Music / “Songs from a Stolen Senate”, The Griffyn Ensemble, live stream September 4-5. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD 

WITH live performances in front of an audience in the same room impossible for the moment, musicians of all kinds have been finding new ways of presenting their music to their fans.

This can be as simple as sticking the iPhone on a chair and logging into Zoom or it can be a complex pre-prepared audio and video production, with a live-to-camera introduction. This presentation was more of the second type, with the added extra of live text messages from the audience and live responses to them from the performers.

The performances were of five works, including one song-cycle, by five different indigenous composers, that were inspired by extracts from the Senate Hansard which referred to indigenous matters. These were sourced by poet Melinda Smith who worked with the composers in various ways to turn the spoken words from Hansard into song texts.

The five works themselves were pre-recorded and then videoed at the Mulligan’s Flat Nature Reserve in Canberra’s north, with Griffyn musical director Michael Sollis playing mandolin, flautist Kiri Sollis, violinist Christ Stone and bassist Holly Downes. Soprano Susan Ellis was stuck in Brisbane for the recordings and was cleverly included in the video as a ghostly face to the side of the screen.

The five musical works were all quite different. The first was by Central Australian musician Warren Williams and was a piece he composed on piano as a reaction to a Senate speech on climate change. This was transcribed by Michael Sollis which became the basis for the instrumental performance.

The second work was by Canberra-based, Yuin composer Brenda Gifford. This was an angry and angular piece of music around a text to do with indigenous incarceration rates. More melodic was Noongar singer and songwriter Gina William’s song “What Are We To Do”, with some chilling lyrics describing WA Aboriginal people with chains around their neck half hidden by a deceptively sweet and catchy melody.

The limitations of the pandemic meant that the ensemble had not been able to collaborate as fully with Torres Strait composer Norah Bagiri as that might have liked.

Her work “Ghost Nets” used a spoken text about scraps of fishing nets which polluted the oceans and damaged wildlife. This work was not as fully formed as the others and seemed more of an improvisation that a scored piece.

The final piece was a suite of three songs by Canberra-based Durug and Eora composer Christopher Sainsbury entitled “Red Kangaroo Standing”. The texts for these were from speeches by Ken Wyatt, the Minister for Indigenous Australians in the current government. They were cleverly put together with some fine playing and singing.

The whole performance lasted a little over an hour, of which perhaps 20 minutes was actual musical performance. The musical works themselves were well recorded and interestingly filmed with the rest of the time filled in by a mix of live and pre-recorded interviews with the composers and some live chat and introductions by members of the Ensemble.

Voice levels in these sections were variable, as was the video and audio quality. A bit like the family Zoom chats we had in the first days of the lockdown back in March and April.

Still, this was an imaginative and interesting way to present this music with what must have been some significant technical and logistical challenges along the way with very limited resources. If we can’t go out to a live concert, this presentation showed that there are viable alternatives and the Griffyn Ensemble are, as usual, at the forefront of innovative way to present their music.