Ambient sunset and breathtaking Glasshouse Mountain views, accompanied by the beautiful sounds of Ensemble Beyond Borders come together as part of the Sunshine Coast's Horizon Festival to bring audiences Songs of GAIA (A Twilight Gathering).
Director and lead artist on the project, Linsey Pollak explains that rather than thinking of GAIA as a central figure, we should think of it as something that encompasses everything that we are not separate from."Some people think of it as Mother Earth but it's basically thinking of the planet as one living organism of which we're all a part of," he says.
"It's all about the connectedness of everything, rather than seeing nature as something separate to us, we're all part of nature – but even more than that, we're all part of the planet and it's all working as one, unified organism, in a sense."
Artists with influences from all over the world help to create that connectedness throughout Songs Of GAIA in a brilliant example of cross-cultural collaboration.
Members of Ensemble Beyond Borders have connections and influences to a number of diverse cultures including those of Indigenous Australia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Macedonia, Tibet and South India.
"I think the important thing is that apart from the fact that we're all from very diverse backgrounds, all of the musicians apart from being incredible musicians in their own right, are all pretty experienced in cross-cultural collaboration," Linsey says.
"I've, for example, run many cross-cultural collaborations over many years. "I've had a huge interest in world music and multicultural music since really I first went to and lived in Macedonia way back in 1977-78. It really opened my eyes to a really incredible diversity that we've got, particularly here in Australia."
Bringing those musicians together to create Songs Of GAIA (A Twilight Gathering) was not too difficult for Linsey, thanks to networking that occurred over many years. "Within the group, some of the people had never met before. I knew them all and had worked with some of them to various degrees.
"Even with Airileke [one of the group's percussionists], I first met him in Darwin when he was just a kid. Now, here he is, somebody very important in the music of his own culture and also in cross-cultural collaboration."
Linsey is not only talented at playing instruments, he's also talented at creating them which he says gives him a different approach to creating.
"Through the creation of instruments, I'm looking for different sounds and different qualities that I might not be able to get with other instruments.
"For me, I feel very lucky to have entered in to that instrument making aspect of what I do very young because I've been doing that all my life and the actual quality of sound is really, really important to me, and I love that diversity of types of sound too as well as the diversity of cultures."
Looking ahead to the Horizon Festival performance of Songs Of GAIA, Linsey can't wait for "the magic of that sunset moment" with the mountain as the backdrop.
"You get the ambience of the place, you're affected by just the feel of the place. Particularly being in the area of the Glasshouse Mountains; that's got its own particular strength of feeling, so it's really a totally different feeling to being inside.
"Of course, you've got that added danger of the conditions but we have our fingers crossed."
Songs of GAIA (A Twilight Gathering) takes place at Bankfoot House (Sunshine Coast) 28 August, and is part of Horizon Festival's 2021 programme.
