BY SAMUEL COTTELL
When Australian poet Judith Wright finished any written correspondence, she signed it off ‘with love and fury’ – an important message that speaks of her passion not just for poetry, but for many more important issues that are local to Australia, such as conservation, the environment and reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. Now, one of Australia’s most acclaimed singer/songwriters Katie Noonan is taking this as a point of departure for her latest album and tour with the acclaimed Brodsky Quartet. The new album features a song cycle by nine Australian composers all set to the text of Judith Wright’s poetry – and Katie is now signing and singing her own ‘love and fury’ on this project.
At first, Katie didn’t know of Wright’s poetry until she discovered that the Judith Wright Centre for the Performing Arts had been created in Katie’s home town of Brisbane. “Whoever decided to pick her for the building namesake led to this album being made,” Katie says. So what was it about Wright’s poetry that was so appealing to Katie?
“I found her poetic voice to be very strong and visceral and extremely Australian; honest and quite brutal, really,” she says. “I felt that would be a really lovely muse for myself and a bunch of Australian composers to create a song cycle of art songs celebrating Australian literature and music.
“There are two main things that run through her work that resonate with me. Firstly, a genuine desire and sadness for a lack of understanding of our Indigenous culture – and then a genuine wish and hope and dream for true reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. I think, sadly, we are really far away from that but Judith’s words really speak strongly, posthumously, to that wish, which I also share with her.
“Also, her deep desire for a greater respect of environment and ecology here in Australia. I think that is particularly in the poem The Slope that Carl Vine used; she could be talking about politicians today, it’s so relevant.”
Katie’s love affair with the Brodsky Quartet began several years ago when she heard the group’s collaboration with Elvis Costello on the album The Juliet Letters. “To me, they redefined what a string quartet and a voice could do and they took it to new, exciting levels,” Katie says. “Their approach to music just seems to be very much similar to my ethos, which is very open to collaborating with all kinds of musicians from all different walks of life and indeed not even musicians, just artists and creatives as well.” So when the chance to work with them came about, in the form of a grant with which Australian artists could collaborate with overseas musicians, the wheels were set in motion.
The album features a who’s who of Australian composers and Katie asked all of them to choose whatever poem of Wright’s they wished. The result, which Katie calls a song cycle, features works by Carl Vine, Elena Kats-Chernin, Richard Tognetti, Iain Grandage, Andrew Ford, David Hirschfelder, Paul Grabowsky, Paul Dean and John Rodgers, and Katie herself. “I really wanted it to have a broad range of sonic worlds, so I think all of these composers are very strong and very unique in their own way and they don’t sound like anybody else,” she explains. “You know when you are listening to these particular composers.”
There’s an important message in the poetry of Wright regarding the reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. When Katie was overseas recording the album it just happened, by chance, that the first rehearsal was on Australian Day. “One of the last things Judith Wright did before she died was march on the grounds of Parliament House for Indigenous equality, and here we were on the other side of the world [in England] where most of white Australia originated from.
“They were like, ‘what is Australia Day?’ and I told them what it was and they were like, ‘why would you celebrate this?’. There is a discussion happening at the moment. I think we should celebrate the time we became a sovereign nation or whatever – celebrating basically cultural genocide is a very weird thing to do. It just gets re-branded and we don’t think about the original story. It’s not a bad thing to celebrate Australia Day, it’s great to celebrate all the great things about Australia, but there needs to be a look at the other side of the story.”
I asked Katie about how music, and indeed, the musicians who perform it can enact social change and also help demonstrate important issues to audiences. Katie recalls that she had never really thought about this until after she wrote a song called The Special Ones (which is about the ending of a close friendship). “I was about 21 and I had these woman in their 30s and 40s coming up to me and saying, ‘that song spoke to me deeply about my abusive relationship with my husband and it’s empowered me to leave’, and all of this stuff which was quite phenomenal, but which was also overwhelming and quite scary for such a young woman,” Katie says.
“Then I realised that music has a responsibility and it is a very powerful healing force, so you need to use it to do good. So I guess that has been my overall thing with my music. I am not an overtly political singer but I think I speak a quiet politics with my music. Musicians have often been at the forefront of change, so I think it is important to lead by example in the things you believe in.
“I have been lucky enough to work with some of our most Indigenous artists and there is so much future there, but I think until we want to walk their world, genuinely, true reconciliation isn’t going to happen just because we want them to walk in our world.”
Katie’s own piece The Surfer also has a strong connection with the project. “I was asked by Bernard Fanning to play at the Anniversary of the Marine Conservation Fund and as I looked into it I found that Judith Wright was one of the founding members of the Fund, which I had no idea about when this album was already under way. So I thought, ‘wow, maybe I could write my piece for this’. As it was all about water, I ended up playing The Ocean by Led Zeppelin and had lots of fun doing that. In that song there is a blues jam in 12/8 at the end, with the guitar riff [Katie sings the riff], and that became the motif of The Surfer.
“The Surfer seemed like it was just the perfect poem, as it is about the really beautiful and physical relationship between humans and the water. I’ve never been a surfer, it’s on my to-do list in life. And also, a friend of ours had passed away a few years ago and the only time my husband had paddled out to sea was to go and scatter our friends ashes. So there was this kind of memory and themes around the ocean and the surfer and music, and it all just came together in that piece. It seemed really easy and it just wrote itself in one afternoon.”
The album has recently been released and Katie has just launched the national tour. So what can audiences expect to take away from all of this and what is the importance of this work?
“I think it is just great to shine light on a beautiful Australian poet,” Katie says. “Certainly a lot of my generation daresay don’t know about. But I feel it’s important to share her work and what she is about, and perhaps be inspired to learn more about our environment and understanding Indigenous culture. But also, to come and share in beautiful music-making with a world class string quartet.
This album and tour is much more than music – it is a social statement that sheds light on issues for Australia. With the combination of Katie Noonan’s sublime voice and the renowned Brodsky Quartet, this is the perfect coalescence of creative collaborations to demonstrate how powerful music and poetry can be for social change.
With Love and Fury is out now and Katie and the Brodsky Quartet are undertaking a national tour of the project. For more info click here.
Image supplied.
