Arriving in Australia six years ago, musician and composer Hari Sivanesan admits he felt at a bit of a loss. Born in London to Sri Lankan parents, growing up in the UK in the 80s and 90s was “a very different place” to what he encountered in Australia, he says, “especially in terms of the arts world. The opportunities I was afforded at that time [in the UK] were so different to what exists here.”

“I felt when I arrived that I was in a dry well. I literally didn’t know what to do with myself, to the extent that I thought about going home.”

Nonetheless, he stayed and in 2019 joined forces with Dr Priya Srinivasan, a celebrated scholar, dancer and choreographer, to create Sangam, an intervention aimed at increasing representation in the arts for artists from South Asian backgrounds.

Hari Sivanesan

Hari Sivanesan. Photo © Ruiqi Fu

Sivanesan is a virtuoso on the veena, which he dubs “the mother of the sitar”, as well as a vocalist, composer and curator, who brings his Sri Lankan, Tamil heritage and his South Indian and Western classical music training together to create contemporary classical works.

One of Sangam’s earliest collaborations was with Bunjil Place in the City of Casey. Now, Sangam is to perform at Bunjil Place with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for the second year running, in a concert on 29 January called Summer Symphony, conducted by Benjamin Northey.

Asked how it came about, Sivanesan says that Sangam has collaborated with Bunjil Place on several projects in order to present emerging local artists. Keen to develop some orchestral music that draws on his heritage, he rang Bunjil Place in October 2020 and asked whether there were any orchestras they could put Sangam in touch with for their next collaboration.

“Robin [Batt, Head of Programming] at Bunjil Place came back to me the next day and said ‘how about the MSO?’ And I said, ‘absolutely!’” says Sivanesan. “So they put us in touch and that’s what seeded the initial collaboration last year.”

Last year’s concert featured the MSO performing Mozart, Beethoven and contemporary classics, while Sangam presented nine outstanding local dancers and musicians during their section of the program. The concert sold out and delighted both the audience and the musicians.

“It was very surreal… astounding,” says Sivanesan. “I don’t know how many members of the orchestra came up to us afterwards to say how much they enjoyed it. It was such a breath of fresh air to feel the reciprocity between our two performance communities.”

“Also for our artists, they are South Asian Australians whose artistic life is separated from their everyday life: they live as a South Asian classical artist on the one hand and work and socialize on the other. There is not often a place where those two worlds collide. For a lot of those nine artists, that was the first time that they invited their work friends and their uni friends to something that they did where they were so happy to say ‘this is what I do’. It was a beautiful moment for them.”

MSO Bunjil Place 2021

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sangam performers, Bunjil Place, 16 January, 2021. Photo courtesy of Casey City Council

MSO Artistic Advisor Matthew Hoy agrees that the concert was a fruitful collaboration, describing it as “transformative”.

“It was a great way for the MSO and for Bunjil Place to commence a collaboration, with Sangam being the binding element because they’ve got such a strong relationship and cultural presence in that part of Melbourne,” says Hoy.

MSO’s relationship with Bunjil Place “came out of an initiative to have more of a presence in outer metropolitan areas of Melbourne,” says Hoy. “So, in addition to the collaboration that we did at Bunjil Place, we’ve also been working with the City of Wyndham, and the City of Hume, which is in the Broadmeadows area.”

“In each place, our goal was not only to bring the orchestra to these areas, but to engage with local communities. The MSO performs in the inner areas of metropolitan Melbourne and tours regionally, so this was the missing link geographically. This is about the MSO’s intentions to go to where the audiences and communities are, not expect them to have to find the orchestra at Hamer Hall.”

“It’s very much about trying to find an authenticity and deal with some of the things in broader cultural or societal contexts around colonial systems and where that sits today in Australia. We worked a little bit with Multicultural Arts Victoria in terms of how to approach the arts in this area so I think that will expand and become deeper, and permeate more widely within the MSO as time goes on,” says Hoy.

“Last year, our goal was to embark on these collaborations and to put them around some very well-known symphonic music so we could share what the orchestra’s main fare is, but this year we are evolving the concept so there is a strong sense of the orchestra and its place in Australian music.”

This year’s program features familiar pieces by Kodály, Piazzolla and Copland as well as works by Melbourne composer Melody Eötvös and MSO’s 2022 Cybec Young Composer in Residence Alex Turley.

The Sangam segment, which will be performed by South Asian musicians and dancers, as well as the MSO, includes two sections: Encounters: Seen and Unseen and New Homes: From Loss to Hope, the latter composed by Sivanesan.

“Last year our collaboration had two prongs,” says Sivanesan. “The first prong was entitled Encounters and that was very much looking at how our worlds intersected in the past in ways that may have been forgotten, and so we have continued with that theme this year.”

