Current Issue #488

Nexus Arts looks to the world with 2018 program

Nexus Arts looks to the world with 2018 program

A bevy of international and internationally-influenced artists fill the bill of Nexus Arts’ 2018 program, along with new Summer Twilight Shows and a program to develop and promote work from SA’s culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

The Nexus Arts program for 2018 is made up of international, local and interstate artists, with influences hailing from the likes of New Orleans, Brazil, India, Africa, Iran, Sweden and Indigenous Australia.

In one of the first performances of the year, the sounds of New Orleans will echo through Adelaide’s West End with NOLA at Nexus. The ever-versatile composer Adam Page will lead a Mardi Gras-inspired street parade through the west with jazz from Chris Weber’s Banksia Orchestra and Melbourne brass band Horns of Leroy.

Two Summer Twilight Shows mark a new offering from Nexus Arts early in the year. The first will feature Iranian trio Chakam fresh from performing at Mona Foma, and the second will bring Swedish folk musician Josefina Paulson and Jonas Åkerlund together for a relaxing after-work performance.

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Josefina Paulson and Jonas Åkerlund

Adam Page will return with local Brazilian percussion ensemble SaSamba for Saúde. This work commissioned by Nexus Arts will see all comers blending the traditional sounds of samba music into something wholly new in an immersive work composed by Page.

The Melbourne African Traditional Ensemble will join wordsmith Manal Younus and the Jazmaris for Ujamaa, a night focussed on connecting to storytelling traditions and ancestral history through music. The work from Younus and the Jazmaris comes to Adelaide audiences courtesy of a joint commission from Nexus Arts and Multicultural Arts Victoria.

Knock, Mark, Stitch will see the experience of dislocation and migration explored in visual, tactile and aural mediums in a cross-disciplinary collaboration from Iran Sanadzadeh, Angus Mason, Setare Arashloo. A newly-commissioned work featuring Erkki Veltheim, Parvyn Singh, Rachel Johnston and Iran Sanadzadeh will bring together four unique musical voices in an original, explorative collaboration.

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Corey Theatre

The Indigenous experience will also be intimately explored by a young crop of emerging Australian musicians in Corey Theatre, Nathan May and Jessica Wishart. The trio of singer/songwriters will join up with The Yearlings, re-work their original material and collaborate on new work, examining themes of country, family, language and culture.

Indigenous dancers from The Thomas E.S. Kelly Project will also perform in a co-presentation with Sydney vocalists The Song Company, and on another evening the India-based sitar player Ustaad Sujaat Khan and tabla maestro Jay Dagbar will join forces in Australia for the first time.

Nexus will reach out to the increasingly diverse world of contemporary popular music as well, with club-style performances from rising artists, including DyspOra, Sui Zhen, Dobby and voiceROM.

Behind the curtain of performance, Nexus Arts is partnering with the Multicultural Communities Council of SA to develop and promote work from local artists of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The Creative Cohesion program will be a two-stream development program, and work in concert with musicians and communities from around the state.

Nexus Arts’ full 2018 program is available at nexusarts.org.au

Header image: Parvyn

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