Episode 06 - Paul Grabowsky

The Deep End with Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn

Paul Grabowsky, AO, is Executive Director of the Monash University Performing Arts Centres. As a pianist, composer, arranger and conductor, he is one of Australia’s most distinguished artists, and has written the scores for more than 20 feature films in Australia, the UK and the US. He is the founder of the Australian Art Orchestra and has won eight ARIA awards, several APRA awards, two Helpmann Awards, the Melbourne Prize for Music and a Deadly Award. He was the Sydney Myer Performing Artist of the Year in 2000, and Artistic Director of the Queensland Music Festival from 2005–07 and the 2010 and 2012 Adelaide Festivals. He was appointed as a Vice-Chancellor's Professorial Fellow in the Monash School of Music in July 2012.

In this interview, he discusses his engagements through the Australian Art Orchestra with the Yolŋu (Yolngu) Manikay tradition of public ceremonial song from East Arnhem Land. Manikay series are performed to lead the structure of Yolŋu buŋgul (public ceremonies). Its main instruments, other than voices, are bilma (paired sticks) and yidaki (didjeridu).

Details of the Australian Art Orchestra’s recordings with the Young Wägilak Group from Ngukurr can be found on the Australian Art Orchestra website: https://www.aao.com.au/releases. Samuel Curkpatrick’s book on this musical collaboration, Singing Bones: Ancestral Creativity and Collaboration (2020), is published by Sydney University Press: https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/114523.

The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia (NRPIPA) is a Study Group of the Musicological Society of Australia: https://msa.org.au/nrpipa/.

Producer: Patrick Telfer.Line Producer: Samuel Curkpatrick. Music composed and performed by: Cameron Deyell and Reuben Lewis. Image credit: Celeste de Clario. Director: Aaron Corn. Executive Producer: Marcia Langton.

https://www.yes23.com.au/