The ides of March…
Arts & Parts had nothing to fear in the first two weeks of March, as we headed west from Sydney – where we’ve been working as well as enjoying the Australian summer – to follow the premieres of the fifth and sixth commissions of Finding Our Voice.
Celebrating Australia in sound, this epic project reimagines the music festival presenting eight newly commissioned musical and cross-art form works live to audiences in locations across Australia, and records the works and contextualising material to share worldwide, via its significant digital footprint. We are now deep in the process of creating and sharing these experiences and resources - and the digital versions of all eight works will be available by mid-year on the Finding Our Voice website.
Premiere number five was a dynamic suite of works called Ephemeral Echoes by the incomparable US-based Australian bass player and vocalist Linda May Han Oh. A musician of style and grace, Linda has just won her first Grammy Award, which makes music-loving Australia, especially those in her hometown of Perth, increasingly proud.
Linda’s inspiration was the ephemeral, transient nature of things – from fireflies, to childbirth, to lightbulbs, smartphones and stars - but there was nothing ephemeral about the work that she and her musical collaborators (Fabian Almazan, Ben Vanderwal, Genevieve Wilkins, Iain Robbie, Steve Richter) and lighting designer (Lucy Birkinshaw) put in to create and premiere the music. The performance was electrifying and thrilled the audience in the Perth Concert Hall on the closing night of the Perth Festival.
The critics said: ‘A celebration of transience, Linda May Han Oh's Ephemeral Echoes deserves a permanent place in the memory and in the canon.’ (Limelight, 4 stars)
Next stop Adelaide – which was humming with activity around the Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Writers Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival and WOMADelaide. Fortunate to catch Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s amazing production of A Little Life (directed by Ivo van Hove and based on the novel by Hanya Yanagihara), Messa da Requiem (from Ballett Zürich with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Adelaide Festival Chorus, and choreography & production by Christian Spuck), Sydney Theatre Company’s frenetic and clever Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s original, directed by Kip Williams), The Cage Project featuring pianist Cédric Tiberghien and Matthias Schack-Arnott’s massive kinetic sound sculpture floating above the piano, ringing and chiming in synchronicity with the music (Matthias Schack-Arnott is the seventh Finding Our Voice artist and his work Tethering premieres at The Substation in Melbourne in April).
Completely enjoyed all the above, but it was the sixth Finding Our Voice premiere Ngapa William Cooper, that we were there to see.
Composed by ARIA-winning, platinum-selling singer-songwriter LIOR, language warrior and Yorta Yorta Dja Dja Wurrung singer songwriter Dr Lou Bennett AM and celebrated film and concert composer Nigel Westlake, with additional creative lyric content by Sarah Gory, Ngapa William Cooper (Grandfather William Cooper) is a work for strings, piano, double bass and percussion.
It tells the story of largely unsung Australian hero and revered Yorta Yorta elder, William Cooper, an early activist for the rights of First Nations peoples, who in 1938, led members of the Australian Aborigines League on an eight mile walk to the German Consulate in Melbourne to deliver a letter of protest, to the muted official responses to the Nazis’ Kristallnacht atrocities. This is believed to be the only such demonstration by non-Jews anywhere in the world; a remarkable display of solidarity from one dispossessed people to another and an event worthy of this dramatic, complex and radiantly beautiful score.
A timeless and moving work, the sold-out audience loved it, we loved it, and the critics loved it: ‘…breathtaking and extraordinary...’ (J-Wire)
It’s been so exciting and rewarding to have two more wonderful projects emerge from Finding Our Voice, and we are eternally grateful to Ukaria for their faith in this project, Perth & Adelaide Festivals for presenting these premieres, and to the Finding Our Voice team who are working so hard to deliver this project to audiences across Australia and beyond.
Martel Ollerenshaw, March 2023
…from the lands Kaurna People of the Adelaide Plains, the Traditional Owners of the lands upon which the Adelaide Festival takes place and the Noongar people who remain the spiritual and cultural and Traditional Owners of the lands upon which the Perth Festival takes place.