Australian Art Orchestra announce new patron

MEDIA RELEASE COURTESY OF: Australian Art Orchestra

The Australian Art Orchestra is pleased to announce Professor Marcia Langton, Chair, Australian Indigenous Studies, Centre for Health and Society, University of Melbourne as patron.

She joins Robyn Archer and internationally acclaimed film maker Fred Schepisi as fellow patrons.

‘The various projects and events organised by the AAO have long been of interest to me and I greatly look forward to a direct association with all those involved’, says Marcia Langton.

Marcia Langton has held the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne since February 2000. An anthropologist and geographer, she has made a significant contribution to Indigenous studies at three universities, and to government and non-government policy and administration throughout her career.

Her research over the last two decades has concerned Indigenous relationships with place and relations with others, land tenure and environmental management, visual art practice, agreement-making, treaties and historical factors contributing to present Indigenous conditions. She has worked extensively in Aboriginal societies in the Northern Territory and Cape York Peninsula, contributing especially to land and native title claims, as well as other community development projects. Prof. Langton’s studies include important research into the trade that existed between the Yolngu people of SE Arnhem Land and the Macassans who were regular visitors to these shores before white settlement.

The Australian Art Orchestra was founded by composer and pianist Paul Grabowsky in 1994. The AAO is currently made up of 25 musicians, stylistically divergent; each one a specialist either as an improviser or instrumentalist.

As Australia’s premiere contemporary music ensemble it explores the rich ground between jazz and classical traditions and between western and non-western music. The AAO is recognised nationally and internationally as a bold leader, a pioneer in its field; playing a vitally important role in developing new music that is truly contemporary and identifiably Australian in its character.

The driving idea behind the AAO is that music is a language which establishes and builds connections between people, whether as individuals, societies, cultures or as nations.

For information about the Australian Art Orchestra, click here.