concerts, one every evening except
for Wednesday, a rest day. The teaching
was organized in two three-day periods,
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holistic music (including overtone
singing), acoustics, Renaissance Court
dancing, music arrangement, music edit-
ing, recorder orchestra, masterclasses,
small chamber groups, dance band, Latin
American music, massed whistle,
shakuhachi small groups, secrets of
polyrhythm, unconventional orchestra
(including inventing instruments!), per-
forming with tape/CD/DAT/multi-channel
systems, collective improvisation from
graphic notation, microtonality and pitch
bending, historical sound documents, the
improvisatory art of the giullari, the “In
Nomines” of Elizabethan England, pop/-
crossover ensemble, shakuhachi making,
bossa nova, drums of the Middle East, In-
donesian gamelan music, harmonic
singing, and “Finding Amadeus,” a brief
introduction to the history of music. 
What follows are excerpts from a diary
I kept while in Australia.
Friday, January 14
As I was about to get on the plane from
Sydney to Armidale, N.S.W., where the
Festival was taking place, someone tapped
me on the shoulder. It was Aldo Abreu! We
apparently stayed over in the same hotel
without knowing it. On the plane, we
catch up on each other’s lives. Aldo, the
proud father, shows me photos of his beau-
tiful daughter Marisol. We discuss the joys
of having children and being a parent. We
then get to talking about music, in particu-
lar about the Bach partita that Aldo won
the Bruges competition with in 1984,
which I have to perform for the first time in
Berlin in a few months. 
After a relatively short time we arrived
in Armidale and were driven to the New
England Girl’s School, where the work-
shop was to take place and where we were
housed. I finally met Zana and Caroline,
the organizers of the Festival. Zana was
very pregnant! She told us that the baby
was due on Wednesday, the day off! (The
baby was born one day later.) Caroline
studied viola da gamba and recorder with
Ruth Wilkinson at the University of Mel-
bourne and earned an M.F.A. degree study-
ing early music instrumental collections
around the world. Robyn Mellor, artistic
director of the Canberra-based musical or-
ganization Gaudeamus, was already there,
as were John Tyson, his wife Miyuki Tsuru-
tani, and Rodney Waterman, all of whom I
already knew. We went into town for
lunch, where I was introduced to Bernard
Wells, a New Zealand recorder player and
guitarist, and to Linsey Pollack and
Matthew Armstrong, both of whom make
and invent instruments as well as perform. 
In the evening, New Zealand recorder
builder Alec Loretto made a cheerful en-
trance. After a briefing for the tutors, I met
Natasha Anderson (student of Walter van
Hauwe), Ulrike Volkhardt (student of Fer-
dinand Conrad, one of my heroes when I
was a student), Greg Dikmans (whose CD
Breath of Creation [with Anne Norman] is a
remarkable blend of Western and Oriental
music alternately played on recorder,
Baroque flute, and shakuhachi), Ruth
Wilkinson (recorder and viola da gamba
teacher at the University of Melbourne—I
had met her husband John Stinson, an ex-
pert on 14th-century Italian music, when
he was at the Villa I Tatti in Florence), Stu-
art Ransom (shakuhachi), Charles Garth
(an early dance specialist who works often
with John Tyson), Ros Bandt (who de-
scribes herself as a composer who does
sound sculptures), and others.
Saturday, January 15
Breakfast: We all had a laugh when Alec
Loretto jokingly mentioned how the
Moeck ceramic blocks would dissolve after
being played by “boozy” recorder players.
Aldo replied, “That’s what we call ‘playing
under the influence’.” 
The discussion continued about breath
pressure and shading tricks for dynamics.
During conversation, the name of Frans
Brüggen comes up. Alec recalled a recent
visit to his house in Tuscany, the interest-
ing topics they covered, and the commit-
ment of Frans to the orchestras he regular-
ly conducts.
Morning tea: I bought John Martin’s
The Acoustics of the Recorder and John
Mansfield Thomson’s The Cambridge Com-
panion to the Recorder. French recorder
builder Philippe Bolton arrives.
