Smoke Between Mountains is a new work by composer and AAO Artistic Director, Aaron Choulai with the Australian Art Orchestra. Composed for an ensemble of ten musicians, Smoke Between Mountains traces a dreamlike narrative against an innovative score that plays with the Ghibli sound world. The work draws on Shinto and Australian First Nations ecological thought, telling the story of a girl from a coastal mountain island in southern Japan and a boy from the high plateau of inland Australia, who begin to dream of the other’s world.

Against a rich visual backdrop of video design by Michael Carmody, the work unfolds through the voice and koto of Miyama McQueen-Tokita and the percussive storytelling of Adam Manning, as Aaron Choulai employs his Sono-Kinetic Conducting system to shape improvised moments of story through sound.