Living Poems of the Sea
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Saturday, 3 May 2025
1:00 pm
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National Film and Sound Archive
McCoy Cct, Acton ACT 2601
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General Admission $40,
Concession $40
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In Association with
This event is part of MOSSO: music in motion
Performances at 1pm and repeated at 3:25pm.
“Living Poems of the Sea is a meditation on the enthralling world of dolphins and whales in music, sound, words and images.
Acclaimed flautist Sally Walker was inspired to create Living Poems through her experiences of playing her flute to enraptured dolphins and her friendship with dolphin researcher Dr Olivia De Bergerac. Sally plays music accompanying videos and images of human-dolphin interactions over decades, and narrates a story illustrating the importance of dolphins, whales and their complex relationship with humans.
With stirring words and music by composer Lyle Chan, and special appearances of music by Christopher Sainsbury and Miguel del Aguila, Living Poems is a work of art that asks a fundamental question: how are we meant to relate to these remarkable creatures?
The project is made possible thanks to the generous support from Kathy Deutsch and George Deutsch OAM, and from Peter Duncan AO and Dr Annie Duncan.
PROGRAM
Living Poems of the Sea (70 min) WORLD PREMIERE
ARTISTS
Sally Walker – solo flute and narrator
Lyle Chan – writer and composer
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
**An automatic discount of 15 per cent applies when purchasing three or more MOSSO tickets in a single transaction.
**Note for Pass Holders – Festival passes automatically include entry to the 2pm-6pm ticketed events.
Credits – Portrait of Sally – Rohan Thomson, Photo of dolphins – Grant Stevens, Graphic design – Cole Bennetts.
Click here to BECOME A MEMBER. NFSA visitor information at nfsa.gov.au/visit-us
-
Saturday, 3 May 2025
1:00 pm
-
National Film and Sound Archive
McCoy Cct, Acton ACT 2601
-
General Admission $40,
Concession $40
ARTIST Learn more about the artist
Artist Lyle Chan - composer
Composer Lyle Chan is known for his socially-conscious works combining powerful emotional impact and intellectual rigour. His most personal and confronting work is his 90-minute String Quartet, a memoir of his years as an AIDS activist in the 1990s. It was hailed by American composer John Corigliano as “a serious and deeply felt work of art born out of a seemingly endless plague.”
He was awarded the Orchestral Work of the Year prize in Australia’s Art Music Awards for his orchestral song cycle My Dear Benjamin, which Chan wrote upon meeting a 95-year old Wulff Scherchen living in Australia and discovering he was the little-known war-time love interest of composer Benjamin Britten.
Artist Sally Walker - flute
With a repertoire ranging from Early Music to works composed especially for her, most notably Elena Kats-Chernin’s “Night and Now” Concerto, performer, academic and music educator Dr Sally Walker has toured internationally with the Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras, was Principal Flute of the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss and the Omega Ensemble, and has performed as Guest Principal Flute with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Kammerakademie Potsdam. She has performed on historical instruments with Salut! Baroque and the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and has a long-standing association as Guest Principal Flautist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, with whom she has played modern, baroque and classical flutes, recorders and piccolo.