22 MAY 6.30PM
Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Aaron Wyatt conductor
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO FAHA First Nations Creative Chair and Artistic Director of Short Black Opera
ADAM MANNING Rhythmic Acknowledgement of Country [2']
ADAM MANNING New Normal for clapsticks and chamber orchestra [10']
VONDA LAST Awakening [10']
LEON RODGERS Seven Sisters [10']
Our musical Acknowledgment of Country, Long Time Living Here by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO, will be performed at this concert. This event will be filmed; there will be cameras in the auditorium.
This concert may be recorded for future broadcast on MSO.LIVE .
Duration: 75 minutes, no interval Timings listed are approximate.
In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone.
With special thanks to the Ullmer Family Foundation and Members of the MSO First Nations Giving Circle.
Aaron Wyatt’s work with the Orchestra is generously supported by the Sage Foundation.
Aaron is an accomplished violist and was a regular casual with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra before moving to Melbourne to take up an assistant lectureship at Monash. He plays with the award winning Decibel New Music ensemble, and has recently returned from the group’s UK tour.
As well as performing with the ensemble, Aaron is the developer behind the Decibel ScorePlayer app, the group’s cutting edge, animated graphic notation software for the iPad. An emerging conductor, he was nominated for a Helpmann Award for his role as musical director of the premiere season of Cat Hope’s new opera, Speechless, at the 2019 Perth International Arts Festival. He has since taken on the role of director of Ensemble Dutala, a group created by Deborah Cheetham AO to bring together Indigenous classical musicians from around the country. He premiered Cheetham’s new work, Nanyubak, for viola and orchestra as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2021, and became the first Indigenous Australian to conduct one of the state symphony orchestras in concert when conducting the MSO’s performance of Long Time Living Here in 2022 at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.
FIRST VIOLINS
Sarah Curro
Dr Harry Imber#
SECOND VIOLIN
Donica Tran^
VIOLA
Gabrielle Halloran CELLO
Alexandra Partridge°
DOUBLE BASS
Jonathon Coco Principal
* Denotes Guest Musician
^ MSO Academy Member 2024
° Denotes Contract Musician
# Position supported by
FLUTE
Wendy Clarke Associate Principal
OBOE
Alexandra Allan^
CLARINET
Oliver Crofts* Guest Principal
BASSOON
Matthew Kneale* Guest Principal
Rebecca Luton* Guest Principal
TRUMPET
Adam Davis^
TROMBONE
Ian Bell* Guest Principal
PERCUSSION
Robert Cossom
Drs Rhyl Wade and Clem Gruen# Adam Manning*
Alexander Meagher*
Hugh Tidy*
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO (Yorta Yorta/Yuin), soprano and composer, is a respected human rights advocate and recognised thought leader on the importance of cultural authority in the Art Music space.
Throughout a long and distinguished career Deborah has championed the voice and visibility of classically trained Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island musicians. She is the artistic director of Australia’s national First Nations Opera Company, Short Black Opera (est. 2009), and Director of Dhungala Children’s Choir (est. 2008). In 2019 she established the One Day in January project, which produced
Ensemble Dutala, Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Chamber Ensemble.
As a composer, Cheetham Fraillon has written commissions for major ensembles and companies in Australia and internationally. Her landmark compositions include Australia’s first Indigenous opera Pecan Summer (2010), Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace (2018) and the ongoing multi-layered, multi-lingual chamber music series Woven Song (2018).
Cheetham Fraillon has been celebrated with a number of significant honours including the Don Banks Music Award (2023) and the Queensland Government – Australian Women in Music Lifetime Achievement Awards (2022). In the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Deborah was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) and in 2022 she was appointed as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA).
In 2021 Cheetham Fraillon began a five-year appointment as MSO First Nations Creative Chair and in 2023 was appointed the inaugural Elizabeth Todd Chair of Vocal Studies at The Sydney Conservatorium of Music at the University of Sydney.
Adam Manning is a musician/composer, artist, educator/researcher, and has Kamilaroi kinship.
As a lecturer at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Adam’s multifaceted pursuits reflect his deep connection to his ancestral land, Kamilaroi Barray, as an original Custodial Descendant.
As a composer, percussionist, and artist, he finds solace in the rhythmic expressions that intertwine with the essence of Land, People, Culture, and Story, resonating with the natural frequency, the heartbeat, of Ngaya Barray, Mother Earth.
Adam’s rhythmic expressions take on diverse forms, blending the old and the new, transcending disciplinary boundaries.
Renowned percussion instrument maker, Latin Percussion, proudly endorses him, while his music can be frequently heard on the airwaves of ABC Classic.
His artworks can be observed in locations such as Murrook Cultural Centre, the University of Newcastle, Newcastle Museum, Lake Macquarie Art Gallery Yapang, and the NSW Department of Education.
