Serata di Poesia: Children. War. . · PDF fileSerata di Poesia: Children. War. Resilience. I Musici (1595) ... Niccolò Paganini: Cantabile in D for solo violin op.109 Contemporary

Serata di Poesia:Children. War. Resilience.

I Musici (1595) by Michelangelo da Caravaggio

La poesia di Paolo Totaro

The music of members of the Australia Piano Quartet

The photography of Kate Geraghty

“In the absence of a justice system the people in my images have a voice.”Kate Geraghty, War photographer.

“Resilience is the stuff of life...it is the life force...it is when you go into the bush and there’s been a fire and you seethis charred stump of a tree and this absurd and wonderful triumphant crown of green...”

Anne Deveson

Wednesday 20 May 2015, 6.00 p.m. – UTS - Auditorium CB.08.02.005 – Dr Chau Chak Wing Building

Totaro UTS.indd 1 14/05/2015 2:35 pm

Children of war: youth futures are national futures

It is my great pleasure to introduce this program, and briefly to highlight its significance in our world today. Tonight is the story of many stories and of their often contradictory, con-comitant emotions: the pain of growing up in a world of war; the pain yet adventure of leaving birthplace and family and heading for a new country;the pain yet challenge of daily living in a new language and a new land-scape and a new culture. It is also the story of using those emotions to help others, to help them talk their talk and walk their walk. It is a story that acknowledges the complex and emotional superstrings that link home-there to home-here, thinking language to speaking language. Paolo Totaro’s poems may not describe his life work as for example, Founding Chair of the Ethnic Affairs Commission, but these poems im-plicitly thread what we know about that life work into words that are both powerful and gently inspiring.They celebrate the experiences of diversity and difference – but inclusively, and tenderly, and generously. We still live in a world of war; there are children still suffering; Paolo’s poems also have at times a ring of despair. We could give up hope. But perhaps it is in the resilience of the imageries of his poetic language, of the Australian Piano Quartet’s musical language, and of Kate Gerahty’s visual language, that we glimpse, even fleetingly, that one day, justperhaps, we may be able to offer our children a world of peace.

Professor Rosemary JohnstonDirector, International Research Centre for Youth Futures


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Serata di Poesia: Children. War. Resilience.

PROGRAM

Poems by Paolo Totaro read by the author (texts at page 4)

Images by Kate Geraghty projected during the performances

Music by members of The Australia Quartet:

Thomas Rann, Cello

Rebecca Chan, Violin

Selections from:

J.S. Bach: Partita no. 2 in D minor for solo violin BWV 1004 Suite no. 1 in G major for solo cello BWV 1007

Maurice Ravel: Sonata for violin and cello (1922)

Domenico Gabrielli: Ricercar in G minor for solo cello

Niccolò Paganini: Cantabile in D for solo violin op.109

Contemporary Australian: to be announced


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2. Tempo di guerra

Così tanto pocoe si riusciva a campare.

Foglie d’insalata prima scartate e la sera dopo bollite; il pane se stantìo aveva più sapore,sacro nel sacchetto di pezzalo si sapeva pulito. C’erano le patate,pochine, ma passate nel passapatatesi dicevano spaghetti fatti in casa:ti lasciavano felicemente pesantee il sale non mancava.

Babbo si portava al lavoroqualche volta una mela. E mi disseal rientro una sera,la voce mi sembrò tremantema il sorriso era forte:

“Ero uscito a prendere ariae stavo per azzannare la melache avevo pelato con il mio temperino.E c’ era un uomo distintoche guardava dall’ altro latodella via Vasto. Si avvicina e, con un sorriso,mi chiede le bucce, che io mortificatogli passo. Lui ne fa una palla,quasi a pomo ricostituito.Mangiamo assiemee stiamo assieme per un pocosenza più parlare.”

***

2a. Wartime

So very littleand yet we managed to survive.

