Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

After their sold-out Sydney Festival 2020 show, didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton and powerhouse violinist Véronique Serret blend traditional songlines and modern storytelling in a collaboration featuring Aunty Delmae Barton’s poetry Heartland – an invitation into landscape, culture, language and Country, wrote specifically for this performance. 

Experience Barton and Serret’s unique, meditative sound inspired by the Australian landscape and the power of connection to place. Serret’s violin and Barton’s prodigious didgeridoo and guitar come together with powerful, soaring vocals and the ethereal loops and effects of electronics, in a distinctive evocation of our uniquely Australian landscape. William’s mum, Aunty Delmae Barton, contributes her Heartland poetry as inspiration, with its message of peace and love carried by the eagle spirit. 

Heartland began life as a seven-minute commission for the 2019 Canberra International Music Festival, and since then has grown organically into an extraordinary hour-long exploration of Country, landscape, culture, language and the nature of identity.  

If a year of pandemic and uncertainty has left you exhausted, let Heartland’s blend of traditional songlines and contemporary storytelling take you on a meditative musical journey, leaving you reinvigorated and uplifted.