The Song Company: Four Colour Season

An evergreen selection of song and brand-new Indigenous dance to match the patterns and movement of the many Australian seasons.

The seasons, the sky, and the gumleaves in voices and dance from Chance to Vivaldi, with the Thomas E. S. Kelly Project

Following the movement of our planet around the sun, the weather changes and nature responds in colour and shape to the wind and the rain, the shadows and the sunshine. The traditional four seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter have been depicted in European art and music for centuries, but the Aboriginal experience of the seasons is a much more varied and subtler story that tells of the patterns of animal and plant life and their direct impact on survival. In this sympathetic synthesis of two artforms The Song Company is joined by a duo of dancers from The Thomas E.S. Kelly Project to trace the course of the Earth’s annual journey in movement and song, both old and new.

Program and choreography including:
arrangements from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons
and music ranging from Alice Chance Pallah-Pallah
to Francis Poulenc Un soir de neige

About Thomas E. S. Kelly

Thomas E.S. Kelly is a proud Bundjalung and Wiradjuri man with Ni-Vanuatu, Irish and British heritage. He studied at NAISDA Dance College and graduated in 2012. Thomas is an artist that works with multiple art forms which include choreography, dance, theatre, music composition, puppetry and teaching.
Thomas creates work that offers audiences an opportunity to learn about Aboriginal Australia and where that fits into to the modern world. Acknowledging the past, to understand the present, to better the future, knowledge is a source of power and it must be shared.

About The Song Company

Since the dawn of history, the human voice and the act of singing have been intrinsically linked with storytelling and the acquisition of culture. The Song Company belongs to a land whose first peoples used songlines and vocal music to pass knowledge and culture from generation to generation, and is proud to continue that tradition, in a unique way, sharing music from across western and non-western art traditions. From its beginnings in 1984 the ensemble’s schedule has grown to include a mix of national and international touring, a subscription series in cities across Australia, recording and broadcast projects, education activities, and special collaborative projects.

The Song Company’s repertoire covers vocal music from the 10th century to contemporary works, and is unique in its stylistic diversity. The Company remains at the forefront of contemporary vocal music through an extensive commissioning program and collaborations with artists and composers of the highest calibre from around the world. A longstanding commitment to education sees the ensemble perform regularly in schools throughout the country, including bringing music workshops to children in regional and remote areas.

From 2016 the ensemble has been led by the British composer, conductor, producer, and lecturer Antony Pitts, whose award-winning career has taken him from the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace and New College, Oxford, via the BBC, the Royal Academy of Music, and performances in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Berlin Philharmonie, to the forefront of the Australian music scene as Artistic Director of The Song Company.

Listen here. Buy a Song Company subscription here, or purchase tickets just for this performance through The Street.