Salad leavesfirst discarded and the next night boiled.“Stale bread has more flavour.”Sacred in its rag sackyou knew it was clean. There were potatoesonly a few, but forced through the potato ricerwe called them home-made spaghetti.They left you happily repleteand there was no want of salt.

Sometimes my father took an applewith him to work.At home one night he told meand his voice was tremblingbut his smile was firm:

“I had gone out to get some airand was about to bite into the applewhich I had peeled with my pocket knife.And there was a refined-looking manwatching from the other sideof via Vasto.He approaches and, with a smile,asks me for the peels. MortifiedI give them.He squashes them into a balla reconstructed apple.We eat and remain a whiletogetherno further need of words.”

Translation by Madeleine Cincotta

1. Trembling man

I am the trembling man.I tremble therefore I am.If the diagnosis is correctwill a Doppler effectbe my fuzzy main trait?

Slow but secure I shall become a blura blear a mist a hazeand people will amazebecause, trembling man,alone I know where I am.

***


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The lieHalfshadowed hospital roomwhitish light: a neapolitan noon.But for an occasional moanas he slumbers to and from,but for his browwhich is furrowed and drawn, you wouldn’t know his painsince surgery at dawn.He was cut and quickly sewnback: nothing could be done:“His pain will grow and grow.There are no guidelines, it may come or goit may burn or ice.”The son was told it all:“The old man is at the ropes.”

Days before, an intercontinental call,a frankly sad voice:“Catch the first plane.You are needed at once.”In the faraway place which the son calls home,the moment ever since dreadedhad now truly come.

The mother’s stunted bodyclutches her son. Despair and a traceof joy: “Figlio mio, ma che tiene?” 1

Oh white gentleness of lies:“Mamma he will be well again.Vedrai.2 Will see. The purple spaceand the birds red blue greenof Pittwater. Paoletta. Riccardosailing for him on that strange sea...Shall book a flight. Back with me.Back, back with me.”

No moment of truth for the ill manand his wife. They are so frailand old. Here, you tell only thosewho should be told.

Primo notturno: le voci di dentro3 Night signals: nightnurses’ noisesmuffled,and the inner ear’s. Waveupon wave, other voices, thinner than air. They belong to the dying man and his son.

“I had to go. To migratewas fugue and revolt.Against you? Maybe so;we always fought. A tug of love.Remember in jest I once said:my first resistance as an oppressed minoritywas against father’s hegemony!Pater patria potestas4 oh fatheryour time has comeand you cannot be told.Here it is not doneyou are so tired and old.”

Slow caresses along greyspent hairsearching, bent, halfclosed eyesas you do with a babyif you want his smiles.

Secondo notturno: food“Don’t you eat, babbino? 5 Just this morsel, will you please?”“No, non posso.6

Il saporeMi delude.” 6 He remembers taste, smells of his once upon a timein a village.“Pane, acqua,un poco d’aglio.” 7 Any effortto relive his appetitedies with him.“Mi dispiace.” 8

3. Mute conversations: Conversazioni mute (July 1985)I wrote this poem in Naples, near what was to be my father’s death bed. Windless days, night’s heat; motorcarsstench; and the pain the pain of it all. He shouldn’t know that he was to die; to the very end, death wasn’tsaid once. Lest he understood, I wrote in English .


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Terzo notturno: shelters Unreachably tallhe lifted the child,his arms and chesta fort and a cradle.Hell on earth, airshelters:they ran most nightsand the sky was alightwith mitraille 9 and groundfire.“Were you scared, babbo?” 10 “For you only. To diewas matter of fact. Four years.Hell on earth. Airshelters.The war was your childhoodcompanion.”

“I remember: till now, a siren, or the rumbleof the pistons of a slow aircargoarouse that screamyou taught me not to voice.”

Now as then he tries to shelterothers. His pain his ownto bear. His care is quiet.Open, stabs the side; a blade his back piagato, 11 the mouth a cave of fire,yet he says subdued:“Mi dispiace”.

