Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Synaesthesia: Music of Colour and Mind – with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 November 2012

Synaethesia means ‘joined sensation’, such that a voice or music, for example, is not only heard but seen, tasted or felt as a physical touch, Richard E. Cytowic, ‘Wednesday is Indigo Blue’, American neurologist and author. Friday is dark maroon, a type of sienna, and Saturday is definitely white. Monday is a cool blue... Since I was seven, when I first learnt counting, numbers had specific colours. ‘Geoffrey Rush: A Man for all Seasons’, Sun Herald interview, May 20, 2007

Synaesthesia: Music of Colour and Mind is a weekend immersion into a world of music and colour. David Walsh is not a synaesthete. But he knows a lot of people who say they are. That’s why he’s curious to take a group of intrepid explorers on a journey to discover what it must be like to experience music, words and numbers as colours.

The two-day event is a collaboration between the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and the TSO chorus; Opera Australia’s Artistic Director, Lyndon Terracini; composer Michael Kieran Harvey; pianist Peter Hill with the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM); Tasmanian-born soprano Allison Bell; singer, song-writer Kate Miller-Heidke; cabaret songstress Meow Meow; MONA FOMA curator and bass guitarist Brian Ritchie; saxophonist Danny Healy; conductor Ken Young; pianist Marc Hannaford; and head of music at the Tasmanian Conservatorium, Professor Andrew Legg with scientist Peter Morse.

Several new commissions are to be premiered along with works by composers such as Olivier Messiaen and György Ligeti – both known synaesthetes. Performances will take place in unexpected ways and locations, enhanced and transformed by lighting designs created by lighting maestro John Rayment. And there will be panel discussions to offer an understanding of synaesthesia and what it means.

Only 400 tickets are available for the weekend. They’re being sold on a first‐come, first‐served basis and are now on sale through the MONA website at www.mona.net.au Price is $A605/person all inclusive. Tickets include admission to the museum and all performances, plus lunch, afternoon tea and dinner on Saturday and lunch and afternoon tea on Sunday prepared by MONA’s decorated chefs.

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website or by phone on (03) 6277 9900 or by email to whatsoneventsinfo@gmail.com

Featured artists

• New work by Michael Kieran Harvey