Liz Argall

Musical journeys

Friday, October 10th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Tonight the Griffyn Ensemble will perform at the National Gallery of Australia – a newly composed program inspired by our closest neighbours, including Papua New Guinea, West Papua and Indonesia. (6.30pm start if you want to go). Part of their work will be an original composition by Michael Solis, the composer I’m working with to create Comicbook Opera. I wish I knew more musical technical terms to describe what he’s doing better.

Anyway I’m particularly (and selfishly) excited because I helped Michael find the right lyrics for the song at the end of the piece. There’s all sorts of exploration through the work and it now finishes in a song that is a fusion of Papua New Guinea Pidgeon and English. It was lots of fun to work on the song, push words about, probe and shape meaning and intent and learn more about PNG language, culture and taboos. Michael has spent time in PNG and it was interesting to see past the dry definitions into some of the cultural aspects of PNG language(“no we can use that word it’s really bad” “but we’re talking about bad things” “Yes but even saying that word is bad”).

It will be fun to see the words live, Michael’s put a lot of work into this piece.