Carriageworks and the Sydney Chamber Opera have announced that they will collaborate on the Sydney premiere of Resonant Bodies, an international festival of new vocal music.

Resonant Bodies was founded in New York in 2013 by Lucy Dhegrae, and in its first Sydney iteration, the festival will showcase six vocalists over the course of two evenings. They including Swedish-Ethiopian composer-improviser Sofia Jernberg, Indonesian vocalist Rully Shabara, New York soprano Ariadne Greif, and Australian vocalists Mitchell Riley, Deborah Kayser and Sonya Holowell. Per a press release, all of the soloists will perform in their own 45-minute sets, which will have no restrictions on repertoire. The visual director for the festival will be Sydney-based theatre director and lighting designer Alexander Berlage, while sound design will be by composer and technologist Benjamin Carey. The performances will take place across three performance times on Friday, August 31 and Saturday, Sept. 1. Shabara and Jernberg will be highlighted in the August 31 performance while Kayser and Holowell will appear in one performance on the first and Riley and Grief in a latter one on the same day.

“Co-directing the Australian iteration of the festival has given us the chance to make links across far-flung geographies, connecting artists from different backgrounds who might otherwise rarely come into contact, but who share common philosophies. We all use our voices to push boundaries. Resonant Bodies’ two-day program will leave audiences stunned by what the human voice can do,” stated Jessica Aszodi and Jane Sheldon, Local Resonant Bodies co-directors.