New Normal features the Clapsticks, the earliest handheld instrument still in use today. For example, in tonight’s version, the composer, Manning, introduces the inaugural orchestral clapstick cadenza, blending conventional and modern techniques to explore the instrument’s versatility.
Yet, this work’s harmonic and melodic frameworks originate from a collaborative and experimental engagement with fellows from the MSO. During this session, Manning employed a visual artwork as a catalyst for musical interpretation, translating artistic elements into the foundational musical themes of New Normal.
In summary, New Normal not only redefines the function of Clapsticks within a modern orchestral context but also bridges the domains of visual arts and musical composition.
Vonda Last is a Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara (Western Desert) singer-songwriter living on Kaurna (Adelaide) land with over 40 years’ experience as a songwriter and performer. Central to her work in community music has been the revival of Indigenous languages and maintenance through composition of contemporary music. Her song For Love of Country is regularly sung by South Australian Primary Schools in the leadup to ANZAC Day and performed at every Adelaide Dawn Service since 2015. In 2021 she performed in ‘First Nations Voices’, voted the Adelaide Fringe Bank SA Best Music Award and the sold-out Grandmothers Songs at the Adelaide Festival Centre in 2020. She released her EP Home/ Ngurra in 2022. Vonda uses her musicality as an expression of her culture and what her family, their stories, her home and country mean to her. Her original songs are honest and melodic with a strong sense of the Australian landscape and way of life.
The inspiration for the composition Awakening, were childhood memories of bush scenes. Growing up in a regional country town located on the edge of a desert, I find myself drawn to the wide open spaces of this country with its vast expanse….Ngurra, country, belonging to place.
I imagined, in my mind’s eyes, a screen of rolling images through the passing of day as the sun rises and sets into the darkness when nocturnal creatures above and underground start to move silently and softly, living in the shadows.
The presence of my people is felt through the rhythm, the beating of ceremony on the ground / parna as hands and feet move together. Singing the songs, the stories passed on from generation to generation.
As we walk on country, looking for signs of life, curiosity takes us on a journey. Following tracks, we teach the child, “what creature does this track belong to?” “Did you hear that bird calling? Is it a warning?”
A summer storm flashes and we run for cover listening as lightning and thunder crack across the sky flashing its colours. The rain falls and a fresh earthy scent floats through the air. All to soon the daylight begins its descent as day turns to night.
Listen to the sounds of creatures of the night as they burrow, foraging along the ground they have marked out as their territory. While we sleep resting in the hollowed ground, small fires burn around us for warmth and light. Mother, Father, Sister, Brother.
We too have boundaries, following tracks our ancestors walked long ago. Season to season, we walk the ancient paths, criss-crossing country.
In the listening, we learn.
Born and raised on the Sunshine Coast hinterland, Leon Rodgers’s journey into the world of music began as a teenager, playing bass in various bands during and after high school. Fuelled by a growing passion for composing, he decided to take his musical pursuits to the next level and ventured to Melbourne to hone his skills by studying sound production at RMIT.
His musical palette is diverse, ranging from the grandeur of lush orchestral arrangements to the subtlety of minimalistic soundscapes.
A proud descendant of the Worimi nation, Leon’s cultural heritage holds a significant place in his artistic identity. He is deeply passionate about collaborating with First Nations artists to amplify our stories and traditions through the power of music.
The star-dreaming story of the Seven Sisters holds a prominent place in the ancient narratives of Aboriginal Australia. Widely shared across its diverse regions and spanning half the breadth of the continent, its songline stretches from the depths of the central desert to the western coastline and traverses numerous language groups.
The story revolves around seven celestial siblings who form the Pleiades star cluster within the Taurus constellation. This star cluster extends beyond the celestial dreaming realm; it not only resonates with Indigenous cultures but is also acknowledged by the ancient Greeks.
In the story, seven sisters from one skin group (Napaljarri) are being pursued by a man from another skin group (Jukurra-Jukurra), a Jakamarra man represented by the morning star. The sisters travel across the land and launch themselves from a steep hill into the sky in an attempt to escape. But the Jakamarra man follows the sisters, travelling in the form of a star seen in the Orion’s Belt star cluster, which is also seen as the base of the Big Dipper. Each night, the seven sisters launch themselves from earth into the night sky, and each night the Jampijinpa man follows them across the sky.
In composing this piece, I sought to capture the essence of the seven sisters’ journey, which is one of flight, pursuit and resilience, engaging with themes of defiance against tradition and the unbreakable bond of sisterhood.
It is my humble attempt to pay homage to this timeless tale and to honour the traditions of the past.
Let us embark on this musical journey together, guided by the light of the seven sisters.
