Adelaide’s Nexus Arts has today announced their 2018 music program featuring 6 new works, 4 commissions and 10 Adelaide premieres, including performances ranging from a New Orleans musical street parade, an exploration of the female Jewish experience, Indigenous Australian storytelling, samba, the Turkish bağlama, Kathak dance, spoken word and everything in between.
Nexus Live 2018 continues to bring you the best music by culturally diverse artists from Australia and further afield, all with a focus on bringing the influences of culturally diverse traditions into contemporary art music practice in Australia.
The season begins with NOLA at Nexus, which will see Nexus turned into a Mardi Gras party straight from New Orleans, Louisiana. This musical feast will revel in one of the world’s greatest celebrations, as musical vanguard Adam Page guides the audience on a musical parade around the streets of Adelaide’s West End. The night will feature the sounds of New Orleans as Chris Weber’s Banksia Orchestra transports you to the old-time Jazz Era, while Melbourne’s Horns of Leroy bring you back to your feet with one of their trademark energetic brass band performances.
This Country will explore and express the Indigenous experience of three young artists carving their path through contemporary Australian society. Ascendant young Indigenous songwriters Corey Theatre, Nathan May and Jessica Wishart join forces with alt-country darlings The Yearlings to reimagine their original songs. The groups will then create new collaborative material and bring it to life for the first time, drawing on themes of country, family, language and culture in a soulful and intimate performance experience not to be missed.
Knock, Mark, Stitch is an exploration in visual, tactile and sound modalities by Iran Sanadzadeh, Angus Mason, and Setare Arashloo. This performance focuses on the ideas of dislocation and the experience of migration. Knock, Mark, Stitch will also see the four unique musical voices of Erkki Veltheim, Parvyn Singh, Rachel Johnston and Iran Sanadzadeh brought together in an original exploration of sonic possibility, in a first-time collaboration between these extraordinary individual artists. The performance will utilise a purpose-built set of pressure-sensitive floors as the physical interface for performing with synthesisers, with Kathak dancer Parvyn (also the frontwoman of Melbourne’s The Bombay Royale) using movement to trigger these aural elements.
Ujamaa will see the Melbourne African Traditional Ensemble (MATE) gently carry listeners through a ruminative journey in communication of tradition, storytelling, language and connection to ancestral heritage through music. Ujamaa will also feature Manal Younus and the JAzmaris, a thrilling new collaboration between these scintillating Ethiopian jazz musicians and young Eritrean poet and spoken word artist Manal Younus, co-commissioned by Nexus Arts and Multicultural Arts Victoria.
Saúde sees the return of composer, performer and all-around musical wizard Adam Page, joining forces with Adelaide community percussion ensemble SaSamba for this new genre-mashing collaboration that is sure to explore completely new musical territories. Tradition meets modern in this new work commissioned by Nexus Arts, with Adam creating compositions utilising the unique samba instrumentation in unconventional ways and stretching the boundaries of samba percussion ensemble music in an immersive and explosive performance style. Saúde will also feature the unpredictable & delightful ABRASKA (formerly Conchillia).
The Summer Twilight Shows are a new offering to Adelaide audiences, each featuring an hour of beautiful music to ease you through the working week. The first of these two shows by international artists features Chakam, who will be fresh from a performance at Mona Foma, exploring the sounds and traditions of Iran. The second show Duo Åkerlund/Paulson features award winning Swedish folk musicians Josefina Paulson and Jonas Åkerlund. The Nexus courtyard garden will be open for a refreshing beverage for audiences to cap off their Summer Twilight experience.
Nexus Arts also launches a new series of contemporary popular music shows Nexus Now, featuring artists including DOBBY, Sui Zhen, voiceROM and DyspOra. These shows will see Nexus transformed into a club-style performance space to celebrate the best creative contemporary talent by Australian culturally diverse artists.
Other highlights include a performance of traditional Indian music by India-based sitar player Ustaad Sujaat Khan and tabla master Nexus regular Jay Dabgar (Melbourne), and a co-presentation with Sydney vocal group The Song Company, performing in Adelaide for the first time and working with Indigenous dancers from The Thomas E.S. Kelly Project.
Nexus Arts in partnership with the Multicultural Communities Council of SA has also introduced Creative Cohesion: a two-stream development program working with musicians and communities from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds to better promote artists and develop their skills and networks.
The Nexus Creative Pathways program returns in 2018. The Pathways program is a yearlong intensive development program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) musicians.
The program strives to equip participating artists with a broad range of knowledge and skills necessary to operate as a successful independent artist in the Australian music industry.
All performances $25 waged / $15 unwaged
A Nexus Arts 2018 Solidarity Membership priced at $30 entitles you to $15 tickets for all Nexus Live performances, as well as other benefits and the reward of helping this dedicated not-for-profit organisation. See nexusarts.org.au for more information.
For the full Nexus Arts Music Program 2018 and ticket information visit: nexusarts.org.au
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