An Immersive musical journey with Professor Julian Marshall

Beginning in 2007 with the startling discovery of the truly remarkable yet tragically little-known poet Gertrud Kolmar, who perished in Auschwitz in 1943, composer Julian Marshall set out on what has become a deeply involving, transformative creative journey. This has, so far, resulted in five works under the collective name The Welten Project – the seventeen-poem cycle on which all works are based.

In this presentation, Julian will share the story and process of the project and play a specially curated playlist of music from each of five Welten works written so far.

Julian says about the event:

“Towards the end of 2024, I began to feel that an event offering some sort of consolidation and contextualisation of Welten Project works written so far would be worth exploring. I had for some time become aware that from each of the five existing works there could be drawn a kind of distilled, concentrated playlist – a carefully curated compilation.

During the evening, in addition to presenting the playlist, I will discuss the idea of how music and the arts can act as powerful tools in ‘bearing witness’ to those experiences, both personally and culturally, that we may prefer, knowingly or unknowingly, to keep in the shadows of our experience.

As the poet David Whyte says: ‘To live with our shadow is to understand how human beings live at a frontier between light and dark’.

And quoting from Carl Jung himself in his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections: ‘As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being’.

Is it not the case, that in recognising and liberating our shadow selves, both personally and collectively, far from becoming dominated and over-run by the ‘dark side’, we may actually begin to understand that what these shadows are asking for – and needing – is, at root, simply, recognition. Their dominance becomes all the more actual, literal and ‘acted out’ the less they are granted just this.

I very much look forward to sharing this new endeavour with you – an event that will take the form of an immersive listener experience prefaced by an introductory talk and completed with a Q&A session.“

You will hear recorded performances from: James Gilchrist, Melanie Pappenheim, Miranda Ostler, Avigal Tlalim, Louisa Clein, Sophie Harris, Lucy Railton, Raj Bhaumik, Philharmonia Orchestra cellos (sextet), The Rupa Ensemble, Schoolhouse 6 Ensemble – conducted by Howard Moody. Engineering and mixing by Philip Bagenal, Jonas Persson and Lucy James.

Presented in conjunction with the School of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney and Mandelbaum House.