Mungangga Garlagula
By Mark Atkins and Erkki Veltheim
Mungangga Garlagula is a collaboration in music, sound and story by legendary musicians and improvisers Mark Atkins and Erkki Veltheim. Audiences are invited to join Mark by the campfire, and to travel with him as he takes us across the border between day and night, dream and reality, the reverberating past and the emerging future.
Together with a company of exceptional Australian musicians who have created a shifting bed of sound for the work, Mark and Erkki lead us into a nocturnal world of memories, echoes, spirits and dreams, conjuring country through words and breath, the snapping of branches and the play of shadows between the listener by the fire and the impenetrable darkness beyond.
Intimate and epic, playful and piercing, Mungangga Garlagula restores the experience of listening with the whole body. It draws us together with new attention on a deeply human journey of disorientation, reorientation and homecoming.
Project History
A descendent of Western Australia’s Yamatji people, and of Irish/Australian heritage, Mark is a virtuosic didgeridoo player and compelling storyteller. Erkki is a Finnish-Australian multi-disciplinary artist: a storyteller in live and electronic sound, and a remarkable performer on violin and viola.
Members of The Narli Ensemble, Mark Atkins and Erkki Veltheim have been collaborating, creating and performing together over many years through the Tura Kimberley touring program. Mungangga Garlagula is a work that has developed over time and across the country.
In October 2022, a semi staged version of Mungangga Garlagula entitled Nightfalls was presented and filmed as part of Finding Our Voice at the UKARIA Cultural Centre in Adelaide. Watch this program imagined as a gathering around a campfire, featuring poems drawn from Mark's life, stories inspired by the Australian natural and cultural landscape, and tall tales of bushmen, travellers and other colourful characters here.
You can also read Marks interview with the team at Ukaria here.
Creators
Mark Atkins | Co-creator and Director
Acknowledged as one of Australia’s finest didjeridu players, Mark Atkins is also recognised internationally for his collaborative projects with some of the world’s leading composers and musicians. A descendant of Western Australia’s Yamitji people, as well as of Irish/Australian heritage, Mark is known not only for his masterly playing, but also as a storyteller, composer, percussionist, visual artist and instrument maker. Mark has performed alongside and composed with artists such as Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Sinead O’Connor, Philip Glass, Donald Lunney, Ornette Coleman, Peter Sculthorpe, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Gondwana, Jenny Morris, John Williamson, James Morrison, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO). He is a founding member of Black Arm Band.
Erkki Veltheim | Co-creator
Erkki Veltheim is an Australian/Finnish composer and performer. His practice spans noise, audiovisual installation, improvisation, notated music, electroacoustic composition, pop arrangements and cross-disciplinary performance. Erkki has been commissioned by the Adelaide Festival, Vivid Festival, Australian Art Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Musica nova Helsink and composed the orchestral works for celebrated Australian indigenous musician Gurrumul's posthumous album Djarimirri.
Creative Team
Mark Atkins
Co-creator and Director
Erkki Veltheim
Co-creator
Ruth Little
Dramaturge
Niklas Pajanti
Lighting Design
Emily Barrie
Design
Co-creatives and Immersive Soundbed Performers (recorded)
Genevieve Lacey
Recorders
Vanessa Tomlinson
Percussion
Stephen Magnusson
Guitar
Anthony Pateras
Piano and analogue synthesizers
Scott Tinkler
Trumpet
Erkki Veltheim
Violin
The Mungangga Garlagula Tour has been made possible with the support of the Western Australian State Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries’ Regional Arts and Cultural Investment Program and the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Mungangga Garlagula was commissioned by Tura with the support of the Australian Government through Creative Australia and Ulrike Klein AO.
The development of Mungangga Garlagula was supported by Ukaria Arts Centre and Finding Our Voice Festival.
Images by Kristian Gehradte.
Tura acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and create. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. With solidarity and friendship we say thank you.
