In a birthday celebration like no other, the Australian Art Orchestra are taking over Melbourne Recital Centre to toast to 30 years of connective music.
A concert of this scale is perhaps the only way to celebrate three decades of the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO). An organisation whose impact on creative communities in this country is immeasurable, 30 years of culture-informing art music is at least one way to measure its success.
Friday November 15 will see the Australian Art Orchestra take over Melbourne Recital Centre. The concert is set up to be a journey of memory, imagination and celebration. The AAO won’t just be opening up a portal on the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall stage, but inviting all to peer through. Across time and space, traversing the past, present and future, the AAO will be honouring thirty years of transformative art.
Australian Art Orchestra’s 30th Anniversary
- Friday November 15
- Melbourne Recital Centre
- Tickets here
Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
The Australian Art Orchestra has performed at a variety of venues around Melbourne in the last six months – from club spaces at Section 8 to gallery halls at the NGV. This mammoth concert at Melbourne Recital Centre both pays tribute to the organisation’s orchestral roots and signals the innovative ways in which the AAO has expanded its output and reach.
Aaron Choulai, Artistic Director of the Australian Art Orchestra, emphasises the importance of the places and contexts where audiences experience the AAO’s music. Music that, as Aaron describes it, is “what we’ve been calling creative music, which obviously sits on the more experimental end of what music can be.”
“Part of our new strategic artistic plan is to present this type of music, but to play with the context of the presentation rather than to change the music,” Aaron says.
Shifting contexts pulls in fresh audiences
“I don’t think I’d be saying anything new to say that sometimes within this sector of music, I think historically it can feel a little bit elitist and exclusive and that’s a part of the culture of music,” Aaron continues. “I think that we’re trying to fight against [that]. But I don’t think that has anything to do with the content of the music.”
“If you create a context for this type of practice where it’s welcoming and it’s accessible, people will listen to it in a very different way.”
Reclaiming spaces and making new ones
As a teen, Aaron grew up enmeshed in the world of hip hop. As he moved into the musical worlds of jazz and improvisation, he already understood the importance that the idea of context can play in the consumption of art.
“Finding accessible spaces that weren’t necessarily the concert hall really helped me to immerse myself in that music,” Aaron says. “So [the AAO are] trying to provide that same opportunity for audiences around Melbourne and Australia to experience something different.”
It’s not often that an orchestra rarely performs in a traditional concert hall, but this is no ordinary orchestra. This anniversary show will be a kaleidoscope of all the different moving parts of what the AAO is and what it is striving to be. Context, content, creativity, art. These elements will all collide to speak to the vibrant future of this organisation.
Warehouses to concert halls
MRC’s formal setting, Aaron says, is also a chance for the AAO to invite some special guests to the stage. From a warehouse in Preston last year to the halls of MRC this November, the AAO will be collaborating with Hikaru Tanaka again, a rapper from Tokyo. Special guests also include Kutcha Edwards and an ensemble of musicians from across the last three decades of the AAO.
30 years is no small amount of time for an art organisation as innovative and as adventurous as the Australian Art Orchestra to have been contributing to the creative landscape of this country. While our music scenes and creative industries have shifted and changed over the last three decades, the AAO’s core vision seems to shine like a beacon of hope into a night sky of fading stars.
Aaron’s first encounter with the AAO
“When I first saw the AAO, the AAO’s focus then – and now, this is something that’s been consistent over the 30 years – is this idea of intercultural music,” Aaron says. “By embracing the various music traditions that we have in this country that have been brought in by the diversity of people and looking within our region at other music traditions, we’re better representative of who Australia is.”
Two of the first pieces that Aaron saw the AAO perform helped shape his understanding of creative music. These were Into the Fire – a collaboration with Guru Kaaraikkudi Mani – and Theft of Sita – a collaboration with Indonesian musicians.
Aaron spent his early years growing up in Papua New Guinea. As an immigrant to Australia, he recalls these early memories of watching the AAO. “It was the first time I got to see how jazz and this specific mode of making jazz that was unique to Australia could be tied to practices and culture from other places,” he says.
“It was the first time I really understood as an artist that I could be myself within this,” Aaron continues. “The things that I had to say that were informed by my experience and my culture from Papua New Guinea were relevant in the type of practice that I was pursuing. It’s tied together a duality for me that I think it would’ve taken me a lot longer to understand if I didn’t see the art orchestra.”
30 years of informing Australia’s art communities
The concert will be honouring the AAO’s history with a re-imagination of their 1994 debut performance, Ringing The Bell Backwards. This performance, Aaron says, is also a way of honouring the musicians, teachers and mentors that have come before them.
“Our history is important, especially in music,” Aaron says. “We all come from some sort of lineage. [Performing] Ringing The Bell Backwards, it’s an important thing to do. It’s important to acknowledge where things have come from. It’s also important to acknowledge the culture continues and things from the past can still be reflective of things now. Sometimes you just need to look at them in different ways.”
Alongside this re-imagination, Aaron and Associate Artist Sofia Carbonara will be premiering new works.
A bright future for the AAO
The combination of honouring history and envisaging a bold future will be a duet for the AAO to perform. A duet that, as reflective and as forward-thinking as the organisation is, they’ll have no trouble mastering.
“I’m excited every day by meeting artists who are coming to jazz and creative music from a completely unique [background],” Aaron says, about the direction the AAO is heading. “What’s always excited me about Australia is there’s an emphasis on people having a very distinct individual artistic practice and a voice that’s unique to them.”
“I see a lot of younger musicians here really making music that speaks to the time that they’re in and the context that they’re living in and who they are as individuals. And that’s exciting to me,” Aaron adds. “I think that it’s very reflective of the artists creating the work that speaks to who we are as Australians.”
You can get tickets to see the Australian Art Orchestra celebrate 30 years at MRC here.
