Concert

A rich journey of world music, from the silk road through eastern Europe and Asia, this concert takes us into the wilderness of the natural world: the canyons, bamboo forests, misty mountain tops, temples and rivers. Quietness is discovered to have always been there - we just had to stop and listen to it. This quietude has been the secret of the saints and mystics throughout time, who through years of seclusion and meditation practice could attain a deep stillness. An opportunity to re-set your own inner compass to your heart, and dial down your inner volume levels to quiet.

The Middle-East and North Africa of antiquity was a place of science, scholarship, astronomy, art, education, architecture and culture, way more advanced than its European counterparts for thousands of years. The Damascus concert using musical flavours typical of the plainsong and chant styles in Eleusinian, Gregorian, Byzantine and Arabic music, traces the journey of humanity in melismatic improvisation-style musical reflections, and offers a window into the heightened atmosphere and illumination in the high cultures of that time.

Live blues with breakfast barbecue* in the heritage atmosphere of The Old Courthouse yard
Sunday 27 April from 8am-10am 

Entry $25 family, $20 general admissions or $15 concession

Featuring local Wheatbelt identity international electric violin virtuoso Rupert Guenther with his all-star band of WA bluesmen playing classic low-down Chicago, Mississippi & Delta blues of Muddy Waters, BB King, Howlin Wolf & more.

Electric violinist Rupert Guenther is an international artist with many CD releases and regular tours of Australia, the UK and Europe. A former sideman to the stars he has worked and toured with diverse talent, from The Vienna Chamber Opera, Beatles producer Sir George Martin, Olivia Newton-John to Greek superstar Demis Roussos. His distinctive bluesbreaker electric violin sound and vocals have earned him a place in the Australian blues scene alongside many of Australia’s top session players. He lives in the WA Wheatbelt region and continues to tour and teach internationally.

Come down to The Old Courthouse for an early morning show and replenish your mind, body & soul!

*Breakfast barbecue menu not included in ticket price

Thomaskirche (or the Church of St Thomas) in Leipzig has been a sanctuary for the soul through its music for nearly a thousand years. Be transported through the ages of European history in a concert of gorgeous sounds alluding to the travelling minnesingers, bards and minstrels, and the musical influences of the great composer JS Bach himself who resided as Cantor for 27 years in the 18th century at Thomaskirche. Close your eyes and be in the old world of Leipzig for a few centuries.

The sounds of the violin have been heard in the temples, mosques, palaces, monasteries and cathedrals of many civilisations, way before music was ever written down or concert halls existed. "A Thousand Years in One Breath" weaves the sounds from many world cultures, particularly parts of the East and Asia, in the way of the troubadours and minstrels over thousands of years all the way here to us, to echo their fascinating stories.

A rare opportunity to hear an international calibre artist performing locally in a close up informal setting, in a fascinating concert of inspired evocative improvisations inspired by actual historic events surrounding the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in 1883.

“Krakatoa - Volcanic Cataclysm, Shockwaves & Sunsets” is a new work for violin describing the eruption and the complete explosion of the entire Island of Krakatoa, the energy of shockwaves, volcanic ash and huge Tsunami it sent out into the world, and how the volcanic ash stayed in the atmosphere for several years afterwards causing red sunsets all over Europe mentioned in writings at the time and in the paintings by William Ascroft in England and Edvard Munch in Norway and many others.

Community concert featuring works by workshop participants

At the conclusion of the four days Creative Music Workshops Intensive, there will be a concert offering a unique opportunity to hear the musical ideas of each workshop participant from their time at the Workshops, much the same as a group of painters might exhibit their pictures as a group exhibition.

Persons under 15 yrs must be accompanied by an adult

International violinist Rupert Guenther presents Marcus Aurelius as part of a series of world premiere performances of his fascinating new original works for violin based on the life and work of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (102-180 AD) drawing particularly from his book of writings “Meditations” in the highly atmospheric Government House Ballroom.

The Marcus Aurelius work illustrates through music the great contrast in psychological maturity which a statesman of Aurelius’ integrity and humanitarian vision would bring to the world stage if suddenly appearing now, as a leader in the modern world, standing in stark contrast among our current rather psychologically unbalanced world leadership. 

The music is a series of 7 extended improvisations as meditations on Aurelius’ philosophy of “good-spiritedness” (the Greek eudaimonia), the path of a life spent practicing virtue and living in accordance with nature, and to be in self-control enough to live free from anger, envy, and jealousy, and how a world leader like this would help us achieve a future of security through wisdom, collaboration and cooperation, instead of seeking security through perpetual suppression, domination and wars.

This performance takes place on a specially designed electric baroque violin custom made for the work, created in discussion with Australian master luthier Paul Davies in country Victoria.

Using musical elements from old Europe, the middle ages and beyond, this concert is a musical immersion in the greatest universal humanitarian ideals and aspirations. Compassion is the light which guides all recovery and healing in humanity. The most evolved civilisations have all been highly altruistic and compassionate. It is the recall of the sensitivity and empathic disposition which has become all but lost to us in the modern world - and the antidote in the vibrational medicine of compassion through the invisible architecture and resonance of this music.

This concert of contemplative music with influences of the Middle East takes us into the world of the mystics of the 11th-14th centuries, with imaginative fragments of sound we would find in the sacred places of that time. The music derives its inspirations from the devotional love-poetry of the likes of Hafiz, Kabir and Rumi, and sets the listener on a mystical journey into the yearning for divine love and the presence and quietude of the hermit saints of the East.