Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO Will Perform With the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
The performance is on Friday 11 July, 7.30pm.
By: Stephi Wild Mar. 13, 2025
To mark this year's 50th anniversary of NAIDOC Week, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will celebrate the strength, vision and legacy of Yorta Yorta/Yuin composer and soprano Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO with a powerful concert of works by this much-loved and acclaimed national treasure.
Under the baton of Short Black Opera artist Aaron Wyatt and guest conductor Nicolette Fraillon, with yidaki (didgeridoo) virtuoso William Barton, Short Black Opera artists Jess Hitchcock and Lillie Walker and members of Dhungala Children's Choir, join the MSO on stage to acknowledge a remarkable career dedicated to the future of First Nations voices in the classical music space.
MSO First Nations Creative Chair since 2019, Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO is an acclaimed composer, performer and Artistic Director. She is also a respected human rights advocate and recognised thought leader on the importance of cultural authority in the Art Music space.
I am honoured to receive this recognition from my colleagues at the MSO on the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC week celebrations. I am particularly proud to share this occasion with Short Black Opera artists Jess Hitchcock and Aaron Wyatt and introduce Dhungala Children's Choir graduate Lillie Walker who will make her solo debut with the MSO in the performance of my Acknowledgement of Country – Long Time Living Here (2020). I am also thrilled that my dear friend of 30 years, William Barton, will reprise Baparripna, a work I created for him in 2021 and overjoyed that my wife, Maestro Nicolette Fraillon AM who will join me on stage as guest condcutor for an encore performance of Earth (MSO 2024).
Most of the works featured in this program came to life through the vision and commitment of MSO's commissioning process. By helping me to champion the visibility and voice of First Nations musicians, the MSO has had a profound impact on the classical music sector nationwide, inspiring many other organisations to do as they have done. I will always be proud that it happened here, first with the MSO. Deborah Cheetham Fraillon
The concert program features key moments from Cheetham Fraillon's compositional partnership MSO from Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace (2019) to Cheetham Fraillion's 2024 work Earth, composed to complement the intent of Holst's The Planets. Other hightlights include Nanyubak (Yorta Yorta - To Dream) with MSO violist Christopher Moore, Baparripna (Yorta Yorta – Dawn) with William Barton (yidaki), and Dutala, star filled sky with MSO Chorus.
Throughout a long and distinguished career Cheetham Fraillon (Yorta Yorta/Yuin) has championed the voice and visibility of classically trained Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians through her achievements as Artistic Director of Australia's First Nations opera company Short Black Opera (est. 2009), Director of Dhungala Children's Choir (est. 2008) and founder of Ensemble Dutala, Australia's first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Chamber Ensemble. As a composer she has specialised in chamber, orchestral, choral and operatic settings of First Nations traditional languages and narratives. Landmark compositions include Australia's first Indigenous opera Pecan Summer (2010), Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace (2018) and the ongoing multi layered, multilingual chamber music series Woven Song (2018).
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