Featuring Paul Grabowsky - director/piano, Daniel Wilfred - voice and bilma, David Wilfred - yidaki, Peter Knight - trumpet, Aviva Endean - bass clarinet, Erkki Veltheim - violin, Helen Svoboda - double bass, and members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Presented in collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

A gathering for songmen, improvising soloists and symphonic orchestra.

The AAO is thrilled to present WATA with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday March 31st and Thursday April 1st at Hamer Hall – the powerful new work by Paul Grabowsky AO, 2021 MSO Composer in Residence and AAO Founder.

The music is built upon the ceremonial song cycles of north-eastern Arnhem Land manikay, featuring Yolngu songmen and long-time AAO collaborators Daniel Wilfred and David Wilfred.

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Grabowsky writes: “Wata is an ancient Yolngu word which translates as ‘wind’ in its many different iterations, both literal and mythopoetic. It is part of manikay which tells of the beginnings and ends of things, of the naming of people and places, songs that in their very performance dissolve our linear time into a vast well, a model of a fully interconnected universe. Wata is also a purification ritual, a song of new beginnings, of release, of flight, and connection to land, ancestry and hope for the future.”