home | news l

Didgeridoo debut on classical stage

BY SARINA TALIP

24 July 2008 - Didgeridoo player and composer William Barton grew up with both traditional Aboriginal music and classical music.

Born in Mt Isa, he was taught the didgeridoo by his uncle, an Aboriginal elder from Western Queensland. He learnt about classical music from his mother, who had an ''operatic improvised voice''.

''She used to listen to Mario Lanza and all that crowd and we used to have a stack of old vinyl records, from Vivaldi to the greats,'' he said.

But rather than think of classical and traditional as separate musical forms, his aim was to merge them.

Barton performed Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe's 1993 Memento Mori with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra last night and will perform again tonight. It is the first time the music has been performed with the didgeridoo.

Barton said, ''I've always had a passion and a drive to create new repertoire for the [didgeridoo] in the classical world. Obviously it wasn't all easy sailing in the beginning because you had to prove that, 'Hey, the didgeridoo is just as complicated as a violin, or a brass instrument' ...

''I've been fortunate enough to perform with some of the top orchestras around the world in my career and it's about the sustainability of that. So it's not about just doing a one-off performance. Classical [music] and the didgeridoo [together] have been around for a while but what I wanted to change was not just have one world premiere, then that's it. I wanted to be able to perform that work over and over.''

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra has begun a partnership with Reconciliation Australia and Barton believes blending indigenous and classical music gives audiences an understanding ''that music is music''.

Barton said he loved the didgeridoo because it was a storytelling instrument.

Chief conductor and artistic director Nicholas Milton said the instrument complemented Sculthorpe's Australian sound.

Milton said, ''Every composer has to create a stylistic fingerprint that makes them sound distinctively like they sound.

''Mozart sounds only like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, all the great composers.

''Sculthorpe has done that, but he's created not just a voice that sounds like [Sculthorpe] but a voice that sounds amazingly Australian.''

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra will perform tonight with Barton on didgeridoo at Llewellyn Hall at 7.30pm.

Source: Canberra Times

Further information: culture issues page - includes news index and external links