Afternoon: I bought the Zen-On edition
of Fred Morgan’s drawing of Frans
Brüggen’s recorders. The drawings them-
selves are works of art! I attended the com-
petition semifinals and managed to hear
three people play: Kara Ciezki, Amy Power,
and Alexandra Williams. I found all three
players highly original, each one very dif-
ferent and individual in terms of style and
choice of ornamentation. I’m impressed
when I find out that they are all three stu-
dents of the same teacher, Ruth Wilkinson.
Evening: The Festival began with a con-
8 American Recorder
At left, Caroline Downer (left) and
Zana Clarke with David Bellugi. Below,
Ben Thorn, center, welcomes 
John Tyson, left, and Aldo Abreu.
CALL OF THE FOUR WINDS FESTIVAL
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March 2000   9
cert by Aldo accompanied by harpsi-
chordist Rosalind Halton in a program of
Latin-American based music, plus Bach.
Aldo, despite having just arrived two days
earlier, showed impeccable technique and
played some of his very interesting
arrangements of Zipoli, Cabanilles, and
Correa de Arauxo. We all held our breath
as Aldo played the Bach Partita...perfectly.
Our ears perk up when Aldo (purposeful-
ly) took an early repeat in the second half
of the last movement by eliminating some
measures the first time through in order to
create a coda out of the last few measures.
He also gave us a beautiful rendition of
Corelli’s “La Follia,” played with a unity of
thought, as if it were one, long, extended
movement.
After the concert, Aldo and I joked
about how sometimes musicians need to
bend the rules when choosing repertoire.
Aldo had included “La Follia” as Latin mu-
sic because of its title (La Folie d’Espagne);
at a house concert of mostly Italian music
on Friday, I would be leading off with mu-
sic by Diego Ortiz—because his treatise
was published in Rome!
Sunday, January 16 
First day of teaching. My morning
“stream” was an advanced group of adults.
At one point, we discussed the merits of Al-
do’s concert. I showed them how one can
play the high C''''  at  the end of the first
movement of the Bach Partita (in the C mi-
nor transposition that Aldo played) by fin-
gering a C''' with the left hand and cover-
ing the fipple with the right hand.
Morning tea: I tried Philippe Bolton’s
electro-acoustic recorder that I had heard
so much about. I liked it so much that I de-
cided to incorporate it into my concert on
Thursday.
In the afternoon, I was pleased to see
that my elective on Eastern European mu-
sic went over well, because this was the
first time I had attempted to do this in a
workshop. First we played the melodies,
and then we improvised accompaniments
to several of the Rumanian and Jewish
dances I brought.
Master class: I was presented to two
young New Zealanders, Cavin and Saman-
tha, but I couldn’t pronounce their names
properly: I had to ask Samantha a few
times to tell me her name. She said some-
thing that sounded like ”Smnth’” to me.
Finally it dawned on me: “Oh, Samaaan-
tha,” I said with a very broad American ac-
cent. I don’t think I ever felt more Ameri-
can than at that moment!
Evening concert by different groups:
First half began with Zana’s group of young
musicians, “Batalla Famossa,” who per-
formed two modern pieces with great gus-
to, one co-authored by Zana Clarke and
Benjamin Thorn and the other by Ben.
Then a very young recorder quartet played
the Vaughan Williams Suite, followed by a
sextet that performed pieces by James
Carey and Andrew Challinger (both of
whom I had met in Edinburgh just a year
ago).
The first half ended with the University
of Melbourne Recorder Trio, composed of
the three Ruth Wilkinson students I had
heard in the semifinals of the competition
the day before. They played the Hindemith
Trio admirably. The real revelation for me
was the music of Gareth Farr that ended
the first half. One movement had a mini-
malist accompaniment with a haunting In-
donesian melody on top. I later asked Alec
Loretto and Bernard Wells about Gareth
Farr, and they told me that Farr is in great
demand at the moment as a composer in
New Zealand.
The second half of the concert was de-
voted to New Zealand (there are 63 partic-
ipants from New Zealand at the Festival).
By this time, however, I could no longer
keep my eyes open. It began with a tradi-
tional Ma-ori welcome sung by an extraor-
dinarily talented young woman, Ka-runa-
Thurlow; Rodney later tells me this was
one of the most touching moments in the
Festival. Luckily, I was able to hear her sing
later in the Festival. Neville Forsythe then
directed the Christchurch Youth Recorder
Ensemble in a series of compositions that
ended with a version of the jazz standard
“A String of Pearls” that Paul Leenhouts
had arranged for them.
