The Mara! Big Band: Zashto?
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The Mara! Big Band project is the fulfilment of a long-held dream of Mara Kiek, 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 former member Andrew Robson plus James Greening, Sam Golding, Gary Daley, Tunji Beier and singers Silvia Entcheva and Jarnie Birmingham.
In 2020, with support from CreateNSW, Mara commissioned 5 current and former members of the Mara! Band to compose an original suite of music for this new ensemble. The new work is called “Zashto?” meaning “Why?” and features poetry and texts by Australian migrant and refugee women, expressing their stories of displacement, hope, longing, despair and resignation in their journey towards for a dream… a new life in the ‘lucky country’.
The pandemic forced the project to be postponed in 2020, but the tour has been rescheduled to September 2021, with the Canberra premiere of the new suite “Zashto?” being presented at the Street Theatre.