ENSEMBLE OFFSPRING
TOURING
Australia's leading new music group, Ensemble Offspring is renowned for our fearless innovation and our commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices outside of our hometown of Sydney.
Our current touring programs bring living new music to new audiences in regional NSW, Australian capital cities and regional centres and to the world. If you are interested in booking one of these shows, please email us here.
Songbirds
Songbirds celebrates the breathtaking virtuosity of Australian birdsong with an array of original Australian chamber music commissioned by and written for a trio line up of Ensemble Offspring. Audiences are transported into the Australian bush by the familiar sounds of nature’s own musicians, with a little help from Australia’s leading composers including Brenda Gifford, Robert Davidson and Caitlin Yeo.
Performed by Lamorna Nightingale (flutes), Jason Noble (clarinets) and Claire Edwardes (percussion), Songbirds captures the magical bird calls of the red centre, virtuosic avian displays and Indigenous musical perspectives on these beguiling creatures of the sky.
Stories of Water and Earth
Stories of Water and Earth features Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson alongside a quartet of Ensemble Offspring’s genre bending instrumentalists, weaving together instrumental chamber music, long term collaboration, dreaming stories and reimagined times.
This hour-long show features a performance of Freshwater Woman by Nardi Simpson, where she shares Yuwaalaraay women's creative and cultural practice through song and interactive moments. To complement and give context to this 40-minute work, a handful of deadly works from the last 10 years of Ngarra-Burria: First Peoples Composers will speak to country and culture.
To Listen To Sing
To Listen To Sing features highlight works from our collaborative program, Ngarra-Burria: First Peoples Composers. Over the past 9 years, Ngarra-Burria has built bridges for Indigenous musicians to step sideways into instrumental chamber composition, completely altering the Australian landscape of art music compositions and importantly giving a new voice to First Nations composers.
The 'best of’ Ngarra-Burria album To Listen To Sing was released in 2023 on ABC Classic and was nominated for an ARIA Award. This unique touring program features a quartet line up of flutes, clarinets, cello and percussion and an exclusively First Nations program.