Gli dispiace. 12 When they clean that wastewhich was his bodyhe just says with his eyes:“Don’t tire.”

And the screamsall the screams of a lifetime of war, of love, of patienttoil do remainas unvoiced now as thenwhen he sheltered his sonfrom mitraille and groundfire.

***

End Notes to Mute Conversations

1. “My son, but what has he got?” (What’s wrong with him?).The mother hasn’t been told that the father is dying. 2. “You will see”. 3. First night scene, nocturne: the voices within. The son imagines a voiceless, mute, conversation. In the headings to the next two poems, secondo means, of course, second and terzo, third. 4. Father, paternal authority (Latin words). 5. Babbino: little father, dear father. 6. “No I can’t. It disappoints me.” 7. “Bread, water, a little (a whiff of) garlic. 8. “I’m sorry”. 9. Machine-gun fire.10. Dad.11. Bedsores (piaghe, plagues, plagued, piagato) are like blades in his back.12. He is sorry.


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4. A quality of daring

What will you be when grown up?A corpse. A corpse? That’s all. Banter appropriate for octogenarians started early for children of war.

The days still began with a sunriseand nights came after the sunset.The cock crew. The wind stillwailed and school was open

whenever it could. But the few menspoke in whispers. Motherscried at times, drainedfrom rushing with five children

out a windowless room. Skies on fire, blast to crash to red scream, down into air shelters.Ours was the Funicolare tunnel.

Slow, old men with bread, few bottles of water. A guitar. Finally, the raid-ended siren hooted at the new sun

and kids would rush outfor fallen unexploded bombstoo large to keep. But one day, one said a pomegranate!

and he would be disembowelled with his 11-year-old sister. Where did it come fromthat winsome hand-grenade?

Oh, spent memories. Spent daring. Spent stanzas against any war.War won’t speak back but, sure as the sun, it reappears.

***

5. Recipe: How to reconstruct the Universe (1988)

A recipe to recontruct the Universe?Simple. Take a baywhere the sea is calm,not far but not too nearyour city. Take trees aplenty-say thirtythree billion-and make them growtall, with timbers greybut also pink and green;arrange masses on highto create glad leafy wavesdarker than the skybut leave free spaceunder the top, so the skycirculates freely midwayover wattle and palm undergrowth.

Now place on the driest limbof a tree, well high,one sea-eagle the colour of boneand make a few magpiesmadly circle and dive and bluffwith fierce tactical noises.

Then, I suggest, sprinkle freelylorikeets, redrobins, bower-birdsand, on the sea, seagulls, herons, pelicans. Also, the quacking soundof the rarely seen:fairy penguins calling a mate.Sea currents and breezenow regulatein a way that gladdens the fishand eases birds mid-airand dries spread wings on piers.

Add, if you so please,just a touch of sails with gentle crewssaying to each other:“Tack now”. “Release”.

***


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6. Lyrebird

Here are three families of lyrebird cornered in remnants of tropical forest near our homes, you wouldn’t know them as they mostly hide under a priestly black garmentand, when they sing,it’s not their own lyrics but those of others: chatter of lorikeetslament of chain-sawseven screams and laughter.Here is a lyrebird whose specialty is to barkwhen I call out for my dog to please come back.Lyrebirds own no one language. They borrow from whomever is closest to their very fine ear.

Myself? Owned by two, or is it three, tongues and an infinity of inner callings and sounds,I move unaware of which is the voiceand how it feels to be in possession,firmly, of what I might call my truest language.

***

8. As He wantedGiven infinite time, random forest soundwill produce Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony.

While still in the forest of infinite chancewe listened to trees in the days of storm no frown of death from the skies but harmonyof wind and rain through leaves and fronds. We found tone-wood with the precise timbreof violins, cellos, clarinets and oboesthat when trees bent, swayed and swung, sang in concert with reeds, yielding to the wind.

