The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) is Australia's leading creative music ensemble. The AAO creates new works that reflect the diversity of jazz and improvised music artists and arts in the Asia-Pacific region. Pianist and composer Aaron Choulai, who has lived in Tokyo for 15 years, returns to Japan as AAO's Artistic Director to present three different original projects over 3 DAYS with special guests at Shinjuku Pit Inn.

The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) is Australia's leading creative music ensemble. The AAO creates new works that reflect the diversity of jazz and improvised music artists and arts in the Asia-Pacific region. Pianist and composer Aaron Choulai, who has lived in Tokyo for 15 years, returns to Japan as AAO's Artistic Director to present three different original projects over 3 DAYS with special guests at Shinjuku Pit Inn.

The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) is Australia's leading creative music ensemble. The AAO creates new works that reflect the diversity of jazz and improvised music artists and arts in the Asia-Pacific region. Pianist and composer Aaron Choulai, who has lived in Tokyo for 15 years, returns to Japan as AAO's Artistic Director to present three different original projects over 3 DAYS with special guests at Shinjuku Pit Inn.

In this unmissable birthday celebration, the Australian Art Orchestra commemorates both the legacy and future of the AAO with a special performance bringing together our community of wonderful artists from the past 30 years of activity.

This concert features a program of works, both new and reimagined, that have been built over three decades including: Ringing The Bell Backwards (AAO’s first performance and major work from 1994), and premieres from both Artistic Director Aaron Choulai and Associate Artist Sofia Carbonara, demonstrating new directions for the AAO in a new era.

The program will be performed by an ensemble that brings together musicians across the many iterations of the Australian Art Orchestra, including Scott Tinkler, Aviva Endean and Adrian Sherriff, as well as featured artists including past AAO Artistic Directors Paul Grabowsky AO and Peter Knight, alongside recent collaborators Kutcha Edwards and Hikaru Tanaka.

One of the country’s most vibrant and captivating soul singers, award-winning composer, vocalist and Noongar woman Bumpy premieres her new work Tooni—a raw and deeply personal exploration of survival, revival, and the urgency of sharing knowledge—featuring members of the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO).

Straight Up and Down (SUAD) presents three new commissioned works, pushing the boundaries of musical innovation and celebrating the originality, creativity, and diversity of Australian improvisers. The featured composers for this iteration are Cheryl Durongpisitkul, Yusuke Akai, and Aaron Choulai.

In an innovative collaboration, each performance will unfold at Melbourne's iconic outdoor container bar, Section 8, situated in the vibrant CBD. Section 8, a cultural nexus known for its diversity in music and community, contributes a context that adds a depth of dimension to this series, creating a unique platform for the premiere of these boundary-pushing compositions.

The second of the premieres features a new commission from saxophonist and composer Yusuke Akai on June 28, featuring a large ensemble of AAO improvisers.

Now or Never 2024
Wuigada - Gagada (To Sing - Loud) | Kutcha Edwards + Australian Art Orchestra

Four ensembles across the month of July, showcasing the diversity and quality of artists and artistic practice in Australia’s contemporary musical landscape. The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) joins NGV Friday nights to curate a visionary series of ensembles, assembled from a variety of its core members, collaborators, and artists from their broader community.

The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures. The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures.

Four ensembles across the month of July, showcasing the diversity and quality of artists and artistic practice in Australia’s contemporary musical landscape. The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) joins NGV Friday nights to curate a visionary series of ensembles, assembled from a variety of its core members, collaborators, and artists from their broader community.

The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures. The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures.

Four ensembles across the month of July, showcasing the diversity and quality of artists and artistic practice in Australia’s contemporary musical landscape. The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) joins NGV Friday nights to curate a visionary series of ensembles, assembled from a variety of its core members, collaborators, and artists from their broader community.

The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures. The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures.

Four ensembles across the month of July, showcasing the diversity and quality of artists and artistic practice in Australia’s contemporary musical landscape. The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) joins NGV Friday nights to curate a visionary series of ensembles, assembled from a variety of its core members, collaborators, and artists from their broader community.

The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures. The AAO’s selections traverse new directions in jazz, innovative rap, folk music and far beyond, celebrating improvisation as a musical language that unites across borders and cultures.

Straight Up and Down (SUAD) presents three new commissioned works, pushing the boundaries of musical innovation and celebrating the originality, creativity, and diversity of Australian improvisers. The featured composers for this iteration are Cheryl Durongpisitkul, Yusuke Akai, and Aaron Choulai.

In an innovative collaboration, each performance will unfold at Melbourne's iconic outdoor container bar, Section 8, situated in the vibrant CBD. Section 8, a cultural nexus known for its diversity in music and community, contributes a context that adds a depth of dimension to this series, creating a unique platform for the premiere of these boundary-pushing compositions.

The second of the premieres features a new commission from saxophonist and composer Yusuke Akai on June 28, featuring a large ensemble of AAO improvisers.

The Altona Theatre will host David Arden and improvisers from the Australian Art Orchestra, and guzheng player Mindy Meng Wang in a coming together of ancient song and storytelling traditions.

Family Jams brings the best of Melbourne's original, live music scene to kids, young people and their elders, making this a gig for all ages to come together.

