Pianist and curator Anna Goldsworthy will mentor ANAM musicians as they create a concert experience that explores the complex history of the Abbotsford Convent. Our musicians will also work in collaboration with Dylan Thomas prize-winning author, and former Convent tenant, Nam Le, who has been commissioned by ANAM to write a poem that will inform the project.

“Of course there is no single version of the Convent’s history, but a clamorous polyphony. In this project the young musicians of ANAM seek to give partial voice to this. It is a privilege for them to work with a writer of the stature of Nam Le, who over recent years has articulated a poetic geography of Melbourne, and now sets his sights on the Convent, with a poem ‘that evokes some of these ghosts – through the personal prism of my time there.’ Taking this poem as catalyst, our young musicians devise a musical response to the rich, charged history of the Convent, and some of its hauntings.” – Anna Goldsworthy