After a performance of the Yabun Yaguna pieces at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2011, Ms Julia Torpey–Hurst an Indigenous researcher in local history and place, asked me if I had plans to play the Sydney Aboriginal chants more frequently. She expressed with some urgency that young Aboriginal people needed to hear these Sydney chants. She asked me if the Conservatorium had plans to make the music more accessible to young Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander people. Ms Torpey’s research was centred on gathering people’s stories who were linked in some way to the Darug and Gundungurra lands.467 , As we talked we developed the concept of OUR MUSIC- performing place, listening to Sydney. This would be a continuing event for playing and listening to local Indigenous music, and we hoped to use the Conservatorium of Music as the meeting place, seeing it was the place of research, and its significant cultural location of Sydney’s Indigenous history.468
The founding idea of OUR MUSIC was for Indigenous musicians of the Sydney region to meet, listen and play together at the Conservatorium in preparation for the OUR MUSIC day. I was therefore presented with the exciting prospect of meeting many Indigenous musicians, and introducing them to the sounds of the Stuart piano. My research plan was to develop my playing of the Stuart sound as an Australian sound. So connecting musically with Indigenous musicians and the Stuart piano was ideal for my research. We arranged a meeting of Indigenous performers at the Conservatorium and planned the first OUR MUSIC day as each person expressed an interest in attending and performing at the music day. The musicians who attended were experienced semi-professional or fully professional singer, songwriters. Subsequently the inaugural OUR MUSIC day was held on the 30th June 2012, in the Verbrugghen Hall at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Also attended the meeting was Dr Chris Sainsbury, head of music at Eora TAFE in Redfern Sydney. Eora TAFE specializes in music courses for Indigenous music students. Sainsbury was confident that OUR MUSIC would provide a good platform for his music students. Three Eora TAFE students studying composition with Dr Sainsbury contributed new and diverse works for the OUR MUSIC day. On the day Dr Sainsbury gave a presentation about his Regionalist 469 style of composition, demonstrating his award winning orchestral piece First Light. In 2012, Dr Chris Sainsbury became the first Indigenous PhD of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
467Western Sydney the Blue Mountain and the Southern Highlands. http://www.deepeninghistories.anu.edu.au/at-the-heart-of-it/
468 see p.25 Part II‘What We Know About This Place’
469 2 ChristopherSainsbury.
