Woven Song - A Seymour Centre 50th Anniversary Event
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https://www.seymourcentre.com/archived/2025/woven-song/
Date Reviewed: 21/11/2025
The Seymour Centre marked its 50th anniversary with Woven Song, a one-night event on 21 November 2025, that fused chamber music, visual art, and cultural storytelling into a tapestry of sound and image. Conceived by Yorta Yorta soprano Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO, the evening was both a concert and a commemoration, weaving together voices, instruments, with projected artworks to honour the venue’s legacy as a hub for Sydney’s performing arts.
The program unfolded as a series of short compositions, each inspired by the Embassy Tapestries—textiles created by celebrated First Nations artists such as Brooke Andrew, Patrick Mung Mung, Pedro Wanaeamirri, and Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra. These luminous works, displayed in embassies from Singapore to Paris, Tokyo to Dublin, were projected on screen, transforming the York Theatre into a gallery of shifting colour and texture. Against this backdrop, Cheetham’s voice carried reverence and urgency, her soprano lines threading through the ensemble with clarity and emotional weight.
She was joined by members of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music faculty, Opera Australia Orchestra, Friends of Ensemble Dutala, and guest artists Mindy Meng Wang (Guzheng) and Anne Norman (Shakuhachi). The inclusion of Chinese and Japanese instruments expanded the sonic palette, underscoring the event’s theme of interconnected art forms and international collaboration. Under the baton of Nicolette Fraillon, the ensemble moved seamlessly between Western classical idioms and more experimental textures, creating a soundscape that was at once grounded and expansive.
However, a technical mistake saw the same video played twice, disrupting the flow and drawing attention away from the music. Combined with slow stage changeovers and a visible misuse of punctuation on-screen, these glitches gave the evening a somewhat patched-together feel. The tapestries themselves were not shown in situ. Only a single photo of the Paris embassy was displayed, leaving the visual inspiration, perhaps, underexplored. Some might have found the brevity and conceptual framing cerebral rather than emotionally engaging. These were balanced by moments of genuine resonance, particularly Cheetham’s opening operatic Acknowledgement of Country and the ensemble’s integration of Asian instruments into the score.
The gowns worn by Cheetham, designed by Linda Britten for Short Black Opera, added a ceremonial flourish, underscoring her cultural roots. It was especially poignant knowing that Cheetham herself is a member of the Stolen Generations, and that her artistry now reclaims space and voice on a stage dedicated to cultural resilience. At one point, Cheetham asked: “Where are the bronze statues of the Aboriginal knowing? Where is the cultural knowing? And who is ‘Above knowing?’” Perhaps this moving piece of living art and sound is how part of weaving Aboriginal history into intemporal expressions of culture, a living archive rather than a static monument.
Woven Song succeeded in marking the Seymour Centre’s milestone with cultural ambition and artistic sincerity, even if technical errors and structural gaps diluted its impact. As a one-night celebration, it reflected the Centre’s ethos of diversity and dialogue, weaving together strands of heritage, music, and art for hopeful storytelling.
Ultimately, Cheetham’s presence and words reminded the audience that anniversaries are not only about looking back but about asking how cultural knowledge is honoured, preserved, and expressed in the present.
Reviewed by Ketvi