Southern Cross Soloists & Ron Haddrick
Release Date: 28 January 2013
Label: Melba
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 9314574114027
Composer/Series: Samuel Wagan Watson
Description
Smoke Encrypted Whispers is a sequence of 23 poems by the leading Australian indigenous poet Samuel Wagan Watson that pairs the Brisbane-born writer's texts with succinct musical commentaries - part reflection, part response - by 23 of the poet's Brisbanite composer peers.
What results - in a performance by the musicians of Southern Cross Soloists interspersed with readings of the individual poems by the distinguished Australian actor Ron Haddrick - is a variegated tapestry given cohesion and coherence by the multiple interwoven threads of Watson's words. Smoke Encrypted Whispers presents tales of the poet's own interior dreamtime and depth of feeling to produce a vivid and touching picture of growing up in suburban Brisbane.
While offering one revealing insight after another into the spirituality of displaced indigenous experience in contemporary urban Australia, Watson's poetry taps into a potent mythology that predates the settled history of the continent - as well alluding to the fears, heartbreaks, hopes and humour that are universal rather than isolated qualities. Through it, we are invited into a magical universe veiled behind the obfuscating layers of our mundane existence.
The 23 composers are Tom Adeney, Damian Barbeler, William Barton, Betty Beath, Gerard Brophy, Lisa Cheney, Peter Clarke, Stephen Cronin, Robert Davidson, Paul Dean, Louis Denson, John Gilfedder, Ralph Hultgren, Michael Knopf, Stephen Leek, Mary Mageau, Freeman McGrath, Richard Mills, Sean O'Boyle, Peter Rankine, Marianne Scholem, Stephen Stanfield and Toby Wren.
Personnel: Southern Cross Soloists, Ron Haddrick (narrator)
Tracklisting
The State Opera Of South Australia & Asher Fisch
The State Opera of South Australia & Asher Fisch
Asher Fisch State Opera
Timothy Young
Folksong Arrangements (Sacd)
Asher Fisch
Asher Fisch
Roger Benedict
Anthony Joseph
Nicky Lawrence
Alan Titchmarsh/Debbie Wiseman
William Parker & Ellen Christi
Sarah Webster Fabio
Sarah Webster Fabio
Seamus Heaney & John Montague
Southern Cross Soloists & Ron Haddrick