Sangam 2022

An illustration of the South Indian dancers (including Amany) and musicians who toured Europe in 1838. Image courtesy of Sangam

Based on Dr Priya Srinivasan’s extensive research over 15 years, this year’s Encounters tells the story of five South Indian dancers (known as Devadasi/Kalavantalu) and three musicians who toured to Paris in 1838, at a time when India was colonised by France. They performed hundreds of shows in France, Europe and the UK, ending up in Vienna. During the tour, they met many European artists. One particularly significant encounter occurred in Paris when a teenaged dancer called Amany (a bronze statue of whom can now be seen in La Musée de Guimet) and the rest of the troupe met several composers in Vienna including Johann Strauss I and Joseph Lanner.

The dancers’ footwork and music inspired the composition of Indian-themed songs such as Strauss’s Indianer Galopp and Lanner’s Malapou-Galopp, which had a significant influence on classical music emerging from Vienna in the years to follow. The dancers and musicians disappeared from history after this encounter. Their practices also became banned in India in the 20th century, due to colonial, patriarchal and national pressures, and the women were shamed into silence and invisibility.

Encounters will explore material from that era through an experimental dance, performed live and on screen, by Srinivasan and Dr Yashoda Thakore respectively, with Melbourne-based musicians accompanying them. Encounters ends with Strauss’s Indianer Galopp, arranged by Sivanesan and Turley.

“Yashoda Thakore is an esteemed Kalavantulu artist, scholar and leader from South India and has been an incredible collaborative partner on this journey,” says Sivanesan.

Amany is the direct ancestor of Thakore’s guru Annabattula Mangayataru. “It’s been miraculous for us all to find that connection,” says Sivanesan.

Thakore describes the project as “a huge step towards exposing the layers of oppression that my Kalavantulu community lives under. Encounters is a celebration of our strong women ancestors as they became international personalities. The collaboration with Sangam directors Priya and Hari, and the MSO, helps us connect to the past and find ourselves in the present, with strength and confidence. This ethical exchange gives me hope that dance and music projects like these will bring much-needed empowerment.”

“It has been so rewarding for us to work with Yashoda Thakore, her guru and their community, and to follow the wisdom of their knowledge and practice,” says Srinivasan. “It is a privilege to bring these incredible artistic communities in India and Melbourne together. I also want to acknowledge the MSO’s willingness to go on this journey with us with care and respect.”

Priya Srinivasan

Dr Priya Srinivasan. Photo © Arun Munoz Photography

The second prong in the Sangam section looks at contemporary issues. Last year, it investigated violence against women using the metaphor of the environment. “Contemporary artistic practice enables us to examine the critical issues of our times. We develop global understandings through these local engagements,” says Srinivasan.

This year, it will explore the voices of Sri Lankan people who fled the war and made new homes in Australia in Sivanesan’s piece New Homes: From Loss to Hope.

 “Sangam has presented a similar themed work called New Homes, with a string quartet, which featured my voice and thoughts of migration. This time, the words we’re using are taken from my intergenerational peers who have escaped war-torn Sri Lanka to live in Australia. There are three parts to the piece: the hope that migration gives, the nostalgia for what is left behind, and the turbulence of the newness,” says Sivanesan.

“It will be a felt experience ­– veena, voice, lighting and words on screen – I’m hoping in two languages as well.”

Sivanesan will play the veena. “I call it the mother of the sitar because everyone knows the sitar thanks to Ravi [Shankar], god bless him. I was privileged to tour the States and UK with him in his orchestra in my teens. The veena existed before the sitar was created in India and so has a very old history. It is a seven-string lute, similar to a sitar. Another way to think about it, is that a viola to a violin is what a veena is to a sitar… it has a deeper tone.”

In developing and arranging New Homes, Sivanesan worked with Northey and Turley. He says it was a very rewarding process, with a lot of learning, patience and trust on both sides.

MSO Bunjii Place

Dr Priya Srinivasan and conductor Benjamin Northey at the concert at Bunjil Place, 2021. Photo courtesy of Casey City Council

Hoy agrees that it has been a very productive collaboration and believes it will lead to “deep and respectful listening between different worlds. The orchestra is its own construct and brings its own cultural traditions and its practice and form, but I think this collaboration has really sown the seed for going deeper and examining the appropriate approach or methodology of doing things in this way, so there not a sense of one element being less [valued] or appropriated by the other.”

In the morning at Bunjil Place, MSO will also present two interactive workshops for children up to five years old (and their parents). Led by Karen Kyriakou and MSO musicians, the workshops will explore Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.

“It’s about finding ways to engage on different levels and with different age groups,” says Hoy. “And also to do whatever we can to make sure that it feels like the orchestra is folding itself into community; it’s not a fly-in fly-out thing, it’s trying to be connected with the community while we are there.”

“We like to think that this is the future of community-engaged practice,” say Srinivasan and Sivanesan, “empowering communities to tell their stories, building long-term, equitable creative engagements and ensuring real professional pathways for diverse artists.”


Sounds of the Symphony: The Nutcracker Suite, will be held at Bunjil Place at 10am and 11.30am on Saturday 29 January. Tickets cost $5 and include a departure snack. Summer Symphony takes place at 7.30pm. Tickets cost $10 and include a glass of sparkling wine or soft drink. Limited seats remain. Tickets and information on the Bunjil Place website.

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