Songs With Paul Stanhope

My collaboration with Paul as a lyricist continues.

To my great delight, I have continued to work with Paul Stanhope on an occasional basis. He is a great collaborator, and a friend.

He was commissioned to write another new work for Gondwana for the World Choral Festival in Sydney in 2019, that brought together youth choirs from around the world. We created I Am Martuwarra, a song about the Fitzroy River, sung in the voice of the river itself, and the Kija, Bunuba and Nyikina peoples who live along its banks.

It was performed at the Festival’s opening gala concert at the Sydney Opera House in July of 2019.

Watch the performance at the Sydney Opera House in July of 2019 above (the first ten minutes)

I Am Martuwarra was the ‘Work of the Year: Choral’ in the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards of 2020.

I reckon I am probably the most unmusical APRA AMCOS member in the entire nation, but I’ve had the good fortune to collaborate with some damned fine musos, including Paul, The Pigram Brothers, and Archie Roach. Winning this gong tickled my fancy hugely.

The lyrics on the 2019 program for I Am Martuwarra

More music coming

I have also provided a new song, Burrup Fish Hawk, for a new work themed around the Indian Ocean that Paul is writing for the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. It is themed around a scene in chapter two of Out of Time, in which Anne Warton sits amongst the ancient engravings on the Burrup Peninsula, watching an osprey.