Introducing Synergy Percussion’s Assembly, Artistic Director Rebecca Lloyd-Jones shared with the audience that she had curated a program of works she not only wanted to perform, but wanted to perform with friends.

Quietly, the program was more than half Australian, and exclusively featured works by living female and gender diverse composers. Not in the least tokenistic, the pieces were interesting before anything else and each took a curious interest in the boundaries of what a musical instrument can be while pushing into original sonic territory. Par for the course for Synergy.

Lloyd-Jones set the pace for the program, with her arrangement of Unsuk Chin’s Piano Etude No. 1 in C for percussion quintet. Short and sweet, it revelled in the high notes of a marimba played with sharp attack and little resonance, with Lloyd-Jones proving its worth as a source of interesting sonic material quite different to its classic, full-bodied sound.

Synergy Percussion performing Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh’s Six Legs and an Amphibious State of Mind. Photo © Jared Underwood

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