The first three pieces – Ancient & New, Timelines and Barrabul-la Voices are scored in detail and performed exactly as scored. The chants are sung by Indigenous singers Clarence Slockee and Matthew Doyle as notated in the score. Indigenous saxophonist Brenda Gifford plays the Barrabull-la chant as per the original transcription in Barrabul-la Voices. The chants and accompaniments are improvised in the fourth piece, Guyanalung Bayui .The score of Guyanalung Bayui is therefore a set of musical cues from which the durations of actual playing and singing are improvised by myself and Richard Green. As previously noted, in the preparatory sessions, Richard Green would always improvise the rhythm and pitch of the chants, whereas Clarence, Matthew and Brenda were more interested in musically interpreting the actual transcriptions.

These compositions portray my current musical approach to both performance and composition that focuses on both the sounds of the Stuart piano and the aesthetics of knowing and performing Aboriginal music with Aboriginal performers. Essentially I am a jazz musician, having experienced my musical life through jazz performance and composition. My practice of improvisation, developed in jazz style, has enabled me to adapt to many other styles of music performance. So here, I have adapted my musical language to two new paradigms, the Stuart piano sounds, and Aboriginal music. Music that serves a cultural function, as Aboriginal music traditionally does,⁴⁴⁷ has interested me over many years of playing church music, music in hospitals, prisons, that is, the functions of music for assisting in medical healing, mental diversion, education and worship. Viewing music from the perspective of its social function places less emphasis on individual performance and more emphasis on what the community role music making has in the community.

I have investigated the functional or elemental sound of the Stuart piano and creatively developed musical associations with its qualities of sound and my national musical identity. I therefore interpret the Stuart & Sons piano as a significant ‘Australian’ instrument in these works, which informs me of Australian qualities of sound. In a similar sense, traditional Aboriginal music is often described as having a function of a repository of cultural knowledge used to store, inform and confirm cultural identity.⁴⁴⁸

^{447     4}Ellis, 16-18.
^{448     5}Ellis, 16-18.