Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Almost two years ago I sat down with Lamorna Nightingale, flautist and Artistic Director of BackStage Music, to discuss an idea I had for a new project. I knew BackStage were open to presenting new ideas and supporting emerging artists, but I couldn't have anticipated that I'd have been given the opportunity to curate an entire show with seven other artists based off of our conversation that day.

Sitting with a cup of tea in Lamorna's kitchen, I shared with her where I felt I was at artistically. I had graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where I studied composition, and I had a background in Western classical music performance, yet I found myself drawn to more exploratory modes of music-making that sat outside of my formal training. I had also begun to be more involved in improvised music performance and cross-cultural musical collaborations.

At this point I had realised that experimental, improvised, and cross-cultural musical spaces had enabled me to engage in music-making without being as concerned by the expectations of others, and allowed for a certain degree of self-expression I had previously been missing.

Particularly, I found these spaces a means of exploring something as complicated for me as my experience living in the 'diaspora'.

I found myself really exploring what my heritage means to me through my work, as a person and artist of Greek and Lebanese heritage creating music in the current artistic landscape in Australia.

When sharing these thoughts with Lamorna, I initially proposed writing a composition that explored this self-examination directly, however, she had an idea. What if I curated a whole show with the purpose of making space for more artists to reflect on their own experiences and share with the community how this can manifest musically?

I had never curated a project like this before, yet Lamorna saw potential for something worthwhile and exciting, and so I began to conceptualise what this project could look like.

We were lucky to have multi-arts organisation CuriousWorks come on board to support the project, and I had the privilege of having mentorship sessions from their CEO Kiriaki Zakinthinos. We discussed the importance of creating a welcoming and safe environment for the artists, so they're comfortable to experiment and explore the ideas and stories they want to, in the ways they want to.

After all these considerations, I settled on a title and concept for the project; azimuth. In navigation, it refers to the angles shown in degrees on a compass, specifying a horizontal direction. The term stems from an Arabic word meaning 'the ways/directions'. I wanted to highlight the infinite ways in which diaspora artists engage with the complexities of 'cultural navigation'. We also decided to focus on artists with a connection to Western Sydney, given it is one of the most culturally rich and diverse parts of the whole country. Amazingly, we received support from Create NSW to begin making this project a reality, and so the real work began.

As an artist based in South-West Sydney myself, specifically Canterbury-Bankstown, I approached Bankstown Arts Centre to see if they'd be interested in hosting this project. Not only did they agree to host our initial artist session, rehearsals and performance, but they came on board as a partner, which really affirmed we were heading in the right direction.

Now with a physical home for the project, we could finally put a call out for expressions of interest. BackStage Music had never put out an EOI before, but we felt it was a great way to reach beyond our own networks and see who was really drawn to the project. It was difficult to narrow down the incredible responses we received, as there's so much talent and creativity in Western Sydney, but we managed to bring together a truly wonderful group of artists!

The artists that have made Azimuth into what it is are Andrea Lim, Behzad Ansari, Joseph Tabua, Mark 'Munk' Ross, Peggy Polias, Pico Dos Santos-Lee and Ria Andriani. This brilliant, diverse group of performers, composers, sound artists, and interdisciplinary creators came together for the first time through this project, to explore what "navigating sound and place" means to them. Each artist has developed a new work in response to this concept, and everyone is also performing in at least one other work as a collaborator.

The past three months have been full of discussions, rehearsals, collaborations, and sharing with each other. It has resulted in a wonderfully eclectic mix of live acoustic performance, electronic production, spoken word, performance art, and intricate soundscapes that explore cultural identity, memory and place. We can't wait to embark on the final step, welcoming the broader community into the space at Bankstown Arts Centre to hear what we've put together! We have a night full of culturally important stories, melodies, sounds, and rituals, for the audience to experience in a shared space together.

This project has truly been an incredible learning curve for me as an artist and now curator, in the best way possible. I have learnt so much through this process thanks to Lamorna, Kiri, and every artist that has been a part of making Azimuth as rewarding as it has been. I can't wait to share the performance that has emerged from these collaborations on Friday 6 November at Bankstown Arts Centre!

Find out more about Azimuth at backstagemusic.com.au/azimuth