Verity Solo Session 1

  • Tuesday, 30 Apr 2024

    6:00 pm

  • Verity Lane Market

    Sydney Building, 50 Northbourne Ave, Canberra ACT 2601

  • With Support From

Verity Solo Sessions give you forty minutes up close with the Festival’s finest musicians.

Verity Solo Session 1 – Lotte Betts-Dean, Voice Electric

The formidable voice and vocal skills of Lotte Betts-Dean plugged into 21st century technology. Music by Kaija Saariaho, Caroline Shaw, Linda Buckley and a new commissioned work by Worimi artist Nicole Smede.

“Irrepressible sense of drama and extraordinary self-assurance. Unmissable, urgent musicality..” (The Guardian)

PROGRAM

Kurt Schwitters – Selections from Ursonate
Caroline Shaw –  Rise
Stuart Macrae – elided compressed
Erin Gee – Mouthpiece
Nicole Smede – The Silence of Thunder (a hidden river) WP
Kaija Saariaho – From The Grammar of Dreams IV
Giacinto Scelsi – Hô I
Mathis Saunier – Cannibal
Morton Feldman – Only
Linda Buckley – revelavit

Nicole Smede’s work is commissioned by CIMF’s A Major Lift

This concert is supported by Andrew Blanckensee

ARTIST Learn more about the artist

Artist Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo-soprano

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Praised by The Guardian for her “irrepressible sense of drama and unmissable, urgent musicality”, Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean is passionate about curation and programming, with a broad repertoire that encompasses contemporary music, art song, chamber music, early music, opera, oratorio and non-classical collaborations. Lotte is an Ambassador of Donne, a charitable foundation dedicated to promoting gender equality in the music industry, and in 2022 she was named as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, an honour reserved for alumni who have contributed significantly to the music industry.

Full bio at www.lottebettsdean.com

Photo credit Benjamin Ealovega

Artist Nicole Smede, multi-disciplinary artist

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Nicole Smede is a multi-disciplinary artist of Warrimay Birrbay, English and Irish descent, living and creating on Gummēya Darrawal & Wodi Wodi Country. Proud of her lineage, she works with language reconnecting to ancestry and culture in song, sound and poetry.

A trained Mezzo-Soprano and graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Nicole has performed at Parliament House, City Recital Hall, Mona Foma Festival, and galleries and venues across Australia and her voice has been heard globally on award-winning film scores. In her artistic practice, she has created meditations, songs, soundscapes and music for podcasts and plays and her poetry can be found in visual and sound pieces, exhibitions, journals, publications and anthologies.

In 2020, Nicole was the co-recipient of the 2020 Shoalhaven Arts Board Grant, a finalist in the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 Red Room Poetry Fellowship. In 2022 Nicole was a recipient of the inaugural Space to Create residency through Australia Council, Yil Lull Studio and ANU. In 2023 Nicole is a participant in Ngarra-Burria First Peoples Composers program working with Ensemble Offspring and a mentee through both the APRA AMCOS Women in Music program and South Coast Writers Centre Emerging Writers program.

Photo credit – Bonnie Porter Green

Nicole is supported by CIMF’s A Major Lift