Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 07/01/2008, uploaded on 01/01/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Meditation at Bar Beach exists as a self contained work for solo piano but also as a collaborative project with images.   Andrew Chubb composed Meditation at Bar Beach in 2007 in response to a collaborative project with Australian photographer, Allan Chawner.

This collaboration became known as Bar Beach...Beyond the Sea which featured Chubb’s solo piano work, Meditation at Bar Beach and a 3-way video projection of images by Chawner (a selection thousands of photographs of Bar Beach, Newcastle, taken over a time period spanning 6 years).  This project was first presented at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery in 2007 and since has been exhibited in Canada in 2008.  The Canada exhibition opening at St Mary's University, Halifax, featured Chubb at the piano performing the work live with the projection for the first time, rather than the usual presentation of the sound recording of the piano work.  Meditation at Bar Beach as a solo piano concert work was premiered by the composer on the Australian made Stuart & Sons piano at the Newcastle Conservatorium Concert Hall on 27 July, 2007.  The recording here is the studio recording made by the composer in 2008 before the tour of Canada.

When writing this piece in 2007, Chubb very clearly intended Meditation at Bar Beach to be piano work in its own right.  Chubb felt strongly that for the collaboration project to be successful, that his music needed to be an independent work – a complete journey in itself and rather than being a musical commentary on the set of images.  With that in mind, he corresponded with Chawner only in overall concepts and basic aspects of structure and only viewed a sample of images that Chawner had produced before composing the work Meditation at Bar Beach.  

Meditation at Bar Beachis a journey, one of varied emotional states ranging including a searching calmness, poignant reflection and angst.  These “themes” develop and expand throughout the work. 

The composer wrote at the time: “These feelings were quite true to me while writing the work and my conception was that these feelings or thoughts are often common to what many people might experience during an almost timeless period to one’s self before a place of such beauty and expansiveness.  Allan and I discussed the idea of how the beach, the sea and in this case, Bar Beach in Newcastle, a beautiful place that is local to both of us, could allow a person to indulge themselves into a state of mind that allows them to simply think, recollect, fantasise or in some cases “meditate” in whatever way in which their mind leads.  Perhaps this work was my own “meditation” at the time.  There seems to be a certain attraction to many places such as Bar Beach that enable time to stand still, for however long we need, to think beyond what we see and to enable our mind the time and peace to “meditate’ on whatever is relevant.”