In 2019, Kate Spencer produced the ‘Songs of Home’ exhibition and First Nations Composers Commissioning project for the Museum of Sydney.
The project explored the complex history of music making in the early colonial period. It showed how people constructed a sense of ‘home’ and ‘place’ through music and looked at the intersection between the musical cultures of First Nations people and the colonists.
The exhibition including over 65 stories, 90 objects including loans from international and national collections, a soundtrack app with 60 tracks (45 recorded specifically for the project with over 80 musicians and production crew in Australia and the UK), including students and staff from the University of Sydney's Conservatorium of Music.
A key initiative was the commissioning of 5 new works responding to themes of Country, dispossession and their personal interpretations of ‘home’ by the following First Peoples composers:
• Brenda Gifford
• Nardi Simpson
• Troy J Russell
• Elizabeth Shepard
• Tim Gray
As part of this initiative, Kate established key partnerships with ABC Classics, Ngarra-Burria First Peoples Composers Initiative and the Royal Australian Navy Band to support the project.
Photography by Stuart Humphreys, for Sydney Living Museums
