If this is our cultural celebration, then truly we have so much to celebrate
Presented by: Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Adelaide Festival
Reviewed: 17 March, 2024
On the final night of the Adelaide Festival, the Festival State was treated to a night of some of the most transcendental live musical performance; part symphonic excellence, part electronic melodic mastery – this multi-modal evening was a once in a lifetime experience.
The Floods of Fire, the brainchild of theatre maker Airan Berg, seeks to examine the unique intersection between our ever increasing climate danger and the ways we seek to understand and tackle the issue through art and science. This thematic drive resonates throughout the first act, a symphonic orchestral dreamscape utilising contemporaneous concert orchestra and traditional instrumentation to weave a tale of both past and present. This is a performance that thrives in both the modern and the ancestral.
We have voices calling out in traditional language, underscored by thrumming drumbeat and bass strings, the ASO backing the theremin of the inclusive Quirkestra, and a stunning call and response between guzheng and first violin, as if calling between cultures, a shared message of help and hope. This is one of the most diverse casts of instrumentalists assembled on the Festival stage, and it is a testament to the theme that they work so well, harmoniously floating in and out of section.
The second act is a symphonic performance by Australia’s upcoming Eurovision stars, Electric Fields, supported by the ASO, Aaron Wyatt on baton, and 5 incredible vocalists. This modal merge of styles is another driving connection between culture and theme, Zaachariaha Fielding’s voice soars through the festival theatre, Michael Ross’s electronic beat pulsates as the ASO are the perfect collaborators, giving this underlying weight that fills the room.
It was hard to not feel emotional as the voices in the crowd sung with Fielding during the powerful cover of From Little Things Big Things Grow, or when Fielding called out for the solo vocalist on Tjitji Lullaby, a child in the crowd who’d flown in for the performance. But most special was a performance of a Mimili song line, set to the music of Fielding, Ross, and symphony, dedicated to one of the original vocalists, sadly recently passed away. The weight of this combined traditional and so thoroughly modern performance had this power and emotion the is so hard to find but such a gem when you do.
If this is our cultural celebration, then truly we have so much to celebrate, but to paraphrase Fielding – if the traditional owners own the table that we all get to play on, Floods of Fire shows we all have a part to play is making it somewhere we can play on for the rest of time.
Reviewed by Daniel Hamilton
Photo credit: Saige Prime
Venue: Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
Season: Ended
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