Branches falling on abandoned hollow trunksprovided counterpoint of percussive clarityas did, by pecking, trinities of woodpeckers,in concert towards one last event: a singularity.Only in the forest of infinite chance, given time for all possible assemblies of truths, we knew we would eventually hearas it should be played, as He wanted,

the deaf master’s Gewitter, Sturm, Allegro and, if we waited a few eons longer,the Hirtengesang, the shepherds’ thanksgiving song.The forest of infinite chance may then close.

***


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7. From ‘Multilingual exercises’ (1977)

L’ English Ghetto: GardenersL’ uccelli aves et birdsque da Pymblestormano sui treesthey know saben conosconosolo words inglesiwordsmore wordsmore more wordsma butal sabbato ammatinaespecially al weekendentiendono palabrase paroledelle terre nuestras

Port KemblaExtremaduracoke havensaltiforni hornosde fundicionaqui la vita è brevemeaninglessnon ha significadohermanos o calorred-hot-whiteblanco fierroc’è ancora l’hope y l’esperanzada l’Estremadura tu veinistyou camefrade meubrotheroespañol ancoraand yetel pianto mio my crysi confounds se mixacol tuo.

Chester Hill: Refugee schoolVietnam est finiet tu almondeyedest iciamong strangers?hardly so si tu veuxloveavoir qui t’enseigne-teachla langue englishwith les dessins from Peanutset tu? de Beirutla guerre est finipour tous parentspoor orphansof us allpauvre infelicitède notremadnesse.

Child drawingsRude men roll grey barrelsover long jettieswith piercing noises of words and metal.Barges with extended slidesgo and come, loaded with more of that colorless cargo.You, little child,didn’t seem to be watching but now, solitary, as you drawthe day’s walk, all the harshness has blossomed into flowers and heart-shaped peta

***


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8. As He wantedGiven infinite time, random forest soundwill produce Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony.

While still in the forest of infinite chancewe listened to trees in the days of stormno frown of death from the skies but harmonyof wind and rain through leaves and fronds. We found tone-wood with the precise timbreof violins, cellos, clarinets and oboes that when trees bent, swayed and swung, sang in concert with reeds, yielding to the wind.

Branches falling on abandoned hollow trunksprovided counterpoint of percussive clarityas did, by pecking, trinities of woodpeckers,in concert towards one last event: a singularity.Only in the forest of infinite chance, given time for all possible assemblies of truths, we knew we would eventually hearas it should be played, as He wanted,

the deaf master’s Gewitter, Sturm, Allegro and, if we waited a few eons longer,the Hirtengesang, the shepherds’ thanksgiving song.The forest of infinite chance may then close.

***

9. Carpe Diem in BalmainHomage to Horace, Odes, 1.11

How can you better say what you now feel than with a ruby blush over evasive dimples and one sly flutter of emerald eyelashes? Here, you sit on blue bottle-crates, close to him and to the paving dust. Here the labrador, moored at the fumes of the four four four bus, wags his tail at the scent: One macchiato. One cappuccino. Now look around. Let your arms go.

Let go listening to this boy’s lively voice.Look at those two who slowly walk holding hands that are mottled.

See how your man won’t follow your gazenor is he aware of the vaporized blush. It is you who knows morning is brief

in this crude village within the newcity. You know the lukewarm sunruns its route faster around the corner,

beyond cafés full of young people,chic in the poor ways of this rich place.Long as it is the young wait for tomorrow

hold on to this moment, Leuconoe, hold on. Do not chase future options, just hold on.Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Don’t presume there will be a tomorrow.

***


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10. The architect’s geneIn memoriam Harry Seidler

The house this mouse built, for herself, [mate and broodis a tunnel, complex, to you and me a pinhole [in the ground.Over there, clay, saliva, dung, the termites’ [mound scrapes their sky. Green tree-ants sew their home in a leaf, [one design.

