ASO presents Kaurna Acknowledgement of Country, Pudnanthi Padninthi (‘The Coming and the Going’)
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is proud to announce a specially commissioned Kaurna Acknowledgement of Country, Pudnanthi Padninthi (‘The Coming and the Going’), that will be performed at the start of ASO concerts.
The musical Acknowledgement is a collaboration with Kaurna Narungga musicians and composers Jack Buckskin and Jamie Goldsmith, and orchestrator/arranger Mark Simeon Ferguson, and Grayson Rotumah, lecturer at the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music.
ASO Managing Director, Vincent Ciccarello, said Pudnanthi Padninthi reflects the musical heritage of the Adelaide Plains and our connection to the land where we work and make music.
“This musical Acknowledgement of Country reflects the ASO’s commitment to building respectful relationships and sharing cultures as outlined in our Reconciliation Action Plan,” Ciccarello said.
Jack Buckskin said music, song and dance were an important part of Indigenous culture.
“Music’s just another educational tool. It’s one thing to be told a story, but you can forget the story very quickly. Song is the next stage of learning,” Buckskin said.
Arranged by Mark Simeon Ferguson for the full 75-piece Adelaide Symphony Orchestra after nine months of working with Buckskin and Goldsmith, the Acknowledgement opens with Section Principal Percussion Steve Peterka playing two boomerangs with a steady beat.
“This is about the Jack and Jamie, Kaurna culture and songs. This is about them sharing their Country with us and, and we can’t get in the way. And so it’s their melodies, and anything I do can’t be in the way of what they’re doing,” Mark said.
ASO Percussionist Steven Peterka plays the Wadnas in the acknowledgement, he says “The Wadnas make a unique and ancient sound, one we can’t produce with standard orchestral percussion instruments. To be entrusted with the role of playing them in the orchestra is an honour, a humbling experience every time I hold them.”
Shivani Marx, ASO General Manager, People, Culture and Operations, spoke of the importance of the musical acknowledgement and how it forms part of the ASO’s greater commitment to reconciliation. She believes nothing is lost by the absence of words.
“In fact, what I hope is that something is gained by connecting it to what we do as an orchestra. We live and we make music on Kaurna land. And so for us, there’s nothing more meaningful than using music to convey the connection to the land and to pay our respects,” Marx says.
“And the same can be said for our audience. We have acknowledgements in our programmes. Acknowledgements come on in our venues, but I think this connects the acknowledgement more with us as the artists, and the audience who have come together for a shared experience. I hope that the emotional resonance can be even deeper.”
“Pudnanthi Padninthi… is an eloquent piece, opening with the steady beat of clapsticks followed by the horns, with the brass and wind instruments evoking the kinds of sounds heard in a traditional ceremony. With the feel of a fanfare, this is a symbolic rather than literal welcoming of the audience, and it represents creative and respectful engagement between cultures.” Limelight Magazine
ASO wishes to thank the project collaborators including Grayson Rotumah, Jack Buckskin, Jamie Goldsmith and Mark Simeon Ferguson for bringing this project to life.
ASO commissioned South Australian film makers Randy Larcombe and Suzi Ting to document the making of ASO’s Kaurna Acknowledgement of Country, Pudnanthi Padninthi (‘The Coming and the Going’) the short film can be viewed at www.aso.com.au
Shivani Marx, Mark Simeon Ferguson, Steven Peterka, Jack Buckskin, Grayson Rotumah
About the artists
Jack Kanya Kudnuitya Buckskin is a proud Kaurna and Narungga man who has dedicated his life to learning and passing on his knowledge and language of the Adelaide Plains to future generations of Kaurna people. Jack currently works with Tauondi Aboriginal College in Port Adelaide as an Aboriginal Cultural Service Mentor, and has been a strong icon in the revitalisation process of Kaurna language through managing and performing song and dance with Kuma Kaaru Cultural Services and through teaching Kaurna language. He believes that as Kaurna language has come from the land this is the only place in the world you will find it; it was in the country before we were born and it is our duty to ensure it continues by learning and using it together.
Jamie Goldsmith is a Kaurna Narungga man from the Adelaide Plains and the Yorke Peninsula. His Kaurna name is Ngungana Kartemeru (First Born Kookaburra) Ilyaitpinna (father of Ilya). He is the only surviving son of Uncle Stevie ‘Gadlabarti’ Goldsmith. Like his father before him, Jamie is a world renowned Yidaki artist (the word for Digeridoo used by the Yolngu, the original creators of the instrument), playing all over Australia and overseas and celebrated widely for his immense talent.
Jamie has also performed and travelled widely with both the Paitya and Taikirtinna Dance groups, in which he has performed and held workshops in schools and festivals nationwide and overseas.
Through his versatility as both a musician and dancer, Jamie has performed at many high-profile events – playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people; welcoming the crowd to Kaurna Land; and sharing his talent and culture with generosity, grace and good humour. Jamie also shares his late father’s belief that language and culture are intrinsically linked; and has also worked with the University of Adelaide’s Linguistics Department, preserving and teaching the Kaurna language for the future generations.
Jamie also worked for over 10 years as an educator at the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre, running cultural tours around the Warriparinga Wetlands (windy place by the river), teaching school groups and the wider community about the ways in which the Kaurna people have used the environment of the Adelaide Plains for food, medicine, art and culture for many thousands of years prior to Colonial occupation.
Furthermore, Jamie has also worked at the internationally renowned Aboriginal Arts centre, Tandanya, and is a talented wood carver. Currently Jamie is continuing in his role as a community leader, working within the Department of Corrections to support Aboriginal people within the prison system.
When he isn’t doing that, he’s travelling all over the world playing Yidaki for the incredible ‘Electric Fields’. Jamie and his Yidaki, alongside the talented Yankunytjatjara singer Zachariah Fielding, is a dynamic fusion of Kaurna and Anangu culture; a powerful illustration of the diversity of Aboriginal talent and the ways in which it has evolved for contemporary global audiences without compromising on the importance of culture.
Strength, knowledge and empowerment of young people and the community are at the forefront for Jamie, and he works closely with Aboriginal youth, mentoring them and helping them to develop a strong sense of self and strength of culture. His performing arts, music, language, cultural tourism, mentorship, work with youth and his current work in corrections are evidence of Jamie’s commitment to being a community leader with the kind of talent, wisdom, strength, grace and generosity of a man who could only be his father’s son; who carries on the Goldsmith name and legacy by empowering everyone around him, and being the kind of teacher to his own two children that Gadlabarti was to him.
Mark Simeon Ferguson, composer/songwriter/arranger/pianist/musical director, was born into a musical family in Whyalla and raised in Clare. He was a finalist in the National Jazz Awards in 1999 and in the same year he completed a Master of Music in Jazz Performance at the University of Adelaide (where he is now Head of Jazz).
His commissions for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra include ASO Does Latin with the Marmalade Man (a concert of his own Latin jazz works arranged for orchestra), Herman and Rosie (a children’s show based on Gus Gordon’s book of the same name), Gospel Messiah (a revision of Handel’s Messiah) and The Bush Concert (a children’s show based on Helga Visser’s book of the same name). The Bush Concert has also been performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the Sydney Opera House, the Melbourne Youth Orchestra in the Recital Centre and the ASO in Harbin, China (after translation into Mandarin). In January 2020 Ferguson was asked by the ASO to write an elegy in response to the devastating bushfires, and they performed this work, For the Lost in three concerts in Feb 2020.
MEDIA ENQUIRIES:
Cheree McEwin, Publicist, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
08 8233 6205 / 0416 181 679 / mcewinc@aso.com.au