Artists
RIA SOEMARDJO
Ria Soemardjo
Ria Soemardjo is a Melbourne based musician with a passion for collaboration across a diverse range of genres and artforms. Her evocative, textured soundscapes are often performed live using an eclectic array of unusual instruments including voice, gamelan instruments, percussion, found objects. Ria’s distinct, haunting vocal style and musicality reflects her Australian/Javanese cultural heritage and a deep appreciation for the timbres, rhythmic complexity and the ceremonial association of Balinese and Javanese gamelan traditions. She has studied Central and West Javanese vocal repertoire, and is highly respected in the world music scene and Australian Indonesian community for her performances with gamelan ensembles around Australia.
Her contemporary world music trio -’Fine Blue Thread’ has recorded 3 albums of original compositions, skillfully melding Helen Mountfort’s baroque cello, Sam Evan’s tabla and percussion with Ria’s lyrics and soulful vocals. Their most recent album was launched at a sold out concert at Melbourne Recital Centre.
Ria is part of the Unfurl Project, an artist collective with Ria Soemardjo and Vanessa Chapple, concerned with aesthetic and ecological connection in local areas. The collective is currently based in Merri Bek, in residence at East Coburg Neighbourhood House.
Ria’s most recent works reflect her deep interest in developing powerful contemporary performance/rituals, often in response to natural or urban sites. ‘Of Frogs’ – premiering in 2022 (Fuse Festival) features her own handmade sound sculptures, clay flutes and vocal resonators. She has been invited into Marrugeku’s ‘Contested lands’ choreo labs in 2022 (Broome) and 2023 (Sydney), along with a cohort of leading indigenous and intercultural artists.
Several of her compositions for music composition and live performance for dance works have received awards and nominations including Ros Warby’s Tower Suites (2012 Green Room Award with cellist Helen Mountfort) and Enfold (2016) & Opal Vapour (2013) – with dancer/choreographer Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal. In 2019 she worked with long term creative collaborator – director/writer Sandra Fiona Long & Bandung Mainteater company to create music & vocal scores for Hades Fading – a bi-lingual multimedia theatre work, presented in Bandung in 2019, & 2020 AsiaTOPA Festival.
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Sandra Fiona Long and Ria Soemardjo
Their first collaboration was a shadow performance 22 years ago. Sandra was heavily pregnant at the time and Ria’s handcrafted shadow birds and a glowing moon emerged out of her belly in a ritualistic succession. In more recent years their collaborative work has focussed on creating sound and visual worlds emulating environments based in vocal composition, text, raw materials and light.
Weaving Ria’s evocative, textured soundscapes and compositions with Sandra’s poetic text and a myriad of visual and sound elements, they are interested in creating a space of heightened listening, holding space for contemplation, drawing awareness to the natural environment through sound and visual immersion.
Their most recent live work – Of Frogs – was inspired by frogs and our waterways, a performance ritual of voice, percussion & shadow play interacting with water. They collaborated on Hades Fading (Hades Memudar), a bi-lingual vocal and visual performance work developed and performed in 2019 in Bandung and in Feb 2020 in Melbourne as part of AsiaTOPA, with Indonesian Theatre company Mainteater. Both these works were produced by Kath Papas Productions.
During the pandemic, they were commissioned to create two audio guided walks. Swallow Walk (Edwardes Lake in Reservoir) and Murmuring Walk (Sanatorium Lake in Mt Macedon (also with vocalist Charlotte Roberts). Both works were inspired by the surrounding environment and it’s natural rhythms. They are currently preparing for two performance events at La Mama theatre, Surat-suratnya, in collaboration with Indonesian director Wawan Sofwan, which reflects on the intergenerational impact of political violence and The Swallows (working title) another vocal and sound based performance work about connection with nature in urban environments, in collaboration with actor Helen Morse, and also produced by Kath papas Productions.
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