- 11th April 2008, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Aurora Festival, Sydney

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About So We Begin Afresh:

Imagination is best served by incomplete knowledge: the ruins of an ancient city, the unfinished symphony, the secret code, the partly clad human form. So We Begin Afresh is deliberately incomplete. The work is comprised of four short movements. The audience only hears three. The musicians select any three of the four movements and perform them in an order of their choice. Although they begin the fourth, they let the music “disappear” well before its conclusion notionally allowing it to be continued only in the imagination.

So We Begin Afresh has been commissioned for the Grainger Quartet by Father Arthur Bridge, Ars Musica Australis. The work is dedicated to my newborn baby Maya - the beginnings-without-conclusion an appropriate analogy for the open future that lies ahead.

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Critical review:

So We Begin Afresh received the NSW State Award for the 'Best Composition be an Australian Composer' at the 2008 classical music awards.

In the middle of three samples of standard repertoire - Debussy in G minor, Britten in C, and the early Schubert in E flat - the Grainger Quartet presented the premiere of a work commissioned by the group from Sydney composer Damien Ricketson, So We Begin Afresh. This new construct comprises four modular movements that can be arranged in any order, the only prescription being that, while three parts are to be played intact, the fourth has to peter out into nothingness. Ricketson's quartet has a tendency to subdivide itself into short paragraphs where a particular effect is brought into play across all four contributors, to be followed straight away by another mode of production. It makes for congenial listening, as long as you are content to concentrate on the moment, not worry about where the material is heading. An easily assimilated structure is imposed by having each movement start with the same sequence of instrumental flourishes but in the body of each segment, Ricketson shows that he is no slouch at eliciting all manner of sounds from his forces.
Clive O'Connell, The Age, 30/07/2007

Damien Ricketson's So We Begin Afresh (world premiere) explores extended string techniques. The four movements can be performed in any order but, to make the point that incomplete knowledge fuels imagination, the last must trail off unfinished. The vivid recurring theme that opens every movement acknowledges the idea, unfashionable in much new music, that repetition breeds understanding and appreciation.
Anna McAlister, Herald Sun, 01/08/07

Ricketson was odd one out:
An obviously juvenile Schubert quartet and Britten’s intricate yet lucid Quartet No.2 preceded an odd world premiere by young Australian composer Damien Ricketson at the masterly recital by the Grainger String Quartet last week. The oddity, titled So We Begin Afresh, has four movements of which the players can select any three, then leaving the outcast one incomplete. The improvisatory, ad libbist music was challenging though aurally friendly and tonal as far as I heard it.
Fred Blanks, North Shore Times, 27/07/07

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Access So We Begin Afresh:

An audio excerpt and the score of this work may be available to download on the Music page