Welcome to Country
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Wednesday, 1 May 2024
10:00 am
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Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture
15 Blackall St, Barton ACT 2600
A traditional Welcome to Country ceremony led by Ngunnawal traditional custodian Bradley Bell.
‘Being welcomed to Country means that you are talking to your spiritual ancestors and you’re saying just let this person come through. We trust that they’re not going to do any harm on this Country and so do not harm them.’ — Jude Barlow, Ngunnawal Elder.
ARTIST Learn more about the artist
Artist Victoria Bihun, violin
Victoria Bihun grew up in Benalla, Victoria. She began playing the violin at the age of five and from the age of nine was making the 400km round trip to Melbourne every Saturday morning to participate in Melbourne Youth Music programs.
She completed her Bachelor of Music degree at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, studying with Mark Mogilevski. As a student she won many university prizes and was concertmaster with both the Melbourne Youth Orchestra and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music Symphony Orchestra, as well as appearing as Guest Concertmaster with Victorian Opera.
Artist Roland Peelman AM
“His encyclopaedic understanding of performing and visual arts and his theatrical instinct place him in constant demand as a musician of flair and imagination.” – Antony Jeffrey, Many Faces of Inspiration.
Born in Belgium, Roland Peelman has been active in Australia over 30 years as a conductor, pianist, artistic director and mentor to composers, singers and musicians alike. He has established a reputation as one of Australia’s most innovative musical directors, awarded with numerous accolades. On the sidelines, Roland remained active as a pianist, putting his fingers in the service of social activism, in particular Human Rights.
Artist Erkki Veltheim - composer/performer
Erkki Veltheim is an Australian/Finnish composer and performer. His practice spans noise, audio-visual installation, improvisation, notated music, electro-acoustic composition, pop arrangements and cross-disciplinary performance. Erkki has been commissioned by the Adelaide Festival, Vivid Festival, Australian Art Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Musica nova Helsink and composed the orchestral works for celebrated Australian indigenous musician Gurrumul’s posthumous album Djarimirri.
Photo by Aaron Chua
Artist Konstantin Shamray - piano
Described as an exhilarating performer with faultless technique and fearless command of the piano, Australian-based pianist Konstantin Shamray enjoys performing on an international level with the world’s leading orchestras and concert presenters.
In 2008, Konstantin burst onto the concert scene when he won First Prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition. He is the first and only competitor to date in the 40 years of the competition to win both First and People’s Choice Prizes, in addition to six other prizes. He then went on to win First Prize at the 2011 Klavier Olympiade in Bad Kissingen, Germany, and he was awarded the festival’s coveted Luitpold Prize for “outstanding musical achievements”.
Artist Flynn & Humphrey
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey are Australian artists who create unexpected situations for listening. They have a long-term highly awarded collaborative practice. Their work is driven by a curiosity about listening in human and non-human ecologies and seeks to evolve and engage with new processes and audiences through public and participative interventions. They work with emerging technologies, cultural groups, sites, and experts across practice and ensemble-made processes. Their current creative obsessions include acoustics of the dark, the sound of existential risk, and ecological and cultural impacts of practice. Maddie and Tim are based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.
Maddie and Tim’s works have been presented by major festivals and contemporary art spaces, including Setouchi Triennale and Kinosaki Arts Centre (Japan); Busan Sea Art Biennale, Ansan Arts Festival, and Seoul Street Arts Festival (Republic of Korea); Brighton Festival and Science Gallery London (UK); Sonica Festival ; Edinburgh Festival and Counterflows Festival (Scotland); ANTI Festival and Oulu Capital of Culture (Finland); Prague Quadrennial (Czech Republic); Theatre der Welt (Germany); Ars Electronica (Austria); Melbourne Festival, Perth Festival, Sydney Festival, MONA FOMA, ACCA, ArtsHouse, Melbourne Recital Centre, Substation, Sydney Opera House, Bundanon, and Science Gallery Melbourne (Australia). Their awards include the national Australia Council Experimental Arts Award, APRA-AMCOS awards for Experimental Music, GreenRoom Awards for Sound and Hybrid Arts, Melbourne Festival award and an Honourable Mention Ars Electronica.
Photo credit – Jody Haines
Artist Kevin Hunt, piano
Kevin Hunt is a jazz pianist-composer active in the Sydney jazz scene since 1979. Kevin Hunt currently performs regularly with vocalist Emma Pask, pianist Simon Tedeschi and vocal duo Stiff Gins.
Artist Paavali Jumppanen - piano
In the span of recent seasons, the imaginative and versatile Finnish virtuoso Paavali Jumppanen has established himself as a dynamic musician of seemingly unlimited capability as a solo recitalist, orchestral collaborator, recording artist, artistic director, and frequent performer of contemporary and avant-garde music.
Artist Satu Vänskä - violin
Born to a Finnish family in Japan, violinist Satu Vänskä has developed an international profile through her role as Principal Violin with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, a position that she has held for the past twenty years. In that time Satu has both directed and performed as soloist with the ACO, an ensemble regarded as one of the greatest chamber orchestras in the world, hailed for its striking virtuosity and innovative programming.
Satu’s development of solo violin projects is reflective of her desire to continually evolve as a musician and to courageously embrace new musical challenges. She has a passion for dynamic programming that explores the link between old and new music, alongside presenting boundary-blurring cross-genre collaborations, that resonate with today’s classical music audiences.
Artist Tipi Valve - cello
Timo-Veikko Valve, affectionately known by audiences far and wide as “Tipi”, grew up in Finland, surrounded by a family who are “musically oriented normal people”. Music lessons were a natural part of his upbringing, and at six years old, Tipi was encouraged to pick up the cello after a teacher at the local music school declared with considerable conviction that “he looks just like a cellist!”. To this day, Tipi remains somewhat puzzled about what that statement actually meant. Whatever the subtext, the teacher seems to have been correct.
Artist Kompactus Youth Choir
Kompactus is a youth chamber choir, aimed at developing the skills of talented singers between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Founded in 2008 with countertenor David Yardley as director, The group now performs regularly in Canberra, under the artistic direction of composer and choral conductor, Olivia Swift.
Kompactus maintains a diverse and versatile repertoire, drawn from many time periods and styles stretching as far back as the late medieval through to modern contemporary music. Kompactus has sung at the Canberra International Music Festival, as part of the Flowers of Peace series, at Floriade and many more, as well as regularly performing around our local Canberra.
Photo credit – Jorge Garcia