Unique festival experiences (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Unique festival experiences

Issue 89
http://www.nit.com.au/thearts/story.aspx?id=5712

The Melbourne International Arts Festival line up will include
performances by Trevor Jamieson in Ngapartji Ngapartji and Mark Atkins
in Orion.

Ngapartji Ngapartji is a unique Festival experience and is performed by
Trevor Jamieson. In this performance, storyteller Trevor Jamieson
recreates the experiences of the Spinifex people in his native tongue.

Performed in Pitjantjatjara - Central Desert language spoken by a number
of Aboriginal communities including the Spinifex people - Ngapartji
Ngapartji combines high-end new media image-making with active
storytelling and music.

At the end of World War II, Trevor Jamieson’s father was born in the red
desert sands where his people had been born for 2000 generations. At the
same time the younger and more powerful nations America, Great Britain,
Japan and Australia were swept up in a complex cold war crisis. Writer
and performer Trevor Jamieson relates this global narrative through the
experiences of the Spinifex people and his own family history.

As part of Ngapartji Nagapartji, audience members undergo a short course
in the Pitjantjatjara language, which can be accessed via the web, or in
person through the language kiosk set up at Australian Centre for the
Moving Image. Each night of the five-night pilot season audiences will
be taught a little more of the language directly by young people and
elders from the central desert. After each lesson a short excerpt from
the story of the Spinifex people will be performed.

Each performance is stand-alone, although if undertaken sequentially
over five evenings audiences will learn more of the language and
experience a richer and more intimate understanding of this exceptional
story.

Ngapartji Ngapartji is intended to help protect, preserve and share an
endangered Indigenous language. It is hoped that audiences will go on
to undertake a six month online Pitjantjatjara language course before
seeing the final production in 2006.

Ngapartji Ngapartji is performed by Trevor Jamieson, in collaboration
with creative director and writer Scott Rankin of Big hART, and
Creative Producer Alex Kelly.

Trevor Jamieson is an experienced film and stage actor whose
performances include Plain Song by David Whitton for Black Swan Theatre
Company, Crying Baby for the Marrugeku Theatre Company /Stalker Theatre
Company production in Darwin in 2000 and Deck Chair Theatre Company’s
production of King for this Place by Neil Murray.

Jamieson has toured and performed internationally - most recently as
part of the Rock n’ Royal Concert in Denmark to celebrate the wedding
of Crown Prince Frederik and Queen Mary.

The festival will also present the Australian premiere of Philip Glass’s
Orion.

“Orion is a lightning world tour of music, juxtaposing sounds we would
otherwise never hear together, uniting musical instruments from Africa,
Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Greece and India to play with Glass
and his Ensemble in a seven-movement piece which gave each soloist the
chance to shine.” Musicweb.uk

Philip Glass has been actively engaged in musical encounters with
composers from multiple traditions since 1964. As a master contemporary
composer, he has composed for virtually every art form: musicians,
ensembles, dance, theatre, orchestra and film. A large collection of
his work has been for both the Mabou Mines Theater Company, which he
co-founded, and his own performing group the Philip Glass Ensemble. His
most recent work Orion, commissioned by the 2004 Cultural Olympiad,
comes to 2005 Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Glass collaborated and performs with internationally renowned musicians
and performers - Indigenous Australian Mark Atkins (didjeridoo), Wu Man
(pipa) from China, Foday Musa Suso (kora) from Africa, multi
instrumentalists UAKTI from Brazil, Ravi Shankar (sitar) from India,
with his music performed in Orion by sitar specialist Kartik Seshadri,
Canadian Ashley Maclsaac (violin) and Eleftheria Arvanitaki (vocalist).

“Without having had such extensive work experience with each of my
collaborators, it would have been virtually impossible to undertake a
project of this musical scale and cultural range”, said Glass.

Inspired by the idea that civilizations are united by common themes,
history and customs, Glass also believes that we singularly and
together are united by the commonality of the natural world - rivers,
oceans, the organic environment of forests, mountains and the stars.

“The stars unite us, regardless of country, ethnicity and even time.
Orion is the largest constellation in the night sky and can be seen in
all seasons from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It seems
that almost every civilization has created myths and taken inspiration
from Orion. As the work progressed, each of the composers/performers,
including myself drew from that inspiration in creating their work.”

The oldest civilization in the world opens the concert with Mark Atkins
on didgeridoo. Atkins, whose heritage is Irish-Australian and Yamijiti,
is recognised internationally for his collaborative projects with some
of the world’s leading composers and musicians, including Philip Glass,
Peter Sculthorpe, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. He is
known not only for his amazing didge-blowing skills, but also as a
storyteller, songwriter, drummer, visual artist and instrument maker.

Both a soloist and ensemble player, Atkins has incorporated the
didgeridoo sound into some unlikely musical environments, adding its
primal pulse to orchestral works, theatrical productions and dance
presentations. He has appeared with the London Philharmonic and the
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and founded the cross-cultural groups
Kooriwadjula (black man/white man) and Anakala. His iconic didge has
also been utilised on a number of symbolic occasions including
welcoming the new millennium by playing didge from the sails of
Sydney’s famous Opera House.

Atkins creates and paints his own didgeridoos from bush logs, which he
collects near his home in Tamworth. Exhibitions of his traditional and
contemporary visual artwork have been shown in Japan, Europe and the
United States. In 2003 Atkins was featured in a film documentary about
his work, Geraldton 6350 via New York: Yamatji Man, which was screened
on SBS.

• The Melbourne Festival is one of Australia’s leading international
arts festivals and has an outstanding reputation for presenting unique
international and Australian events in the fields of dance, theatre,
music, visual arts, multimedia, free and outdoor events over 17 days
each October.

First staged in 1986 under the direction of composer Gian Carlo Menotti
it became the third in the Spoleto Festival series - joining Spoleto,
Italy, and Charleston and the United States. Melbourne’s Spoleto
Festival changed its name to the Melbourne International Festival of
the Arts in 1990. In 2003, the Festival was renamed Melbourne
International Arts Festival. The Artistic Director for 2005 & 2006 is
Kristy Edmunds. Bookings are available through Ticketmaster (phone 1300
136 166) or go to www.melbournefestival.com.au