Weaverbirds aerial nests, of chewed grass and [palm leaves,pulse against the sunlight. Yes, living things all [have innate sense of roof, of eaves. They don’t boast. Don’t add to the palympsest, humbly react to what is [internally told.

Humans however, Pheidías to Seidler, improve [on ancestors:towers, domes, each add to the great predecessors,build nests great as theatres and theatrical [places to rest,

try to move one step, two step higher in the [originalityladder. Their works may last longer. But all living[ creaturesnests do not outlast time. Or man’s other gene. [For war.

***

11. The question

There was once a monkey who asked who am I ?The answer was not one that would satisfy.Some time later he climbed down from her tree,looked at the sky and asked pray, who am me ?

If these four words were syntactically incorrect,they posited a question that took time to reflect.Later still, not the monkey but her descendantsreset the question what is our why, our essence ?

It was the moment He had waited for. He struckthe Lease. Called the Quick Eviction Angels Truckand both he and she had to leave all the trees

and grassy lawns and the tepid sea-breeze.Yet, the questions kept on rising to the skyand I for one still ask who the heck am I

***


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12. UlyssesesTo Homer, Dante, Tennyson, Joyce and NASA I will load the boat for my longest journey and will have a noble crew, a crew of five,recruited from one only source, who will arriveeach alone, each of them his own true king

and all sharing one single great name.Each will have known all those who came beforebut the first to arrive will pointedly ignore the newcomers, won’t shake hands, balking

each time he hears his own revered nameattributed to another, whose dress and tongue he won’t know -they look as from far-flungplaces. It’s time now to explain. I invite

them to say where they came from, who’s their father and why are they king.The first: ‘I am Ithaca’s true and only king, the one who fought and won not on a horse

but on his feet. The blind story-teller, not Laertes, was my true father. Therewe shall leave my story’. The second’s answer:‘I am the same man but my father was wicked,

he adopted and placed me as a flame in Hell,maligning my wooden horse -a fraud, a bait’.The third cries ‘...Come friends, ‘tis not too lateto seek a newer world. Push off...let’s go

to the untravelled world, whose margin fadesfor ever and for ever when we move.’ The fourth is a thin man with thick glasses.He throws cigarette ashes and thinks aloud:

‘I am the true Ulysses. I waited so long to tell my own story as it is the truest,of me, me, me with hands in my pockets,breaking asunder Logos and Word.’

The last, in truth, is a machine shiny as a star. It whirred coming on board, now its voice sounds as from sidereal distances, like Joyce: ‘I am the space Ulysses, the probe

made to study Apollon, or Sun the median star.And I have come onboard to steer you all-great poets as Dante and, like you skipper, small- across the sidereal winds to the peace

of this voyage of very last release.’

***

13. Eternal feminine

You are my orchard and I your fruit and grower.You are my mother and I your father and lover.You are my sister and I your son and brother.

Which memories will nurture this last trope?Which wave disrupt the pond least,what new lily grow, tenderly in tunewith the memory of one who, oh so soon,is but a fading glyph in your time of wake,a frozen flash of light in a now still universe?

Will you clutch this lock of frizzy grey hairand linger on the runway after take-off,to take in the ever widening absence?

It is not in glory I perish nor disgrace, anchored to your courage, wifemother.

***


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14. Homeless

Let me sleep as old dogs doon a ragged blanketas weary of sleeping as of waking to one more first light.

Let me stay forgottenthreadbare as these rags kept as surety for days of improbable cold.

Let my heart slow to one beat,my arms to one gesturemy brain to one thoughtbut let it be one last conceit.

Let my hair fall and the skin around my skull shrink to filmy leather.

Let my flesh be food for life with no eyes no ears no feet no lungs.

Let winged beingseat worms fed on my tendons then fly discarding me within seeds of jacaranda for new trees to growwith my molecules my atoms my nothing.

