Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Iron in the Blood is an album exploring the rich tapestry of Australia's colonial past. Featuring music by award-winning saxophonist/composer Jeremy Rose and his newly formed Earshift Orchestra, the album is inspired by and features text from Robert Hughes' seminal work The Fatal Shore, read by Philip Quast (three-time Laurence Olivier Award winner) and William Zappa (Mad Max 2; Dead Europe).

PM Malcolm Turnbull aptly summarized the book in a parliamentary tribute to Hughes (1938-2012): "Hughes' account of Australia's convict system, The Fatal Shore, is probably the best-read Australian history. It exposed in Bob's compelling prose the sadistic brutality bound up in our nation's founding - a system that not only dispossessed and all but destroyed the native people but then flogged and tortured the prisoners it had brought to the other end of the world". Iron in the Blood provides an opportunity to explore Hughes' masterpiece with a musical narrative that creates a rich fabric of perspective, from evocations of Australian natural beauty to the folksong of the colonialists. Hughes was reportedly a jazz-lover, making this work a fine tribute to not only the book, but to Hughes himself. Composed and conducted by Rose, the work is brought to life by a stellar 17-piece orchestra, featuring a new generation of Australian musical talent.

1. The Marauder Within -- 2. Time Immemorial -- 3. Tyranny and Van Diemen's Land -- 4. An Indelible Stain -- 5. Beyond the Seas -- 6. Bunters, Mollies and Sable Brethren -- 7. A Strange Lottery -- 8. Norfolk Island -- 9. We be the Aristocracy Now -- 10. The Melancholy Bush (Old Colonial Boy).