Chamber Music for Optimism
POSTPONED FROM MARCH and set in a new location at Darwin Entertainment Centre, Arafura Music Collective’s upcoming performance, Times of Change, centres on the effect of humanity on the natural environment and our responses to change.
Artistic Director Claire Kilgariff says she hopes the music can invoke a sense of reflection in the audience.
“In planning this performance early in 2020, after the bushfires, we adopted a reflective approach. As artists, we want to help promote change, with beautiful music and reflections on the climate,” she says.
“At that stage, who could have guessed we would then undergo a period of profound change imposed by responses to the pandemic?”
The performance also celebrates AusMusic Month with small ensemble masterpieces, including Sydney composer Romano Crevici’s In Times of Change and a beautiful work from Sydney-based composer Alice Chance, Precious Colours. The latter is inspired by the Gamilaraay Dreaming story, How the Opal came to be, as told by Auntie June Barker. The message is about treasuring and respecting our unique and delicate environment.
Although climate change may sometimes bring on a bout of the blues, the Arafura Music Collective is determined to keep the performance positive.
“The performance is a musical reflection on how we respond to change – we can choose to be positive and make our contribution to benefit our community and the Earth,” Kilgariff says.
“We’ve broadened the original format from March to include musical responses for really dramatic change. We will play a work by Cambini, who ran a playhouse performance theatre in Paris during the terror of the French Revolution.
“This piece was written in a time of complete chaos, but the response from Cambini is a beautiful, perfectly classical period piece, that is ordered and structured – it’s fascinating to think it was written in a time when society was undergoing cataclysmic change.”
Times of Change
WHEN SUN 29 NOV | 5PM
AT DARWIN ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE
COST $40 | $35 CONC | $7.50 U18 | FREE U12
INFO yourcentre.com.au | facebook.com/arafuraensemble
Header & thumbnail photo: M&A Photography