Monday, January 17
Early morning, I found myself closed
out of the music building where I was to
teach, so I started walking back to my
room. I was captivated by a very unusual
sound that I heard coming from the sci-
ence building. At first I thought that it
must be a recording—maybe a CD of
Burmese flute music. It turned out to be a
young recorder player named Genevieve
Lacey who was practicing a piece from the
15th-century Faenza codex for a concert
that evening!
Genevieve is on her way to be-
coming an international star. Count on hearing
more of this very interesting and talented
young musician soon! (see box).
At the afternoon master class, I worked
with Alexandra Williams, who played one
of the Bach cello suites magnificently. I
gave her a few technical and musical point-
ers, but more than anything, lots of en-
couragement.
This evening’s concert began with a
program of Medieval music performed by
Ruth Wilkinson and Genevieve Lacey and
narrated by Ros Bandt, all very tastefully
and imaginatively presented. The second
half was dedicated to Renaissance dances.
John Tyson and Miyuki Tsurutani provided
the music with dancers Charles Garth and
Fiona Garlick. They gave a performance
that was a huge success. The audience
loved it, lots of laughter, especially when
Charles did his “three-legged” dance. John
played florid diminutions with amazing
ease and an enticing blue-grass swing. He
also did some very impressive pipe and ta-
bor playing. I played the bass part for three
of the dances. On the first one I used, for
the first time ever, a Paetzold sub-contra-
bass lent to me by Natasha. After the con-
Genevieve Lacey
Genevieve Lacey was born in New Guinea in 1972. In 1980 she
moved to Australia. After studying with Ruth Wilkinson at
Melbourne University—where she graduated in January 1995
with majors in recorder, oboe, and English literature—she went to
Basel, where she studied with Michel Piguet. Starting in 1996, 
she studied with Dan Laurin in Denmark for two years. Shortly
after returning to Australia, she put together a 25-concert tour of Australia with a
Danish percussionist. Halfway through her tour, she got a call from the director of
the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, who said that a soloist had taken ill and
asked if she would play three major concertos in three weeks’ time (Vivaldi’s C
major and C minor and the Sammartini). As a result of her success, the ABC
Classics label offered her two recordings, one with Linda Kent (Baroque Piracy) and
one with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. For this disc, rather than doing the
usual catalog of Vivaldi concertos, she constructed a Vivaldi opera he never wrote,
interspersed with recitatives, arias, and tempests. For Decca, she has also recorded
a CD of sacred Vivaldi music with countertenor Andreas Sholl and the Australian
Brandenburg Orchestra.
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10 American Recorder
cert, one person, referring to the populari-
ty of the evening, said to me, “What is it
about Americans?”
Late at night in the common room of
the dorm, we relaxed and were entertained
with popular music from South and North
America and Italy played by Rodney,
Bernard, Aldo, and the Diaz family—Justo
(Argentinian), Olympia (Greek), and their
talented daughter Olive (all three are mem-
bers of the South American music group
Papalote). The Diaz family played cha-
rango, guitar, percussion, panpipes, and
sang.
Tuesday, January 18 
At the afternoon masterclass, Kara
Ciezki played Big Baboon, by Paul Leen-
houts, with conviction, communicative-
ness, and ease, and made me see wonder-
ful images. She was to win the competition
a few days later with this piece. She played
the piece so well that besides compliment-
ing her, I had no idea what to say! I thought
she was a bit upset, so after the class, I told
her that in 20 years’ time, when she’s
teaching at an international festival and an
incredibly talented young player plays a
very difficult piece that she doesn’t know
very well and then looks at her for words of
wisdom, she’ll know how I felt! Later in the
week she brought me Hindemith’s Trio for
another lesson, and I was very happy to
have something to teach her!
The first half of the evening concert was
organized by Rodney; he put together mu-
sic by Egberto Gismonti, Pete Rose, Steve
Tapper, and himself that incorporated an
unusual combination of instruments: re-
corders, panpipes, quenas,  charango, gui-
tar, electric bass, piano, Oriental and
African percussion, and a clarinet/sax-like
instrument called the saxillo made and
played by Linsey Pollak.
