A Bhandari Pilgrimage
(2025)
for SSATBB choir
I. The Journey II. The Pond III. The Stone IV. The Temple
awarded the University of New South Wales Willgoss Choral Composition Prize 2025
premiered by Corte on 2 Oct 2025 at the Sir John Clancy Auditorium, UNSW, Kensington, NSW, Australia
featured in Words of Wisdom
recording: complete ~ Corte; Sonia Maddock, conductor
score available through The Australian Music Centre
duration: 9’
genre: Choral
category: Ambrosia, Utile Dulci
In December 2024, I spent a few weeks in beautiful Nepal. Part of that time was in Gulmi, a rural area in the country's centre, made up of quiet villages and rolling 'hills' (mountains, by our standards). Ubiquitous smart phones aside, this idyllic region has seen little change for at least five hundred years.
While there, I was invited to visit the holy places of a local family, located near the top of a very steep and substantial incline. The trip there, up from their ancestral valley, was a little hair-raising, but did not last long and featured spectacular views. The sites themselves included a pond, recently constructed through familial funding; a stone, supremely ancient and housed in its own hut; and a temple, replete with a row of bells and kaleidoscopic religious paraphernalia.
For the family, our brief pilgrimage appeared to be an unremarkable, everyday act of devotion; for me, however, it was a unique and surprisingly moving experience. This work is an attempt to communicate some of that sense of wonder.
