As we reemerge into a changed world after the darkness of lockdowns; loss, loneliness, and grief may dwell in our near periphery, or be still active in our days and hearts. 

How can we respond to this moment in time? Through this work, I wanted to find the ground. A place to rest. Where our senses are enlivened, where beauty is exposed for us to linger in, and to let go. Unencumbered. 

As composers and performers, we are invited into others’ worlds to tell stories through music. Those of an individual, a culture, a world, a moment. This active empathy has been the very center of my world, as I approach international cinema collaborations. Each one starts from the ground.

This collaboration with Southern Cross Soloists and Didgeridoo player and descendant of the Wakka Wakka people from Queensland Chris Williams, has opened up a new conversation. A new language and voice, shared empathy, curiosity, and expression through music. Chris has invited me into his world of the didgeridoo. One where I can barely feel the gravity of layers of the history of this instrument and all who’ve played and experienced it as they are deep and vast.  

From opposite sides of the Pacific and connecting on screens from our studios, we’ve found promise in exploring ideas, techniques, and mapping out possibilities of nuanced and yet open roles of the didgeridoo with chamber ensemble. Much of our exploring won’t make it through, but the possibilities that do, have a magic that captures our own heads and hearts. It is a new woven, unbridled conversation we can bring into the world and concert hall, the merging of my composed world with Chris’s freer expression.

The piece starts with Williams playing a bloodwood eucalyptus didgeridoo made by Adam Henwood. It’s pitched in low A and has a beautiful earthy, rich tone, before moving to his instrument pitched on D.

Poet David Whyte, in his book Consolations, describes the ground as  “...the living, underlying foundation that tells us what we are, where we are, what season we are in and what, no matter what we wish in the abstract, is about to happen in our body; in the world or in the conversation between the two.”

When we are there, we can allow ourselves to be part of the greater world. Writer Annie Yi tells us that “The wilderness lives within all of us, the rhythms of our bodies tethering us to the natural world…” and poet Mary Oliver, in “Sleeping in the Forest” brings us closer in again.

“...I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees.

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me…”

━Mary Oliver, “Sleeping in the Forest”

What can music bring to this moment? Woven, glimmering, anchored, free, wild, open moments with our own longings and surrender. These instruments together on the same stage allow us all to be transformed into a new sound world and the infinite possibilities that might accompany it. 

These instruments together on the same stage allow us all to be transformed into a new sound world and the infinite possibilities that might accompany it. It reflects our shared future through music.

The ground anchors us, connects us, and allows us to come home to ourselves. Support rising from beneath, that nurtures. From the darkness and aloneness of isolation, we emerge, senses heightened. 

━ Leah Curtis, June 2022

Formed and fashioned from the very ground on which we stand.

We are now transplanted into ground newly broken, ground already cleared for us.

We take root and fill the land once more.

Our life. Beginning and thriving in solid ground. Home. Connection. Country.

━ Chris Williams, June 2022