Let all life carry on let it fill any void:a white new blossoma new cloudthe chick of an eaglea cry of a newborna wave encircling a surferbut not a child beggarnot a dull parliament of mennot a church of altered senses.

Towards the end of timelet the gods fulfil the promise

that all substance nature lent us draws towards one single point where flesh reassembles.

But let me not enduresuch resurrection but remain asleepno substance no dream no more conscious thought.

Or please let me imaginea ‘me’ not identical but with zeal enoughto live a new existence: with some knowledgeof what is to come a ‘me’ with the skill to push uphill my large round stone.

Or allow me to float, forever float as air does above heavier gasesas oil does on wateras eternal words swim on pages of wisdomas rhyme prevails over commonsenseas my body now hoversover these fine marble stepsunder the green hedge-fund poster.

Let my eyes stay closedbut thenif possible if the need becomes extreme only then allow me just a glance at the shadows of the two by whom I was lovedduring the flash of life in my polite cage of thought.

***


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15. Evolution’s true crown

In the beginning were oats, millet and wheat,windswept waves of free-born grainsin the savannahs of Africa’s green plains.

One day, an ape scouting for his luckgave up on trees, migrating with wife and children for a grain-foraging new life.

Worn fossil molars, alas, tell the sad story.Energy was misspent on chewing raw grainrather than on growing a still puny brain.

History’s turnaround came with a discovery.Grains could be ground between stone and briar wetted by rain, cooked by lightning fire,

and bread was! soft in the centre, with a festive aroma, crunchy crowneasy on the molars, round oblong white brown.

Digestion time shortened, the brain grewand soon the ape would call herself Man.The rest is well-known. Brains that plan

took Marco Polo to Asia and to the garlic,Amerìgo to the American tomato,Galileo to the oil so loved by Plato,

Saint Thomas to the flowering oregàno, and with these ingredients on a disc of dough, well salted, soft hearted, reddish glow,

pizza was! evolution’s highest crown.

***


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Paolo TotaroPaolo Totaro’s poetry in English and in Italian is published

in anthologies by Oxford University Press (Mark O’Connor ed. 1992); Stanford UP (USA 2014); in a 2014 special issue on Australian poetry by ARC (Canada) and Cordite (Australia); in literary reviews including Other Modernities (Milan University 2014), Le Simplegadi (Udine University 2014), CreArta (UTS 1998), Quadrant (2012, 2013), Contrappasso (2013, 2015). His Collected Poems (1950-2011) was published in 2013. He won the First Prize at the 1992 Due Giugno literary competition with Storia Patria (Naples and Sydney, 2012). He has presented his work in public libraries, the Dante Alighieri Society, The Italian Institute of Culture, Manning Clark House, SBS TV and radio, the ABC, and others. Many of his works reflect his childhood experiences of war.

He had a role in the foundation of multiculturalism in Australia with his Report to Parliament Participation (1978) as Foundation Chairman of the Ethnic Affairs Commission and his work thereafter. He has served Australia in many public positions and was honoured with the Order of Australia in 1988 and the Order of Italy in 2010. As a pianist, he presented the first Australian performance of the Suite op 145 by Shostakovic On Michelangelo Poems for baritone and piano (Art Gallery of NSW, 1974).

Kate GeraghtyKate Geraghty started work as a photographer in 1997 at The

Border Mail newspaper in Albury, NSW, and has been a staff photographer with the Sydney Morning Herald since 2001. In that time she has covered the 2002Bali bombings, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, South Asian Tsunami, 2006 war in Lebanon, humanitarian crisis in theDRC, South Sudan’s historical referendum vote for independence, Gaza flotilla attack in 2010, war inAfghanistan and domestic abuse in Papua New Guinea in 2013. In 2014, Kate covered life under sanctions inIran, the Crimea crisis, the war in East Ukraine including the mh17 downing and has just returned from the war against ISIS in Iraq. Kate has been awarded five Walkley awards most recently awarded 2013 Nikon Walkley, Press Photographer of the Year, Australia.

