Memory Unwrapped: Aurora Orchestra - Memory

Music and memory have a deep-rooted, emotive connection. Marking his 65th birthday year, composer-conductor Brett Dean joins mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean to weave together fragments of remembrance: tributes, elegies, snapshots, and echoes across time.

Crossing centuries and voices, tonight reminds us that memory is never still—it lingers, shimmers, vanishes, and returns. It carries us back to places we thought forgotten, to people we still carry with us, to emotions that words can never quite hold. From the tender nostalgia of Copland’s Simple Gifts to the shimmering energy of John Adams’ Shaker Loops, from the tender melancholy of Molly Drake’s I Remember to the searing lament of Radiohead’s Harry Patch (In Memory Of), each piece tonight is a different act of memory.

Along the way we hear Ives’ questioning miniatures, Ravel’s and Adès’ reflections on Couperin, Caroline Shaw’s radiant Cant voi l’aube and Kurtág’s distilled Kafka fragments. Dean’s own works sit alongside Weill’s bittersweet Nanna’s Lied and Nadia Boulanger’s Versailles, creating a mosaic of memory in sound – intimate, playful, haunting and profound.

This event will last approximately 75 minutes, with no interval.