Where Emus Roam the Streets-release day gig 2

This is the first jazz release from the 2022 ABC Composer Commissions Fund, created to support new Australian music from emerging and diverse voices. The ensemble features young women all starting to hit their stride on the Australian jazz scene: drummer Kyrie Anderson, bassist Bonnie Aué, pianist Ciara Ferguson (heard here on vibraphone) and trombonist Jasmine Ferguson. And we believe they are all Helpmann Academy jazz award winners!

Where Emus Roam the Streets is a lyrical contemporary jazz album inspired by the dramatic vistas, ‘ghost towns’ and extraordinary people of the Ikara-Flinders Ranges on Adnyamathanha country. Mark’s association with the area is through his Aunt Jan and Uncle Chris Ferguson who have lived in Beltana for decades and are deeply connected to the community. Through them he met senior Adnyamathanha man Terrence Coulthard — whose ‘Welcome Song’ features on the album.

In preparation for this project, Mark spent days driving, running, walking and sitting in the northern part of the Ikara-Flinders Ranges between Parachilna and Iga Warta. Where Emus Roam the Streets was inspired by these experiences, alongside extensive research and conversations with members of the community. The album’s nine new pieces explore the beauty and hardship of Adnyamathanha country and reflect on the lives of its people, the collision of cultures, and Mark’s own experiences.

Invisible Threads is an international jazz group comprised of members from the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, led by Boston-based pianist Jacob Hiser. The group’s name is a symbolic reference to the web of lineages that connects musicians across time and space. There are the familiar and highly visible threads, representing musical voices that are channelled heavily by other musicians and are easily recognizable. And then there are the fainter and practically invisible threads that make up the rest of the web; threads that are hard or impossible to see unless you catch them in just the right angle of light. Those are the multitudes of voices that are less recognized or forgotten, voices whose echoes get fainter with passing time; voices that, without being intentionally found/internalized/channelled through our own voices, will fade away into the past. The goal of the Invisible Threads project is to illuminate and strengthen those threads by seeking out those faint, forgotten voices and bringing them to new life, through fresh arrangements of their own music and original compositions that bear their musical DNA.