The 2024 Canberra International Music Festival comes to a close with a celebration of the oldest living culture on earth.

For more than twenty years, the Stiff Gins have sung in language about Indigenous culture and women’s empowerment. Now, in a unique Festival collaboration, Kaleena and Nardi join forces with the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam to perform the Gin’s tender songs like you’ve never heard them before – arranged by jazz legend Jonathan Zwartz. Three percussionists bring Holly Harrison’s new trio to life, while William Barton and Véronique Serret summon a final moment of magic alongside works by Nardi Simpson and Yuin composer Brenda Gifford.

As the curtain falls on Roland Peelman’s decade-long tenure at the helm of the Festival, some of his closest musical collaborators join forces to mark the end of an era and to set the tone for the future.

PROGRAM

Simpson/Briggs, Selection of Songs – in new arrangements by Jonathan Zwartz featuring Dudok Quartet Amsterdam

— interval —

Barton/Serret, duet
Holly Harrison, new percussion trio
(commissioned by CIMF’s A Major Lift)
Nardi Simpson, Burruguu (time of creation)
Brenda Gifford, Wardhu (skin)

ARTISTS

Stiff Gins: Kaleena Briggs and Nardi Simpson
William Barton and Véronique Serret
Dudok Quartet Amsterdam
Claire Edwardes, Niki Johnson, Veronica Bailey, percussion
Jason Noble, clarinet
Lamorna Nightingale, flute
Freya Schack-Arnott, cello
Ben Ward, double bass
Luminescence Chamber Singers
Ellery String Quartet