Hand To Earth (RISING 2023)
Venue: This event is fully seated and will take place upstairs in Forum II.
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Seats for this show are general admission, however if you have seating requirements or difficulty with stairs please contact our box office on 1300 11 10 11 or customerservice@marrinergroup.com.au to arrange accessible seating.
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A call to open ears, fusing ancient and contemporary.
Yolngu manikay (song cycles)—an oral tradition from Southeast Arnhem Land that’s over 40,000 years old—in conversation with a Korean vocalist and minimalist jazz.
“The songline and raki, they pull. Two things. They pull you or they can touch you. You’re not singing from your head, you’re singing from your heart.” — Daniel Wilfred
Yolngu manikay exist to cross vast stretches of time and space and connect to raki, the spirit that pulls all together. These songlines form the heart of Hand to Earth. Trumpeter and composer Peter Knight from the Australian Art Orchestra developed the project over more than a decade and half—travelling, listening and improvising within the spark of instant rapport between Yolngu songman Daniel Yipininy Wilfred and Korean vocalist Sunny Kim. Kim sings in English and Korean while intoning gestures that invoke raw elemental forces. Their vocal approaches are melded into the atmospheres created by trumpeter/composer Peter Knight, David Yipininy Wilfred on yidaki and Aviva Endean on clarinets, woven into minimalist soundscapes reminiscent of Brain Eno and Jon Hassell. It’s a collaboration that opens its ears to the world’s oldest continually practiced music and taps into the essence of human connection and transports the listener to previously unimagined places. They’ll be opening the Forum upstairs space for RISING in a very special performance.