About the Project: Rafael Karlen
Composer & saxophonist
People around the globe are increasingly concerned about climate change and the long-term effects of government and corporate decision making. All around the world we can see questionable short-term gains prioritized over the value of history, culture, and the environment. A striking example of this can be seen in Hasankeyf, an ancient city in Turkey which has recently been flooded for a controversial dam project, washing away 12,000 years of history.
I first learned about Hasankeyf after reading a powerful Photo Essay by the Turkish photographer Emin Ozmen. This inspired me to write this large-scale work for choir and string orchestra exploring and based on the concept of sinking cities and erasing histories. I am thrilled that The Australian Voices and Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra agreed to develop, perform, and record this new work and that Pearly Black contributed such rich lyrical content.
The destruction of history is a charged and layered concept to unravel. Hasankeyf is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and has seen countless empires and civilizations. The dam project is in a poor, dry part of Turkey and its’ construction often utilised the local inhabitants to help flood their own city. Many residents were forced to relocate completely or move to a new pop-up town with a view of the waters above where they used to live. In addition to the tragic loss of history, this dam will also cause massive knock-on effects to the people and environment downstream. Significantly, the dam is expected to only have a functional lifespan of 60 to 100 years after erasing 12,000 years of history.
Many questions have come up while working on this project. We chose to focus on questioning what is gained, what is lost, and what is the value of history as history is curated by selecting what to preserve and remember. A loss in one part of the world is a loss everywhere.
There are countless layers and aspects to the story of Hasankeyf and the loss it represents. Early on, I knew that I wanted the work to cover a broad range of emotional and conceptual territory and felt that voices and strings were perfectly suited to this task. Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra and The Australian Voices are two fantastic and versatile ensembles that I have followed for many years. Both ensembles are bold, open-minded, and dedicated to fostering new music. I approached Pearly Black, a beautiful singer herself, to write lyrics as I was looking for an artist with a diverse range of experience and with many reference points to bring to the music. I was very excited when all these wonderful artists agreed to be involved.
The impact and gravity of the situation is difficult to comprehend and navigating how artists on the other side of the world can/should reflect on these events is not a simple undertaking. It has been incredibly rewarding working with Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, The Australian Voices and Pearly, and growing together through the project – thank you!
Pearly Black
Singer & Lyricist
The call came out of the blue – a musician/composer I knew by reputation only, asking me to collaborate as wordsmith on a new musical work. It was a surprising request. “Are you sure you want me?” I asked, as I am far more usually called on as a singer. Rafael replied that, yes, he was sure, and I am eternally thankful that he did, as this has been a deeply enriching project to work on.
I was immediately and powerfully drawn into the story of the drowning of Hasankeyf and the many other towns and villages that have been inundated by the massive GAP dam project in southeast Turkey. An evocative photo-essay by Turkish photographer, Emin Özmen, delicately portrays the complexities, contradictions and losses involved in the long process of rerouting the rivers that birthed civilization. The Tigris and the Euphrates are simultaneously mythical and very real: thought to have fed Eden itself, now dammed to make power whilst drowning places where people have lived for millennia. It presents a very rich seam to mine for poetic imagery.
Yet there were many times working on this project that I could not find words to articulate the depth of loss involved. Despite writing many, I still haven’t found the words. I wonder if there can ever be adequate words. How does one articulate the clanging cognitive dissonance of losing one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in human history?
Through art we can bear witness, amplify the voices of the lost and those that remain, and relay a big story from one side of the world to the other. Perhaps it provides a distant mirror in which we can examine our own complex relationship with progress and the cost of it. It has been a unique privilege to give voice to this story in collaboration with Rafael, the incredible artists in Camerata and the wonder that is The Australian Voices, to bring this story across the aether. I can’t thank Rafael enough for making that unexpected phone call all those months ago.
Brendan Joyce
Violinist and Artistic Director, Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra
I’m excited about this performance! Seven or maybe eight years ago now, I got into a habit of visiting a coffee shop in the Valley on a late Saturday morning. The coffee was excellent, and the surroundings were sleek and minimal other than a fantastic black-line-only mural drawn by the barista. A few times I saw a chap that seemed like a familiar face from the local music scene. That chap was Rafael Karlen, and we met there a few more times and for more coffees, and got chatting about music and collaborating.
A few years later, in 2017, I went to see pianist and composer, Joe Chindamo perform impromptu at a jazz club while on a tour that visited Melbourne. Rafael, with his interests in jazz happened to be there too, and though he had moved to Sydney it became clear that it wasn’t just coffee but serendipity that was at work. That serendipity was further cemented when Camerata’s then Executive Director, Adam Tucker, happened to be at the Peggy Glanville Hicks house in Sydney for Rafael’s final concert of works after a year-long residency there.
Rafael eventually proposed the idea for the work you hear tonight – that was around 2019 – and proposed involving The Australian Voices with whom we’d just performed (an inadvertent collaboration on a regional tour where we ended up in the same town (Gympie) on the same night, and the only solution was to share the stage, literally). For me, the attraction of a narrative – one that could be explored from many angles and had deep expressive possibilities, one that was and remains current – was very attractive. A lyricist was needed, and Rafael brought the well-known singer/songwriter, Pearly Black on board in this capacity. Rafael managed to secure funding to record the work, and eventually some of the funds to do creative development through the Australia Council, and Camerata was able to bring the performance of the work through funding from Arts Queensland, through its Judith Wright Arts Centre’s First Night Showcase program. We are grateful to the Australian Digital Concert Hall for their assistance in bringing this online world premiere to fruition!
Some of you know that COVID lockdowns came into play with the scheduling of the creative developments and the ultimate performance date. We are finally here though, and I hope you are moved as much as I am by this story and by Rafael’s music, and that you’ll agree that it was worth the wait!
