Multitudes
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Delivery scheduled for August 2025
Led by violist Katie Yap, multitudes brings together six of Australia’s most exciting musicians in a recording capturing four new works, each based on one of Judith Wright’s exquisite bird poems. Each work celebrates a juxtaposition - old/new; human/nature; Chinese/Australian; and folk/classical. Brimming with intimacy, warmth and vitality, these new works and collaborations will be released on the VDB label in August 2025.
About multitudes
Our world is filled with contradictions: technology affords us the opportunity to be the most connected we’ve ever been, yet we are the loneliest society that has lived. We proudly say we are a global, multicultural community, and yet there are barriers everywhere we turn.
Our own identities are fractured, containing multitudes, yet struggling to create a single whole. multitudes is a response and an antidote to these breakdowns in connection.
Led by violist Katie Yap, multitudes brings together six of Australia’s most exciting musicians - not just in performance, but also in composition. Through the joyful process of improvisation and co-composition, they have created four new works, each based on one of Judith Wright’s exquisite bird poems.
Each work celebrates a juxtaposition - old/new; human/nature; Chinese/Australian; and folk/classical. Experience the intimacy, warmth, and vitality of these new works and collaborations.
Black Cockatoos brings together renowned early keyboardist and composer Donald Nicolson with Katie Yap in a joyful exploration of old and new.
Evoking the unsettling moments before a storm, and the heavy wildness of the black cockatoo’s wingbeats, Black Cockatoos for harpsichord, baroque viola, and electronics is a semi-improvised woingrk draw on influences from Hildegard von Bingen, JS Bach, and 70s electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre.
Lament for Passenger Pigeons tells the story of the passenger pigeon, a North American bird once so numerous that flocks would cover the sky like a winged eclipse, but quickly brought to extinction through over-hunting in the early 1900s. Using transcriptions of its unusual call by behavioural scientist Wallace Craig as thematic material, cinematic soundscapes, and the emotional journey of Judith Wright’s poem from anger and mourning to hope, it is a truly transporting experience.
Combining renegade guzheng player Mindy Meng Wang’s traditional Chinese music with Katie’s classical viola, the pair explore what it means to connect to your culture through music, and bring deep traditions into a multiplicitous modern world.
Migrant Swift evokes the daring of both human and animal migration over oceans and untold distances. This is the story of Mindy and Katie’s families; of so many people in journeys both chosen and forced; and of the strength hidden in tiny, feathered bodies.
Night Herons sees Katie Yap joins forces with long-time friend and collaborator, violinist/violist/singer/composer Emily Sheppard.
Night Herons is written in their shared language of folk harmonies and complex grooves, it’s inspired by dreaming and wonder, and the whispered connection of strangers brought together in the face of wild birds on a wet, sunset-gleaming road.
Katie Yap, viola (All tracks)
Donald Nicolson, harpsichord and electronics (Black Cockatoos)
Bowerbird Collective: Simone Slattery, violin & Anthony Albrecht, cello (Passenger Pigeons)
Mindy Meng Wang, guzheng (Migrant Swift)
Emily Sheppard, violin (Night Herons)
Image credit: Lewis Luman Cross (American, 1864–1951) Passenger Pigeons, c. 1900. Oil on canvas, 78 5/8 x 132 inches. Grand Rapids Art Museum, Gift of Ruth Skwarek in memory of Elsa and Henry Mueller, 1983.1.19.