Festival fine music links Indigenous and stellar themes under director Iain Grandage

Perth Festival director Iain Grandage compares curating a major arts event to classical composition, with particular resonance in the fine music program rolling out from February 10 to March 5. “My history is as a classical musician who has utilised that training and knowledge to collaborate with all sort of other art forms, be it the poetry inside literature, or writing scores for dance, or theatre, or opera, or the Concert Hall stage, either as a composer or performer or a conductor,” Grandage says. “So I see the Festival as having the capacity to sew together a multitude of strands into a single narrative, and that is not dissimilar to composing. And I love having a Festival that has as wide a range of offerings as possible so that everyone finds a point of appeal.” Fine music, he says is a catch-all term embracing contemporary music but with traditional elements built in. “I love the idea that we’re not presenting an exquisite concert of 18th century music, which would be completely within the remit of the Festival to do,” Grandage says. “In Carmen we do have a 19th century magnificent opera in the WACA, but that is one of the only works of core repertoire that we have in our program. “I do think it’s our job at the Festival to consistently put on stage things which would otherwise not have an opportunity to be seen by West Australians.” Grandage says that is a defining point of the Festival: “The single most logical place for such offerings to exist”. The theme is Djinda — Noongar for stars — which is also a logical progression from his previous Festival themes of home in 2020, river in 2021 and ocean in 2022. “These ‘onion rings’ of inclusion and aspiration were somewhat compromised by COVID, but not in any meaningful sense because we got to celebrate so many artists from closer to home and their artistry on an international festival stage,” Grandage says. “But now with that theme, I do like the idea, not that it’s a never-ending collection of galaxies and stars out yonder, but the fact that we as human beings in our terrestrial lives, gaze in wonder at those objects and try and find meaning, and the meaning that we’re looking for is human connection and ways of relating to other people.” Incorporating Indigenous themes into that comes naturally, given First Nations people’s age-old connection to the cosmos. “That happens at the start in Music of the Spheres, where Emma Donovan sings of the stars in three of the languages of her father’s side, which are Noongar, Yamatji and Yinjibarndi,” Grandage says. “Music of the Spheres is about that moment during the Copernican revolution when our ideas formed of maybe the Earth wasn’t the centre of the universe, in fact the Earth rotated around the Sun, and the Sun rotated around the centre of a galaxy, the Milky Way.” The concert incorporates romantic arias Um Mitternacht (Mahler), and Morgen! (Strauss), the Eclipse aria from Samson (Handel), and Rusalka’s Song to the Moon (Dvorak). “Those ideas of gazing at the night sky, or thinking of tomorrow, and those romantic arias, are interspersed with a whole series of beautiful madrigals that predate that Copernican revolution, that are all about the exquisite idea of the glory of God for his creation,” Grandage says. The second half is Glimpses and Dialogues of Galileo, a 25-minute extract from former WA Opera director Richard Mills’ upcoming work Galileo, to be premiered next year. “So there are big questions that are inside this concert, but also just exquisite music from beginning to end, bookended by brand new works from Emma Donovan and Richard Mills, two much-loved people with a profound connection to Western Australia,” Grandage says. Donovan performs at the Concert Hall on February 10 with a 10-voice choir, four operatic soloists, the WA Symphony Orchestra, and a historically informed performance ensemble led by Shaun Lee Chen. She will also link up with percussion ensemble The Putbacks at The Rechabite on February 12. Noongar song researcher and musician Dr Clint Bracknell continues the Indigenous thread under his performance name of Maatakitj, in collaboration with the world-famous Kronos Quartet. “He specifically traced the history of Noongar song from Perth but also all along the south coast as well,” Grandage says. “That led him to then compose, using much of that knowledge. Language generates song and then song generates accompaniment, so he is singing with one of the great strings quartets of the world, the Kronos Quartet, in a three-movement work. The three movements are a storm, then a painting up, and then a kangaroo song. It’s a very beautiful journey through and understanding of Noongar culture. “That performance happens initially in Albany, where lots of genesis of that kangaroo song started. It was a connector between Albany and Perth so it’s beautiful that it gets reflected in that performance at Albany Entertainment Centre (March 1) and then in the Perth Concert Hall (March 4).” Kronos were booked for the Perth Festival in 2021 and finally make it in 2023, adding the commissioned work to their long history of supporting composition globally. Similarly, Bizet’s Spanish opera Carmen has been carried over from last year, presented with WA Opera and starring mezzo-soprano Ashlyn Tymms. “Carmen is a magnificent staging from Stuart Maunder in our own Colosseum, the WACA Ground,” Grandage says. “Gilly won’t be there — or maybe he will be — he won’t be centre-stage, but it’s wonderful to have that sense, given that it’s filled with toreadors and high drama. “It’s lovely to have it in a quasi-Colosseum staging, with projection and large scaffolding set, performed live over two evenings on the third weekend of the Festival (February 24 and 25). “The stage is in the centre of the ground and the audience are on the southern side of the ground, facing north towards the stage.” The famous WACA breeze will drift gently from stage right to stage left, Grandage quips. “Or if the easterly is in it will drift from stage left to stage right, so we have ordered some quiet nights, some still nights for those two, with the stars above.” Two more concerts on the closing weekend include The Cage Project, a reinvention of John Cage’s masterwork, Sonatas and Interludes by percussionist, composer and sound artist Matthias Schack-Arnott, in collaboration with Musica Viva at the Concert Hall on March 3. “This is an entire visual arts mobile suspended up above the piano where Cedric Tiberghien, one of the finest pianists in the world, is performing,” Grandage says. “But what he’s performing on is a prepared piano — it’s a real concert grand but it also has a MIDI (computer interface) capability to fire up percussion instruments which are suspended up above him in this beautiful mobile. “It’s not only a meditative work, it’s a visually stunning work the conceptual artist has created.” Schack-Arnott also has a run at PICA with Everywhen, providing more of his immersive audio-visual experience (February 21-25). Then on March 5 the Concert Hall welcomes “one of our finest exports”, Grammy-nominee Linda May Han Oh, and Ephemeral Echoes. “She was the bass player in the Disney movie Soul, and she plays with the finest jazz artists in New York City where she currently lives,” Grandage says. “Her husband is (pianist) Fabian Almazan; those two are playing alongside Ben Vanderwal, a local drummer, and three members of Tetrafide, Genevieve Wilkins, Iain Robbie and Steve Richter, and they’re playing a series of found objects.” It’s a meditation on a world of built-in obsolescence, Grandage says. “Because she’s a jazz performer and because there’s a lot of improvisation in her work, the ephemeral nature of what that improvisation is, but also what is it to have objects which are here one day and gone the next, so she’s improvising a lot on old light globes,” he says. “These musicians are creating a beautiful sound world, led by Linda with lots of improvisatory elements as you would expect of our jazz offering.” Finally, an extended run of Icelandic superstar Bjork’s Cornucopia, literally under the stars at Langley Park, incorporates a flute ensemble flown in and a vocal group recruited in Perth. “There’s an 18-voice choir that has auditioned for Bjork and so will be sharing the stage for one of the brightest stars in the firmament,” Grandage says. “So there’s a lovely local collection in there, part of the Choral Collective.” www.perthfestival.com.au