Canberra International Music Festival / Magic Realism, Jane Sheldon, Mark Atkins, Erkki Veltheim. At Street Theatre, until May 2. Reviewed by NICK HORN.

Festivals challenge artists and composers to experiment with new sounds, new forms and new modes of presentation. 

Erkki Veltheim and his collaborators took up the challenge enthusiastically with two new compositions in this program. 

The shorter of these featured soprano Jane Sheldon in Veltheim’s arrangement of O Spectabiles Viri (O men of sight – what a sight!), by 12th century composer, Hildegard von Bingen. The second was an extended collaboration with Mark Atkins, storyteller and didjeridoo player. Each performance was accompanied by a pre-recorded soundbed.

This evening’s experiments were not, perhaps, uniformly successful, but the eager audience at The Street Theatre was generous in its reception of these offbeat works of music drama.

In the first piece, Sheldon is revealed alone, as if underwater, spotlit against a dark stage, dressed in a gaudy, shamanistic costume. Her discontinuous rendition of Hildegarde’s original mystical song is set against the pre-recorded medieval sounds of portative organ and hurdy-gurdy, layered disconcertingly with bat sonar samples and electronics that represent – according to Veltheim’s notes in the Festival program, only available online – bats as blind transmitters of Hildegarde’s visions. 

The purity of Sheldon’s vocal tone is inarguable. She is a fine singer of early and contemporary music. But our experience of Hildegarde’s ecstatic, looping melody was undercut by the disruptive soundscape, and the staging and lighting was too static to enliven the “bat-vision” concept.

The main work of the evening was Mungangga Garlagula, a series of tableaux staged to resemble a scene around a campfire, with Atkins’ performance supported by a soundtrack (notably featuring Scott Tinkler’s jazz trumpet and Genevieve Lacey’s recorders) and Veltheim’s live percussion and violin contributions. We were witness to a long homecoming journey, conducted through song, poetry, humorous anecdotes, ghost stories and dream visions, interspersed with extended didgeridoo solos.

Those didgeridoo interludes were the highlight. We were in the hands of a master. Moving between three different instruments, Atkins built layer upon layer on top of a growling ground, creating eerie and gorgeous all-encompassing sound-worlds, sympathetically supported by the soundbed and Veltheim’s unobtrusive percussion. They offered a strong and tangible feeling of the experiences evoked in the narrative. 

Dramatically, there is room for improvement in this production. Stage movement could be more theatrically aware, with Atkins appearing a little unsure during transitions; momentum was lost as a result.

A country-style guitar song as opener seemed at odds tonally with the rest of the show, and a poem about the dispossession of indigenous people might have benefited from a more dramatic delivery, as a break from Atkins’ otherwise effective flat, dry tone of voice. The accompaniment sometimes overwhelmed the narration.

Overall, however, the feeling of country intensified through uncanny story, didgeridoo and soundscape, making the final episode deeply moving, an account of Atkins’ dream encounter with an ancestor, telling him: You not lost boy – you home.