Multitudes

Freedman Fellowship 2022

Our world is filled with contradictions: technology affords us the opportunity to be the most connected we’ve ever been, yet we are the loneliest society that has lived. We proudly say we are a global, multicultural community, and yet there are barriers everywhere we turn. Our own identities are fractured, containing multitudes, yet struggling to create a single whole.Multitudes is a response and an antidote to these breakdowns in connection. Storytelling is one of humanity’s greatest tools; my vision is to tell my own story through live creation, active participation, and genuine, vulnerable sharing of an intimate space with collaborators and audience.Multitudes involves the creation of four new works through collaborative composition and improvisation. Each will be based on one of Judith Wright’s bird poems, which my mother introduced to me, along with a love of birds themselves.

Night Herons with Emily Sheppard (violin)
classical+folk

Emily and I have been friends and colleagues for over ten years, and have an instinctive improvisational connection, combining folk and classical styles. Playing with her is a joyous experience, and so is playing her music—I released her work Aftermath as a music video in 2021, and have performed it many times in concerts. Night Herons captures an ephemeral quality of wonder, which characterises my musical relationship with Emily.

Black Cockatoos with Donald Nicolson (keyboards, electronics)
old+new

Donald and I share a fascination with the combination of ancient and modern music and instruments. Together we’ll explore that fusion to create a work for baroque viola and electronics. The viola’s sound is beautifully imperfect, and the baroque viola goes even further—full of profound intimacy and humanity. Judith Wright’s Black Cockatoos evokes an urgent wildness that lends itself perfectly to gut strings and electronics.

Lament for Passenger Pigeons with Bowerbird Collective (violin, cello)
music+activism

Simone Slattery (violin) and Anthony Albrecht (cello) of Bowerbird Collective are outstanding examples of musical activists, combining research of our most endangered birds with captivating music of the highest quality, and have toured their acclaimed show Where Song Began throughout Australia and internationally. This collaboration will allow me to explore my own love of environment and combine it with my music-making.

Migrant Swift with Mindy Meng Wang (guzheng)
Chinese+Australian

Mindy champions the fusion of Chinese traditional and Western art music. I have spent my entire life trying to find a way to express my mixed Chinese heritage, having been brought up with little Chinese influence, and no language. By working with Mindy, I will finally be able to bring my cultural heritage in touch with my music making.

Wattleseed Ensemble

Melbourne-based collective Wattleseed Ensemble brings some of Australia’s most exciting young performers together, combining their expertise on period instruments with wide-ranging repertoire and a love of storytelling through music.After their debut in the midst of the COVID pandemic at the online Port Fairy Spring Music Festival in November 2020, they have performed for Musica Viva Australia, the Melbourne Recital Centre, and the 3MBS festival Music, She Wrote. In March 2022 they embarked on a thrice-postponed tour, HOME: a concert that explores the incredibly diverse, yet unifying concept of home that each person, and each piece of music holds. At its center is the premiere of a new work by Melbourne-based composer Matt Laing, an ambitious and thought-provoking piece based on the changing environment of the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.They will be bringing their new program, Rejuvenation, to regional Victoria in September 2023.Wattleseed’s raison d’etre is to bring diverse audiences together in harmonious contemplation of music, and the things that make us human. From Hildegard von Bingen, they flow seamlessly into the high Baroque, folk music and contemporary Australian works, creating fascinating and intimate sound worlds.

• Wattleseed

Croissants & Whiskey

Combining four of Melbourne’s most versatile and in demand musicians, prog-baroque quartet Croissants and Whiskey brings a new energy to old instruments.
An unconventional blend of Harpsichord, G Violone, Baroque Viola, and Recorders creates new and unexpected timbres, blending the sonorous with the sharp, and making the old new again. Performing both baroque and modern compositions, Croissants and Whiskey is currently commissioning new works from diverse Australian voices, including an upcoming recording of Elizabeth Younan's The Fertile Crescent for the ABC Composer Commissioning Fund.
Formed during 2020’s stage 4 lockdown, Croissants and Whiskey is named from the refreshing libations at those first joyous post-pandemic rehearsals. Joy Lee, Ryan Williams, Katie Yap, and Miranda Hill bring musicality, focus, and humour to their work, making any performance one not to miss.
Individually, Joy, Ryan, Katie, and Miranda have performed with Australia’s elite ensembles, including: Elision, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, Inland Concerts, Astra, Melbourne Baroque Orchestra, Arcko, Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, Homophonic! Genesis Baroque, and the major Symphony and Opera Orchestras.

• Croissants & Whiskey

Musica Viva Australia
Futuremakers