William Barton’s Sky Songs set to soar
Didgeridoo legend William Barton teams up with his partner and his mum to present cross-cultural work Sky Songs at QPAC’s Clancestry
William Barton’s knack of combining the hauntingly beautiful and ancient sound of the didgeridoo with more contemporary music has made him world famous.
And you can hear the renowned Queensland musician and composer perform with a modern orchestra when he brings his concert Sky Songs to Brisbane for QPAC’s Clancestry festival, which continues until November 12.
This didgeridoo virtuoso from, as he describes it, “the Kalkadunga Mob in far-north western Queensland, out Mount Isa way” has long dreamt of creating a work in which cultures meet in sound and music, evoking the timeless Australian landscape.
Barton drew on more than 25 years’ experience performing with orchestras all over the world when composing Sky Songs.
He remembers walking for hours on end, to connect himself to Country while visualising how to pull this show together.
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“I would do a lot of walking and still do a lot of walking,” Barton says. “I walk the land for myself, but also for the music and for my people.
“I want to connect to people in the audience from all walks of life, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous. We’re going back to the ceremony, the ceremony of healing, where in that moment when people are engaged with the music it becomes a spiritual journey that we want to represent in the most culturally appropriate manner.
“Some works were composed a long time ago. Some are new arrangements specifically for the orchestra.”
The Sky Songs concert on November 9 mixes these ancient and modern compositions, with a symphonic landscape provided by John Foreman’s 45-piece Australian Pops Orchestra. It will include recitations from Barton’s mother, songwoman Aunty Delmae Barton, and contributions from Australian music legend Iva Davies, along with violinist and composer Veronique Serret, Barton’s partner in life and music.
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The work Barton created with Serret is particularly close to his heart.
“It’s called Bushfire Requiem, which is one of the feature pieces of Sky Songs,” he says. “It’s a space where I want mum to share her wisdom.
“She will be reciting her poem as a call and response. Veronique and I, we wrote the music for Bushfire Requiem, but my mum, she created this. It’s an acknowledgement of Country but also acknowledgement of the landscape through the trying times of the bushfire for – not only the human life – but also the animals sacrificed in that journey of nature.”
Barton says Clancestry, QPAC’s annual First Nations festival, is the perfect venue for Sky Songs.
“It’s so important to have events like Clancestry,” he says. “It brings mobs together from different parts of our song lines in Australia and it’s where we can express ourselves through that western form of expression inside of a western venue, the Concert Hall at QPAC.
“We’re reaching out, sharing our gift of our nation and that provides a space for other First Nations Indigenous brothers and sisters and Aunties and Uncles to tell their story and tell the story of truth, whatever that might be.”
Other Clancestry events include Song Circle, and Emily Wells’ poignant theatre work Face to Face.
There are free events at the Festival Ground, South Bank Cultural Forecourt. The Mob Music Stage will come alive as the sun goes down with First Nations music from the Andrew Gurruwiwi Band, J-MILLA, Cloe Tarere, Tjaka, BIRDZ and Fred Leone.
Festival Ground will also host afternoon weaving workshops and a heart-warming children’s theatre show, Merindi Schreiber’s BIRMBA, a fun piece about three cockatoos.
Clancestry, November 8 -12, QPAC
qpac.com.au/clancestry