★★★★½ Genre-bending experimental mini-festival is musically expansive success.

Meat Market, Melbourne
November 10-12, 2016

The Book of Daughters is an ambitious, large-scale project run over three nights in the cavernous and acoustically accommodating Meat Market art space in North Melbourne. Each night consisted of three main performances of around 25 minutes each, enacted over two alternating stages. Prior to these, Sonic Flock, described as “an experiential aural exhibit”, took place nightly in the foyer, where seven two-person-sized cloth tepees had been set up in close proximity to one another. Each tent contained a musician (who would later take part in a performance on the main stages) with their instruments/accoutrements, and audience members were encouraged to wander through the space and step into any tent for a few minutes to experience an intimate, one-on-one sonic performance. This functioned as a liminal space preparing audience members for the visual and aural immersion to follow, but also, beautifully and simultaneously, all the sounds from the various tepees in the foyer melded into an accidental acoustic cacophony.

On the main stages, local and international performers of varying ages and levels of experience gave captivating solo and ensemble performances. The Jolt Arts production team had structured the...