MACLIVER, Sara
Sara Macliver is an Australian soprano singer, born and raised in Perth, Western Australia. Macliver is one of Australia’s most popular and versatile artists, appearing in operas, concert and recital performances and on numerous recordings. She is regarded as one of the leading exponents of Baroque repertoire in Australia, and lectures in Voice at the UWA Conservatorium of Music.[1]
She trained in Perth, where she was a pupil of Molly McGurk and was a Young Artist with the West Australian Opera Company. Her roles for the company have included Micaela (Carmen), Papagena (The Magic Flute), Giannetta (L’elisir d’amore), Morgana (Alcina), Ida (Die Fledermaus), Nannetta (Falstaff) and Vespetta (Pimpinone). In 2007, she created the roles of Echo/Aphrodite in Richard Mills‘ opera The Love of the Nightingale. She sang Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro with the company in 2009.
Sara Macliver regularly performs with Symphony Australia Orchestras, Musica Viva, Melbourne Chorale, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australia Bach Ensemble and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. She has a particular association with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, with whom she recorded her first CD, If Love’s a Sweet Passion, which was a finalist for the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) Award for Best Classical Release in 2000.
She has performed in Japan, Italy, New Zealand and Hong Kong. She has performed with Pinchgut Opera in The Fairy-Queen, toured with Musica Viva, Australia Bach Ensemble and worked with Richard Egarr on Joseph Haydn‘s The Creation in Perth. Other projects include a program based on the life of Jane Austen, with pianist Bernadette Balkus and Musica Viva. She also appeared in Pinchgut Opera’s production of Monteverdi‘s L’Orfeo to great critical acclaim.
Sara Macliver has made a number of recordings for ABC Classics including Gabriel Fauré‘s Requiem and The Birth of Venus, Carl Orff‘s Carmina Burana, the title track for a trilogy of Christmas albums and a CD of Haydn arias with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ola Rudner. In 2002, she completed a recording of Handel‘s Messiah for a joint ABC Classics and ABC Television production. This has been released on CD and DVD, and screened several times on national television. ABC Classics have released a disc of Bach arias and duets with Sara Macliver and mezzo-soprano Sally-Anne Russell and the Orchestra of the Antipodes conducted by Antony Walker. This quickly became a best seller and was nominated for an ARIA award. This was followed by a disc of the Pergolesi Stabat Mater (ABC Classics) and other baroque duets, which won the inaugural ABC Classic FM listener’s choice award in 2005. She also appeared in Pinchgut Opera’s production of Charpentier‘s David et Jonathas H.490 in 2009.
She has received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Western Australia, in whose School of Music she completed her undergraduate studies.
Although resident for some years in Sydney, she has now returned to Perth.
Marcia was baptised on 28th October 1934 at St Aiden’s Church, Clifton Hill, Brisbane, Queensland. Her Godparents were Doris Alice Guy, Marie Chayter (Rollo’s sister), Clifford Henley (Norma’s brother).
In 1937 aged three, Marcia’s life changed forever. With jobs scarce due to the Depression, her father, a fully qualified chemist, accepted the prize offer of managership of the Felton, Grimwade and Bickford chemical factory. In March 1937, their Brisbane belongings, Beale upright piano and all, were duly secured with them on a ship called the “Duntroon”. Their passage to Perth was so rough that their cases slipped from under one bed to another like greasy snaggers in a frypan. The accompanying sea sickness knew no bounds. Norma and the three year old Marcia were so ill, they disembarked in Adelaide and completed the voyage by train. 
In 1940, Marcia started primary school at Lawley Ladies College, a small private school at the end of Longroyd Street, travelling towards Walcott St, Mt Lawley. 
Marcia was eight in 1942 when Lawley Ladies College was evacuated to the country and the only alternative was Inglewood State School with Mr. Chandler as headmaster. Marcia was put up from grade 2 to grade 3. There was a “rough” element at Inglewood school and Norma continued to dress Marcia in her Lawley Ladies’ College uniform for which Marcia was bullied and had stones thrown at her being called a “College Snob”. She often used to run home as she was so frightened.
The Mount Lawley Tennis Club dances held every second Friday was the place to go and Marcia’s Mt Lawley “gang” including the Nevards, Coombs, Berwyn Allen and Marcia would walk to those dances and met Jack Harrison and his twin sister 
In 1999 Marcia began writing the history of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra Celebrating 75 Years which was published in 2003.
Jody
Clarinettist Allan Meyer, soprano Sara Macliver and pianist Graeme Gilling were the selected artists. Composer Iain Grandage envisaged a song cycle and accepted the commission as did poet, Kevin Gillam.
The clarinet (the woodwind family’s own black wood) alternatively plays the roles of lover and landscape – Messiaen-like birdsong and watery figurations on occasion make way for duets with the voice, most notably in the two love songs that delineate the work’s tripartite structure.
The first of these love songs (some nights there are no words) marks the end of the first section of the work and the second (Seine) occurs at the beginning of the final section. Throughout the central section of the cycle, an ever-darkening series of settings incorporate expanding musical means (including a quote from Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire) and end with a clarinet solo – a reflection on the text ‘how great the diameter of solitude’.
Iain said “My joy in writing this work was that it was in fact not an act of solitude. I was writing for dear friends and colleagues – musicians of the highest order whom I have had the pleasure of making music with for many years. I would like to thanks Sara, Allan and Graeme for their patience, facility and unfailing generosity whilst the piece emerged, Jody Harrison for commissioning it (with assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council) and of course Kevin for his wonderful words that help transport us all to our own places of calm and deep contentment.”