Compassionate Collab

Sydney-based folk muso Lior has had a varied career, encompassing solo albums, collaborations, and even songwriting for kids' TV (Giggle And Hoot, anyone?). Now he's working on Compassion, a pairing with conductor Nigel Westlake and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

“The first half of this year was writing. It was pretty steady and quiet. I knew, though, when the second half of the year kicked in it would be pretty crazy,” Lior begins, talking from home just before a quick solo trip to Edinburgh. “[But] Compassion is written and rehearsed, so it will just be final tweaks,” he says calmly. Although it's a change, it's something he's excited about.

Inspired by an unusual musical connection between Lior and Westlake, Compassion will inevitably be an emotionally-charged piece, but also one with lots of positive energy too. “I think it's emotional because it's tied to how Nigel and I met, and to cut a long story short, a lot of people know that a few years ago Nigel lost a son in really tragic circumstances. This whole project was brought about because Nigel invited me to play at a commemoration concert for his son … and I finished my performance with an ancient Hebrew hymn which I sometimes close shows with. That sort of led to Nigel and I talking, and a friendship grew, and we talked about arranging an orchestration around that hymn. And it's not that I sing it as a religious piece, I sing it as a universal [one]; it embodies a beautiful universal message of compassion.”

Like lots of organic collaborations, the project seemed to take on a mind (and life) of its own soon after. “The collaboration grew and the Sydney Symphony offered to commission a full work from the two of us,” Lior continues. “So we collected a whole bunch of ancient texts from both Hebrew and Arabic about compassion and collaboration and how we treat each other, and within all that there is definitely spirituality, but a lot of the emotion of it builds from that original context.”

While the texts do draw from religious spaces, there's more to the music than simply a religious placing. As an artist who grew up in Israel before coming to Australia, Lior is aware of the relationship between culture, religion and perhaps conflict, but also the universality of such works, too. “I really was interested in finding common ground, and I think we've done that,” Lior says of the folky/SSO collaboration. “Nigel describes the piece as 'having a determined sense of spirituality about it', which I quite like – I'll go with that.”