Straight Up and Down (SUAD) presents three new commissioned works, pushing the boundaries of musical innovation and celebrating the originality, creativity, and diversity of Australian improvisers. The featured composers for this iteration are Cheryl Durongpisitkul, Yusuke Akai, and Aaron Choulai.

In an innovative collaboration, each performance will unfold at Melbourne's iconic outdoor container bar, Section 8, situated in the vibrant CBD. Section 8, a cultural nexus known for its diversity in music and community, contributes a context that adds a depth of dimension to this series, creating a unique platform for the premiere of these boundary-pushing compositions.

The first of the premieres features a new commission from saxophonist and composer Cheryl Durongpisitkul on March 29, featuring a large ensemble of AAO improvisers.

Commissioned for the Coburg town hall organ by The Brunswick Music Festival, AAO presents a program of new works from AAO Artistic Director Aaron Choulai and AAO 23/24 Associate Artist, Sofia Carbonara, composed for solo, duo and trio performances. SHUFFLE – PLAY explores the music of cabernet, cartoons and silent film and celebrates the sonic and spatial potentials of the Coburg Town Hall – from inside the organ itself, to the upper balcony.

Arranged for the AAO, this performance celebrates the songs of country, history, pain and joy expressed in Kutcha Edward’s repertoire, and creates space for experimentation by some of Australia’s most creative voices of jazz and improvisation.

Featuring two prominent figures in Japanese Hip-hop, The Australian Art Orchestra in collaboration with the Tokyo based collective Namboku Records, presents a warehouse party in the heart of Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

Lo-Fi Improv is a celebration of the intersections between improvisation, rhyme schemes, experimental music and sample culture. Alongside unique voices in Melbourne Jazz and beat music, this event features solo performances from Tokyo hip-hop luminary MC’s Kojoe and Hikaru Tanaka, as well as excerpts from the Australian Art Orchestra’s latest work, Raw Denshi. With performances from a selected line-up of Naarm based beat makers and Dj’s, Lo-Fi Improv showcases the longstanding relationships between artists of the Tokyo hip-hop scene and Melbourne Jazz, in a space that welcomes community to experience new pathways of experimentation in music.

Based on Aaron Choulai’s critically acclaimed 2020 release, and reimagined for the Australian Art Orchestra, Raw Denshi explores new pathways of experimentation in hip-hop and improvisation, bringing together two of Tokyo’s most prominent and influential MC’s and the AAO. Featuring pioneers of Japanese hip-hop, Kojoe and Hikaru Tanaka, Raw Denshi combines bilingual rapping and structured and free improvisation, woven together by Choulai’s distinct approach to composition.

Based on Aaron Choulai’s critically acclaimed 2020 release, and reimagined for the Australian Art Orchestra, Raw Denshi explores new pathways of experimentation in hip-hop and improvisation, bringing together two of Tokyo’s most prominent and influential MC’s and the AAO. Featuring pioneers of Japanese hip-hop, Kojoe and Hikaru Tanaka, Raw Denshi combines bilingual rapping and structured and free improvisation, woven together by Choulai’s distinct approach to composition.

A suite of 4 works, collectively composed by Helen Svoboda, Peter Knight, Martin Ng, Aviva Endean, Daniel Wilfred, David Wilfred, Mandhira de Saram and Cath Roberts

Celebrating its 25th year in 2019, the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) commissioned a series of solo improvised performances – a series now being released as a triple album on its own imprint. The recordings present the distinctive, idiosyncratic personal instrumental languages that AAO consists of up close. This concert features three of those soloists, toasting the release and providing the opportunity to experience the innovations of AAO collaborators first-hand.

A cross-continental collision of culture and creativity.

Award-winning and prolific contemporary classical composer Brenda Gifford will premiere a new work as part of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival and Australian Art Orchestra’s First Nations Artist Residency Program.

At the culmination of our first mentored intensive with Punctum, both mentors and mentees share their work for a live audience at Punctum ICU.

Six powerful women reimagine folkloric stories of goddesses from their many shared heritages, echoing tales of creation, regeneration and transformation, and evokes a time when music and language, art and life, were intertwined.

Listen Up! is Ensemble Offspring's micro-festival of new music, bringing together Australia’s most inspiring musicians who share an obsession with the newest of the new. A smorgasbord of contemporary-classical and jazz virtuosi, First Nations artists and art music fiends come together over two 60-minute programs.

Six powerful women reimagine folkloric stories of goddesses from their many shared heritages, echoing tales of creation, regeneration and transformation, and evokes a time when music and language, art and life, were intertwined.

Hand to Earth is a call to open your ears. Eluding genre, traversing continents and cultures and fusing the ancient with the contemporary, this largely improvised collaboration pushes the boundaries of musical forms.

One ensemble, three composers: The Australian Art Orchestra presents 'Market St Commissions' - a program of three new works composed for a cutting-edge 11-piece ensemble of Australia’s finest improvisers. Three prolific up and coming composers have written specifically for this line-up, accentuating the breadth of what this high-calibre ensemble can do - Jess Green (ACT), Joseph O’Connor (VIC) and Carolyn Schofield (VIC):