JENNY’S DREAM : TO PRODUCE AUSTRALIA’S FIRST ELECTRIC VIOLA DA GAMBA CD

Jenny Erikkson’s group Elysian Fields is Australia’s only electric viola da gamba ensemble. Their dream/vision is to take one of the Western world’s oldest instruments into the 21st century! Her troupe is seeking funding help from music lovers to make this dream possible. 

Things are already in action. Leading jazz artists and composers Matt McMahon and Matt Keegan have each written a remarkable major song cycle for the CD – making them the first and second Australian composers ever to write vocal music for the electric gamba!  

Bassist Siebe Pogson has written several pieces as has Eriksson herself.  Each of these works has been premiered and “played in” to live audiences.  

The critics have been very complimentary. In May 2017 leading jazz critic, John Shand, reviewed the premiere of Matt McMahon’s setting of poems by Thomas Wyatt in the Sydney Morning Herald and gave us 8.5/10:

“Here was a head-spinning dialogue between half a millennium ago and now, and a sound as foreign as dreaming someone else’s dreams. It emanated from Jenny Eriksson’s electric viola da gamba, the only example in Australia….The songs were exquisitely sung by Susie Bishop (who also played violin). Clearly at ease with the language, she neither over-dramatised the pieces nor made them stilted, rather enhancing Wyatt’s tone of quiet melancholy and amused resignation.”

Music lovers wanting to make a contribution to make Jennifer’s troupe’s dream come true is to make a fully tax-deductible donation through the Australian Cultural Fund (ACF).

The ACF is a fundraising platform for Australian artists.  Managed by Creative Partnerships Australia, it was established by the Australian Government in 2003 to encourage donations to the arts.  Search for Jenny Eriksson or Elysian Fields at: https://australianculturalfund.org.au/