It’s been a decade since the symphonic song cycle Compassion, written by composer Nigel Westlake and singer-songwriter Lior, was given its world premiere by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2013. Since then, the ARIA Award-winning work has been widely performed and also recorded by the ABC.

Lior Westlake

Lior and Nigel Westlake. Photo © Craig Abercrombie

In 2021, Westlake spoke to Limelight in some detail about Compassion and how he and Lior came to work together. Now the pair have joined forces for the second time on a companion piece called Ngapa William Cooper (Grandfather William Cooper), written with Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung singer, composer and language activist Dr Lou Bennett.

Ngapa William Cooper, which has its world premiere at the Adelaide Festival, centres on William Cooper, a Yorta Yorta Elder who was an early activist for the rights of First Nations people. In December 1938, he led a delegation of members of the Australian Aborigines League on an eight-mile walk to the German Consulate in Melbourne to deliver a letter condemning the violence committed by the Nazis during Kristallnacht. It was the only protest in the world...