.jpg)
Projects
let me whisper in your ear
Secrets ricochet across beams, declarations explode across bare walls & gestures find life in negative space as Alta Collective takes over converted-warehouse Mycelium Studios. Wavering between pride & self-doubt, bold assertions & quiet meditations, 'Let me whisper in your ear' reveals the emotionally complex worlds we all inhabit, bringing the intimate & the hidden to the foreground.
its motion keeps
Time, like the tide, its motion keeps... Tight vocal harmonies and ethereal projections weave together stories of love, death and the immutability of time itself.
Collaborating with visual artist Agata Mayes and channelling the distinctive voices of Caroline Shaw, Kate Miller-Heidke, Benjamin Britten, Laura Mvula and other vocal masters, Alta seamlessly transitions across genres to invite audiences into new sound worlds.
in the wee small hours
A magical evening of contemporary jazz, combining Alta’s signature seamless vocal blend with the energy of a four-piece jazz combo. This concert was a collaboration with Alta Collective and jazz pianist Pat Jaffe and debuted Pat's latest composition, ‘this place is change’, developed to celebrate the individual voices within Alta and the intersection of composed and improvised music.
when the earth stands still
Stay a moment. Learn the atoms of the soil. Listen. Journey with Alta Collective as they trace the paths of waters, winds, fires, mosses and mountains, through music as diverse and strange as the earth that inspired them.
The centrepiece of this concert is the world premiere of song cycle "Earth-Shaped Hearts", by Juliana Kay with Bridget Bourne (percussion), commissioned by the ABC Classic Commissioning Fund 2022. "Earth-Shaped Hearts" draws a thread from the minutiae of everyday life to the incomprehensibly vast geological timescales of our planet.
folklorica
For as long as we have had language, humans have told stories through song. Stories of loss, of loneliness, of unrequited love. Stories of hope, of joy, of dancing!
Alta Collective presents an evening of folk and folk-inspired songs from Australia, Europe and Latin America. Enter the stories of everyday folk from around the world, catch a melody and drift on easy into the night.
Featuring songs by Australian artists: Alice Hurwood, Monique Clare, Lisa Young and international artists: Michael McGlynn (Ireland), Violeta Parra (Chile), Dolly Parton (USA) and more…
minimal
The word ‘minimal’ was first used as a musical classification by Tom Johnson, for the Village Voice a New York arts and cultural publication. This concert series at Tempo Rubato celebrates the many faces of minimalist music for strings, woodwinds, piano and voice.
… the "passionless, sexless and emotionally blank soundtrack of the Machine Age, its utopian selfishness no more than an expression of human passivity in the face of mass-production and The Bomb".