William Barton, one of the finest didgeridoo players in the world, speaks about this instrument and the work Kalkadungu for didgeridoo and orchestra that he composed together with Matthew Hindson. William Barton will play this piece at the Mariinsky Concert Hall on 19 July with the Mariinsky Youth Orchestra under Daniel Smith.
– You play the didgeridoo, which is probably the oldest wind instrument in the world. From your experience, what would you describe as the main challenge in playing this instrument?
– I think, the main challenge is to attire to a certain level of expression where you can engage freely with the audience and to tell the story and communicate with your colleagues on stage as well as adapt freely as an improviser. As a musician who composes structured music and also plays the didgeridoo for over twenty five years by now, I believe that the story-telling process is very important – and that’s what I learnt from my ancestors.
– What is so extraordinary and unique in the sound of the didgeridoo that is likely to surprise a listener who has decided to attend the concert on 19 July?
– It is a very raw sound of the Earth. It is one of the first sounds my ancestors would have heard or, say, would have engaged with musically. It is like a bass drum in a band, or, the cello for that matter, because it has a really low resonance of the landscape and that’s why contemporary Australian classical music really lent itself well to this sort of collaboration between the didgeridoo and the orchestra.
– As a co-author of Kalkadungu, what kind of things would you advise listeners who are probably hearing this piece for the first time to pay particular attention to? Is there something specific about the rhythm, or the sound of the didgeridoo, or the orchestration or, say, the general form of this work?
– It is the overall form of the work. Say, in its second movement, where I actually enter from the audience and walk through the audience up to the stage, I am singing a special song that I wrote when I was a fifteen-year-old boy. And so the whole work has evolved and was created from that chant, and then working with Matthew Hindson we figured out other movements that we need to write, and the didgeridoo actually appears toward the very end of the piece, so listeners have to wait to hear the sound of the didgeridoo until the end.
– As you have performed Kalkadungu in a number of countries, and this work is something very Australian, how does the reception of this unusual piece vary in different countries and cultures?
– I think people will find something that they can hopefully relate to any country even if if is only one movement, or the simplicity of me singing the song, traditional song in my language of the Kalkadungu people while the orchestra holding a sustained pedal note, or the interaction of the didgeridoo with the bass drum solo before the final movement and how rhythmically the didgeridoo relates to other instruments even though I wrote the bass part component of the didgeridoo quite free and improvised because I am adapting to the environment where we are going to play the piece. And so I hope people will enjoy this piece and the sound of Australia expressed through it.
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