The Symphony of Sirens by Arseny Avraamov was an ambitious, dramatic and innovative large-scale inclusive work that premiered in Baku during the early and fervently creative period of the Soviet Union (1922). In this spirit, but in the dramatically changed circumstances of 21st Century Melbourne, The Siren Event proclaims the acoustic and cultural horizons of Footscray, through a spatial interplay of musical forces, contrasting the analog and human scale of instrumentalists, and the super-human mechanisms of an ensemble of sirens.
The Siren Event explores the motif of ‘the call’, through a 21st Century distributed orchestration of over 100 musicians, and an ensemble of hand-wound sirens.
Thirteen composers created components in the work: Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, Anita Hustas, Carolyn Connors, Ray Pereira, Neil Kelly, Peter Knight, Aviva Endean, Genevieve Lacey, Arcadia Quintet and Adam Simmons.
Siren Ensemble: Jennifer Tran, Moses Carr, Adam Sutardy, Felix Ching Ching Ho, Sam McGilp, and Tim Humphrey
The work premiered at BigWest Festival 2015 and was supported by a project fellowship from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.