John and Miyuki
gave a fantastic performance of a new piece by
Pete Rose called Pendulum, with Miyuki play-
ing the pendulum part on a bass recorder and
John playing Pete’s be-bop inspired music as if
he had invented it on the spot. 
Rodney dedi-
cated one of his own compositions to Zana
Clarke and to Racheal Cogan, who, he ex-
plained, have transformed the use of the
Ganassi recorder—Zana through her work
with her group Nardoo in which she pre-
sents “an intriguing blend of Turkish,
Japanese, Indian, jazz, Medieval, and con-
temporary music” and Racheal through
her performances of Greek traditional mu-
sic with the group haBiBis. For the final
piece of the first half, the entire group per-
formed a piece with a “solo” on the bombo
by 11-year-old Olive that received foot-
stamping applause!
The second half of the concert was an
incredible show put on by Linsey Pollack,
called “The Art of Food.” Linsey invented a
character called Ivan, “a kitchen-hand
who’s eccentric, hilarious, and totally irre-
sistible. And he lives in a musical world
where all is possible... From the moment
that Ivan walks into the kitchen, every-
thing becomes musical... carrots, potatoes,
satay sticks, meat cleavers, and even an
electric drill with which he transforms a
carrot into a clarinet before our own eyes”
(from the program notes).
Wednesday, January 19
Free day. We all catch up on our sleep,
laundry, and practicing, and I have some
nice quiet moments getting to know some
of the tutors better. In the afternoon, Ben
Thorn plays two of his compositions for
me, one where he plays a pipe and small ta-
bor while reciting Rudyard Kipling and The
Voice of the Crocodile, which I had first
heard played by Pete Rose.
In the late afternoon, I was picked up by
Keith Power, for many years the only pedi-
atrician in Armidale and an accomplished
pianist and harpsichordist (his daughter
Amy is studying at Melbourne University
with Ruth Wilkinson). With Keith, I was to
perform a concert at his house for the Ital-
ian department of the New England Uni-
versity in Armidale. In the evening, I had
dinner with most of the other tutors and
shared a toast to honor the birthday of Ul-
rike. I ate grilled crocodile for the first (and
probably only) time. It tasted surprisingly
like...chicken, not at all rubbery as I would
have expected. (Maybe they didn’t serve
me crocodile at all!)
Thursday, January 20
Morning: a new “stream” group con-
sisting of eight young adults, six of whom
were students of Zana’s and performers in
the group Batalla Famossa that she directs.
They were all extremely bright and talent-
ed, and it was quite a challenge for me to
keep their young flexible minds sufficient-
ly engaged. They could sight-read ab-
solutely anything, so I kept putting new
music in front of them. They had the best
of times playing the Klezmer tunes from
my  Landscapes CD. Since I had my own
concert that evening, I also had them try
playing along with my CD-recorded “virtu-
al orchestra” that I was to use as a back-
ground for the performance.
While I was performing in the concert
that evening, a frog came into the chapel
and sat and listened. For an encore, I called
Aldo onto the stage and we performed a
Baroque sonata together. Unbeknownst to
us, at precisely that moment, Zana was
having her baby, an 8-lb. boy, who two days
later was named Shah (“King”) Biffin.
Friday, January 21 
I was unable to attend the Festival con-
cert, called “The Contemporary Recorder,”
because I was performing at Keith’s house
concert at the same time. Natasha, Ros,
Robyn, Ben, Ulrike, and Rodney per-
formed pieces by Swiridoff, Blake, Water-
man, Thorn, Anderson, and Bandt. I was
told by friends later that the concert was a
huge success and that Natasha’s improvi-
sation was particularly expressive and as-
sertive.
Saturday, January 22 
After the morning tea/coffee break, Al-
do, Rodney, John, and I had our streams
National Recorder
Competition
A Third National Re-
corder Competition
was sponsored by 
Orpheus Music and
Dragon Early Music
Enterprises in con-
junction with the
“Call of the Four Winds” Festival in
Armidale, N.S.W., January 15-22. The
competition was entered by partici-
pants from around Australia and over-
seas. Winners in the performance sec-
tions were: Open Solo (Fred Morgan
Memorial Prize): Kara Ciezki (pic-
tured, from Melbourne); Under 18 
Solo: Karyn Ashley (Armidale); 
Under 12 Solo: Marion Barraclough
(Melbourne); Open Ensemble: 
Fortune (Sydney); Under 18 Ensem-
ble: The Fipple Pipers (Wollon-
gong). Winners in the Composition
sections  were: Open piece for solo re-
corder: Yasuharu Fukushima
(Japan); Open Ensemble piece:
Miggs Coggan (Armidale); Under 18
section: Cavin Adams (New-Zealand).
