Mara! big band takes off in 2021

The Mara! Big Band project is the fulfilment of Mara's long held dream to create a bigger, bolder version of her dual ARIA award winning Mara! band, featuring the cream of Australia's jazz and world music illuminati. To the Mara! band's all-star line-up (Sandy Evans, Paul Cutlan, Lloyd Swanton, Llew Kiek) Mara has added seven key players including the welcome return of Andrew Robson on alto and baritone saxophones plus James Greening (trombone & pocket trumpet) Sam Golding (trumpet & tuba), Gary Daley (accordion), Tunji Beier (percussion) and singers Silvia Entcheva and Jarnie Birmingham.

In 2020, with support from CreateNSW, Mara commissioned 5 composers (all current or former members of the Mara! Band) to compose a original suite for this new ensemble, setting poetry by Australian migrant and refugee poets, with stories of displacement, hope, longing, despair and resignation in their search for a dream... a new life in the "lucky country".

The Mara! Big Band will be touring the new suite with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts and percussionist Tunji Beier's participation is supported by Flying Arts and Regional Arts Trust.

The pandemic forced the project to be postponed in 2020, but the tour has been rescheduled to September 2021, with concerts in Springwood, Bathurst, Wollongong, Canberra and Sydney.

You can expect some massive textures covering Anglo/Celtic, Balkan and Middle Eastern sonic worlds.

"a once in a lifetime gathering"...."a killer line up"

First concert of the tour is September 4 at the Live at the Village Music Festival in Springwood, Blue Mountains.

For more info and tickets to this concert

For more information on the Mara! Big Band Project

  

Mara! and Martenitsa new album update

With recording sessions at Megaphon Studios, Unversal Forbes St, and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Mara! and Martenitsa's exciting next CD is currently being edited.

This will be a CD devoted to showcasing a wealth of previously unrecorded works composed and commissioned especially for Martenitsa Choir and the Mara! band.

Composers include Llew and Mara Kiek, Paul Cutlan, Laura Bishop and Sandy Evans in addition to Bulgaria's premier choral composer, the late Ivan Spasov. Librettists include Stephan Kozuharov, Marcia Malinova-Anthony, Silvia Entcheva and Mara Kiek.

Engineers Steve Morley, Chris Doherty and associate producer Guy Dickerson are also contributing their expertise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tra Parole E Silenzio Mara! and Martenitsa's latest CD

Tra Parole e Silenzio is a celebration of life's most precious and enduring treasures - love, home, family and friends, so exquisitely expressed in the poignantly tender poems of Eduardo Di Giovanni and stunningly interpreted by Mara! Band composers and performers Paul Cutlan, Andrew Robson, Steve Elphick, Llew Kiek, Mara Kiek and Sandy Evans, in collaboration with Silvia Entcheva, Naomi Vaughan and the magnificent Martenitsa choir. More about Tra Parole e Silenzio.

CD available from our online store.

from Froots (UK) Dec 2012

"The Sydney Morning Herald once referred to Mara! as "the Dom Perignon of (Australia's) World Music Bands", it was perhaps a touch premature, but this collaboration between the group and their Bulgarian-style choir certainly meets that appellation...an unqualified success with its feeling of fresh adventure, sumptuous singing and depth of musical experience."

Read Tra Parole CD review in "The Australian" of April 14, 2012