Australian Art Orchestra awarded fellowship

AUSTRALIAN ART ORCHESTRA:

Following a highly successful tour to Darwin and Ngukurr in May, the AAO is awarded the H C Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship 2010 for its work on Crossing Roper Bar.

Crossing Roper Bar is contemporary jazz brought face-to-face with traditional indigenous music – a ground-breaking project that unites the Wagilak Gujarra/Nyilabigi people of Ngukurr in south east Arnhem Land and the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO). They will perform on Wednesday 22 September, 7.30pm at Llewellyn Hall, Australia National University.

The AAO has been awarded the prestigious H C Coombs Creative Fellowship 2010 for their ground-breaking work on the Crossing Roper Bar project, and this Fellowship will see the AAO and Young Wagilak Group in a series of workshops with ANU students and the performance on Wednesday evening.

Crossing Roper Bar, an on-going collaborative project, was developed between AAO musicians and the Ngukurr songmen. It is based on an equal exchange of knowledge that began as a dialogue centred on music and developed into a process of collaborative composition that retains the beauty and dynamism of both traditions.

The Young Wagilak Group from Ngukurr have worked closely with the AAO and have created a contemporary interpretation of the cultural traditions. A wonderful marriage of the very old with the very new, Crossing Roper Bar is a celebration of country, of ceremony, and of the power of music to build enduring bridges across cultures, time and space.

Crossing Roper Bar began with a series of workshops in 2005 and brought together some of the country’s great improvisers who worked with the traditional songmen, and has continually evolved into a captivating performance of extraordinary music, a coming together of the two.

The prestigious H C Coombs Creative Fellowship will be provided through the Australian National University Research School of Humanities and the Arts. ‘This Fellowship is an important and highly valued element of this University’s cultural life and one of its features is the interaction, both formal and informal, that occurs between the recipient and the students and staff at the ANU’, says Professor Howard Morphy, Director, Research School of Humanities and the Arts

Ngukurr is an ideal place to learn about Yolngu culture because it is the gathering point for outlying peoples of the Wagilak, Ngalmi, Murrungun, Nunthirrbala, Mungurra, Lalara and Wurramurra nations, who come together under the name Yugul Mangi.

The Roper River is a magnificent waterway flowing from Mataranka, 100 kms south of Katherine, and out across the land of the Mangarayi and Yungman people. Before it reaches the Gulf of Carpentaria it passes the remote town of Ngukurr which is isolated by the Wet for several months of each year (November to Easter) when the Roper engulfs all but the highest land. At other times a causeway across the Roper makes it possible to cross the river and go on to Ngukurr. The crossing over seems not only a poetic but also a fitting metaphor for this collaboration, Crossing Roper Bar.

Members of the Crossing Roper Bar project are available for interview.

Crossing Roper Bar is proudly sponsored by Total E&P (Australia). This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

The Australian Art Orchestra presents Crossing Roper Bar at Llewellyn Hall, Australia National University on Wednesday 22 September, 7.30pm.