CALL OF THE FOUR WINDS FESTIVAL
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March 2000   11
perform for each other. Aldo’s class played
a brilliant orchestration of the final Allegro
of Handel’s A minor sonata that greatly en-
hanced my appreciation for the form and
structure of the piece. Rodney’s group
played a Brazilian tune with jazz improvs
in the middle. John’s group played a Re-
naissance tune with a remarkable sprechge-
sang descriptiveness and an enjoyable jazz
piece, also with improvs. My class played
“Craitele” (a blindingly fast piece tran-
scribed from the Rumanian Flutes CD on
Arion) and five Klezmer dances with im-
provised accompaniments.
The evening concert was entitled
“Pearls of the Baroque.” Ulrike, Hans-Di-
eter Michatz (Baroque flute), Ruth, Ros-
alind, Genevieve, and Greg beautifully per-
formed Baroque masterpieces by Hot-
teterre, Couperin, Bach (the B-flat trio
sonata), Loeillet (the quintet for two flutes,
two recorders, and continuo), Elisabeth-
Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, and Tele-
mann (the D minor Tafelmusik). Greg Dik-
mans opened the evening with a very sen-
sitive and moving performance of van
Eyck’s variations on “Daphne.”
Sunday, January 23 
Clean up day. De-briefing meeting.
Zana and Peter showed up with three-day
old Shah. After the meeting, I offered to ex-
change CDs with anybody present. (I came
home with two dozen CDs of colleagues!)
In the afternoon, I flew to Sydney. The de-
partures were not all painful, as I’d already
made arrangements to see all of the Mel-
bourne-based colleagues the following
week.
January 26, “Australia Day” 
Early morning breakfast with Racheal
and fellow haBiBis member Irine Vela in
their backyard in Melbourne
. Alexandra ar-
rived and we played some trios. Then Alexan-
dra took me to visit Fred Morgan’s wife, Anne
Murphy, in Daylesford. I had known Anne’s
sister, Mary, when she lived in Paris. Anne
Murphy is a harpsichordist who teaches at
Melbourne University. We spent a very warm
and gentle evening together. Visiting Fred Mor-
gan’s workshop was a very special moment,
because, although I never had a chance to meet
this extraordinary man, his presence was tan-
gible in the festival through his life’s work.
Conclusion
Zana Clarke and Caroline Downer
showed remarkable vision and purpose in
putting together this unique festival, as-
sembling a versatile and eclectic group of
people who worked together smoothly
over the entire period. (A note of special
recognition should be given to Caroline
Downer for shouldering most of the day-
to-day responsibilities with expertise and
good humor.) I wish to congratulate them
both personally and thank them for having
included me. I'm only sorry that time did
not allow me to visit and experience first-
hand all of the remarkable work that I
know was happening at every moment of
the day! Having seen so many talented and
committed young students also gives me
great hope for the future. For me, this festi-
val was both an appropriate ending of one
century and a promising beginning of a
new millennium. There is no doubt in my
mind that the “Call of the Four Winds”
Festival will be an event that people will be
talking about for years to come. I would es-
pecially like to thank Giovanna Jatropelli
and Giorgio Campanaro, directors of, re-
spectively, the Sydney and Melbourne
branches of the Italian Cultural Institutes,
for their help, kindness, and sponsorship.
Based in Italy, David Bellugi is an Ameri-
can recorderist known for exploring multiple
cultural influences in his programming.
Top left, Rodney Waterman at the  con-
cert on Tuesday, January 18. At left,
John Tyson, far right, joins in on an en-
semble piece that closes the first half of
the concert. Above, in the 
second half of the concert, Linsey 
Pollack as Ivan, “a kitchen-hand who’s
eccentric, hilarious, and 
totally irresistible, and who lives in a
musical world where all is possible.”