Events

Waratah at Aichi Expo 2005

18 July 2005

For the celebration of Japan's "Marine Day" on 18th July, 2005 in Australian Pavilion at the Aichi World Expo, Waratah will perform and coordinate performances by performing artists from numerous South East Asian and Pacific nations.

Waratah is an Australian music trio that unites jazz, world music and contemporary Australian music into a remarkable fusion. With deep respect for the meaning the koto holds for the Japanese people, Waratah have filtered its tone through the aural dynamism of multicultural Australia, which they will now re-present to the Japanese and international audiences at Aichi.

Waratah first performed together at the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, and have subsequently performed at the Festival of Asian Music and Dance (Sydney Opera House), Woodford Folk Festival, Bellingen Global Carnival, Government House (Sydney), the Songs of the Wind Festival (Blue Mountains, NSW), Asia Fest (Lismore), the Armidale Regional Art Museum, the Brett Whiteley Studio (Sydney), the Sydney Improvised Music Association, and has broadcast for ABC Radio National's Music Deli.

Each contribute compositions, and their performance incorporates liberal doses of improvisation. This is an ensemble which guarantees its audiences a new experience.

Artists

Sandy Evans:

Sandy Evans (tenor saxophone), whose melodic inventions transcend jazz to explore sonorous lines, rich deep timbres and multiphonics, is heralded as of Australia's leading contemporary jazz performers and composers. She has received many awards, including the Australian Jazz Artist of the Year (2003), the Young Australian Creative Fellowship from the Federal Government (1996), APRA award for Jazz Composition of the Year (What This Love Can Do, 1995), MO Award for Jazz Instrumental Performer of the year (1996) and the ARIA Award for Best Jazz Album (Clarion Fracture Zone CD Blue Shift, 1990).

She has played with and composed for many of the most important groups in Australian jazz since the early 1980's, including Ten Part Invention, the catholics, austraLysis, the Australian Art Orchestra and Mara! She has composed for the Martenitsa Choir for performances with Mara! and Clarion Fracture Zone. She has led her own groups Women And Children First, the Sandy Evans Trio, and Clarion Fracture Zone, and has composed and directed Testimony, a ninety minute music theatre work about the life of Charlie Parker, for ABC Audio Arts.

Sandy Evans Website

Satsuki Odamura:

A star pupil of the Sawai Koto School in Tokyo, Satsuki Odamura moved to Sydney in 1989. She has performed with some of the leading artists and ensembles in Australia, including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Synergy, Elision, Nadoya, Sangam, Slivanje, Riley Lee and Jim Denley. She has elicited compositions for the koto from numerous Australian composers, including Peter Sculthorpe, Carl Vine, Barry Conyngham, Michael Askill, Ian Cleworth, Anthony Briggs, Anne Boyd, Sarah de Jong, Liza Lim, Sandy Evans and Tony Lewis. She has recorded three CDs in Australia - Like A Bird, Burning House, and Koto Dreaming (to be released 2005). Burning House won the 1998 Sounds Australian Award. Today Satsuki performs all around Australia and internationally.

Tony Lewis:

One of Sydney's most versatile and accomplished exponents of non-Western percussion, percussionist and composer Tony Lewis specialises in cross-cultural music forms, and music for dance. He has composed major dance & theatre works including Dancing Demons(One Extra Company, 1991), Satu Langit(Chrissie Parrott Dance Company, Perth Festival, 1994), Wirid-Jiribin, The Lyrebird, with Tharawal Aboriginal performer Matthew Doyle and Dhamor Percussion (Festival Of The Dreaming, Sydney, 1997), and Children of the Stepping Stones (Sadari Theatre Company, Seoul, South Korea, 2002).

He appeared as a soloist at the Commonwealth Drum Festival (Auckland, 1990), and was Musical Director of the Asian segment of the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. Tony has performed all over Australia, including many indigenous communities, and internationally, and has studied and conducted cultural exchange projects across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific. He is currently undertaking his PhD at Macquarie University, Sydney, through research into the garamut (log drum) drumming of Manus, Papua New Guinea.

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