Australian String Quartet // Djinama Yilaga Choir // South Coast Yuin Choir

The Australian String Quartet (ASQ) channels unique chemistry, bringing freshness and vitality to a longstanding musical form. In a program inspired by language, place, and breadth of the human spirit across millennia, the ASQ continues its association with Djinama Yilaga – an intergenerational Yuin choir established in 2019 by Four Winds’ Aboriginal Creative Producer Cheryl Davison. Dedicated to the rematriation of Dhurga language, the voices of Djinama Yilaga and Nowra-based (sister collective) South Coast Yuin Choir combine with the instrumental sonorities of ASQ to bring a shared sense of history through words and music.

Another Australian voice, Nigel Westlake’s Sacred Sky is a musical evocation of loss – a work imbued with themes of beauty, soulfulness, & transcendence, inspired by visual meditations of unnamed locations on the eastern seaboard, surveying rich and evocative emotional terrain.

The convergence of music and language is also a phenomenon that fascinates Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw. The current era of confusion and misinformation (seen through the lens of US politics and a global pandemic) was a catalyst to address language’s power to stir emotion and spread information or ideas through written, spoken and digital forms.

Whatever your language, this is a moment we hope speaks to you.

“Harnessing the silvery tone of their remarkable instruments, these sensitive, highly talented players impressed throughout [their performance] with their overwhelming sense of shared musical vision and desire to create a ravishing musical unity. Put simply, the ASQ remains a sure-fire winner.”

Tony Way, The Age, 1 November

Audiences may recognise Shakeela’s song walawaani, featured in HOME STRETCH – a love story to the Tathra-Bermagui Road (2021).