Australia Piano Quartet,UTS Ensemble in ResidenceFormed in 2011, the Sydney-based Australia Piano Quartet is one of few ensembles worldwide committed to the piano quartet genre. Rebecca Chan, violin Daniel de Borah, piano Thomas Rann, cello James Wannan, viola

Each of the players is an award-winner, internationl soloist of the first rank in her or his own right.

Rebecca Chan, violinCompleted degrees in Medicine and Arts at the University of

Melbourne and studied violin at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) and the Sydney Conservatorium with principal teacher Alice Waten.Rebecca has been soloist with many of Australia’s major orchestras, and in Europe. She has had success in many competitions, including the International Citta di Brescia Violin Competition. She was a founding member of the Hamer Quartet, winners of the first prize, the audience prize and the overall Musica Viva award in the inaugural 2009 Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competition. She has also played with the Cam-erata Bern and with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.Rebecca has been a core member of the ACO since 2010 and was also a 2008 ACO Emerging Artist.

Thomas Rann, celloThomas Rann is founder, co-Artistic Director and Cellist of the

Australia Piano Quartet. Thomas has benefited from the guidance of leading cellists including Raphael Wallfisch, Niall Brown, Uzi Wiesel, and Frans Helmerson.Thomas has won numerous awards and prizes and has performed as soloist with orchestras including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Or-chestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Camerata Menu-hin. As a soloist and chamber musician Thomas has performed at many international venues including the Wigmore Hall, St. Mar-tin-in-the-Fields, Westminster Abbey, St. James’ Palace, Tonhalle Zurich and Victoria Hall, Geneva.Thomas’s festival appearances include the Verbier Festival Academy, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Adelaide International Cello Festival, International Holland Music Sessions, Canberra International Music Festival and the Kronberg International Cello Festival.Since relocating to Sydney, Thomas has performed regularly at the Sydney Opera House Utzon Room, Eugene Goossens Hall (ABC Classic FM Sun-day Live), the Independent Theatre, the Melbourne Recital Centre and Adelaide’s Elder Hall. In 2012 Thomas collaborated with photographer William Yang and composer Elena Kats-Chernin in the acclaimed Sydney Festival production of ‘I am a Camera’. He recently appeared with Ensemble Offspring in The Song Compa-ny’s premiere of Jonathan Cooper’s ‘The Arrangement’ at the Art Gallery of NSW. Thomas is also a regular guest musician with Sydney Chamber Opera.In 2014 Thomas will continue his role as Visiting Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney. Thomas has co-curated a six concert collaborative series across multiple faculties at UTS. He will also co-curate and perform in Australia Piano Quartet’s inaugural series at the Sydney Opera House Utzon Room. Thomas plays on a modern French cello made in Montpellier, France in 2010 by master luthier, Frederic Chaudiere.


The International Research Centre for Youth Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) promotes and conducts high impact research pertaining to the education, communities and futures of children and youth, especially those who may have limited opportunities. Centreprograms aim to expand and deepen horizons of thinking, grow senses of personal worth, and inspire ideas about options for futures. The Centre is strongly committed to the significance of literacy, to respectful understandings of what literacy means in a country of many mother tongues, and to the importance of mainstream literacy in growing the participation, imaginations, and minds that generate creative andcivil societies. The Centre is distinctive in that it works across disciplines and across sectors, and is supported not only by grants but by corporate investment. Education is not a separate silo of influence but is very much influenced by social context, health and perceptions of wellbeing, families and communities, parenting practices, and the larger sphere of government policies. Youth futures are national futures, and education is everyone’s business.


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Serata di Poesia: Children. War. . · PDF fileSerata di Poesia: Children. War. Resilience. I Musici (1595) ... Niccolò Paganini: Cantabile in D for solo violin op.109 Contemporary