Above: William Barton performs his composition ‘Journey to the Edge of the Horizon’ with members of SSO’s wind, brass and string sections. Featured image: Barton demonstrates the variety of sounds possible from his instrument, captivating the large City Recital Hall audience. Photo credit: Cassandra Hannagan.
In our current global environment, full of conflict, aggression and clash of cultures and community, this special concert with heart-warming collaboration, shared stories and discovery was a refreshing event. And one in the midweek timeslot that filled every level of the large City Recital Hall venue.
Inspirational drawcard William Barton is a prodigious humanitarian, songwriter, yidaki expert and sought-after crossover musician with a wealth of awarded albums, performances and compositions to his name. He has a history of working with local plus international classical orchestras in a career which has involved him interpreting works by progressive Australian creatives Peter Sculthorpe, Elena Kats-Chernin and Liza Lim.
Barton’s programme notes to this event included insights such as: “We now journey together to the Edge of the Horizon where we find truth and honesty and the best of humanity where the view of our world is about understanding and caring…..That magic place exists upon the horizon – we are already there, we just need to listen”
Reading such words was rewarding enough of a take-home, even before the easy, expressive and successful collaboration with ten orchestral musicians and Barton’s own poet-singer-songwriter mother Aunty Delmae Barton touched us. Through his own music, playing two yidaki instruments, guitar and powerful vocalisations this hard-working musician presents a unique blend of cultures, musical formats and co-operation where expression and impact is consistently at a soaring, worthwhile and necessarily high level.
Above: William Barton performs with Sydney Symphony Orchestra string players. Photo credit: Cassandra Hannagan.
With compositions dating from 2006 to 2024, this excursion with Sydney Symphony Orchestra included works already awarded, well-known, recorded and easily found on streaming platforms. The intimate environment and genuine exchange was magnified by including his own mother in the mix. Her penetrating voice was stunning and her spoken word recitation in Birdsong at Dusk was edge-of-our-traditional-concert-hall-seat stuff.
Barton’s own direct and strong vocalisations, humour and musicality in the centre of any line-up of classical musicians resonated well in our 2026 end of a world with questionable cultural interaction. The welcome to country given at the concert’s opening included conversation and commentary on Australia’s fumbling through the challenges of reconciliation, praising the role of the Arts and First Nations plus other creatives or performers in urging us to move towards a future with more understanding and grass roots caring. Before any note of William Barton’s music was heard, this was already an exchange with impressive impact.
Above: Aunty Delmae Barton provided vocalisations and recitations during her son’s works. Photo credit: Cassandra Hannagan.
We witnessed Barton’s masterful control of his instrument and a well-blended tapestry created through inimitable gesturing in scored and improvised heterophony that was complex but never without clarity or a followable, colourful direction in the synthesis.
Escalating to the final work for the event, Journey to the Edge of the Horizon (2024) with wind quintet, cello and double bass this journey featured seamless live performance and an inspirational mix of ancient musical techniques for developing voice, instrument and energy. The easy flux between instrumental and vocal expression within the works and the rebuilding of classical ensemble writing was a rewarding feature here. In particular, the happy marriage of wind instrument gesturing, especially with Samuel Jacobs’ french horn reiterations, with Barton’s sensitive yidaki bravura was a highlight of the music played by the larger ensemble.
Above: the ensemble performs ‘journey to the Edge of the Horizon. Photo credit: Cassandra Hannagan.
William Barton performing his own catalogue is where he deserves to be orbiting right now, after a career spanning from Mount Isa to ‘classical’ concert halls of the world. His creativity works well in versions for voice, yidaki, and both in conjunction with string quintet and larger wind and string ensemble with Sydney Symphony Orchestra musicians.
The audience’s stillness and ecstatic ovation after experiencing newness from old traditions in moments such as Carnarvon Spirit and Petrichor demonstrates (in the words of a wise teenage Barton) that we are ready in the Arts in the Antipodes, despite what is occurring in other colonised messses in the world, to ‘be ‘passing on the internal song of humanity’.
This concert event is singing out boldly for repetition and a recording well past the Angel Place and Picton concerts scheduled this year. Its concept is an accessible and vivid shining light this June in Sydney and for the programming of Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s large swoop of diverse concerts in their annual season.
Songs from Storytellers, mixing performing cultures and language, fetured the following artists:
William Barton (voice, yidaki, gutiar), Aunty Delmae Barton (voice), Harry Bennetts (violin), Emma Jezek (violin), Tobias Breider (viola), Catherine Hewgill (cello), Kees Boersma (double bass), Emma Scholl (flute), Alexandre Oguey (cor anglais), Francesco Celata (clarinet), Todd Gibson-Cornish (bassoon), and Samuel Johnson (horn).
