Get to know the Resonance Shows:
Irrapinarna Young Kaurna Warriors (2-24 July)
The exhibition Irrapinarna showcases the cultural tool-making practices of three young Kaurna men: Isaac Hannam, Drew Kilner, and Bryce Cawte. As emerging community leaders, they bring over a decade of experience developing skills and knowledge grounded in Kaurna traditional cultural practices.
Waypeople (3 July)
Wellington-based saxophonist and composer Jake Baxendale brings together a remarkable collective of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia’s leading jazz and contemporary musicians for Waypeople, a luminous new album inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s English-language version of the Tao Te Ching. Drawing from jazz, Chinese classical music and improvisation, the project fuses lyrical storytelling with meditative textures and powerful ensemble interplay.
Combining voice, woodwinds, piano, bass, drums and the majestic guzheng (Chinese zither), Waypeople transforms the timeless Taoist philosophy of harmony, balance, and paradox into sound. The result is a work of shimmering beauty — grounded in jazz but alive with the rhythm of ancient poetry and the pulse of contemporary life.
NAIDOC at Nexus with CASM (10 July)
Join the students of CASM (Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music) at Nexus on 10 July for a special NAIDOC Week performance celebrating creativity, collaboration and community. Featuring original songs, reimagined covers, duo and band performances, class collaborations and special guests, the show highlights the next generation of First Nations artists.
Aligned with this year’s NAIDOC Week theme, ‘50 Years of Deadly’, the concert also celebrates more than 50 years of CASM’s legacy, bringing together powerful storytelling and music across rap, hip hop, country, pop, electronic, rock, blues and reggae.
Nexus Arts Retrospective (29 July – 28 August)
Nexus Arts in partnership with Dentons Law Firm are pleased to present a showcase of Nexus Arts Gallery alumni. Featuring a selection of works from six South Australian artists, this exhibition highlights the creatives behind a gallery that celebrates Culturally & Linguistically Diverse and First Nations visual artists. Among the collective will be Jake Yang, Fruszi Kenez, and ShenShen Zheng
Conversations – A Feast of Poetry and Music (6th August)
This inaugural Conversations (a Feast of Poetry & Music) event will feature some artists from the 2026 Interplay cohort who are spoken word poets and writers. Each artist will be given a 15-minute performance slot to share their poetry live during which another artist will respond to their words with instrumental music underscoring the spoken word. It is a conversation between poets and musicians occurring in real time. It will give our artists another platform to explore and extend their creative practice and self-expression, particularly through mindful improvisation. The audience gets to witness something rare and beautiful – an original organic conversation never to be replicated.
Ribbons in My Hair, All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Be (6 Aug – 11 Sept)
Chin Ton Naomi Tang presents a solo exhibition developed during a residency at Nexus Arts featuring mixed media ceramics and textiles. The exhibition explores femininity, desire and self-worth using humor and vulnerability.
Seams (14 August)
Helen Svoboda and David Wei Han Dai bring together two deeply expressive traditions in a collaboration that feels both intimate and expansive. Svoboda’s double bass and voice work—rooted in jazz, improvisation, and contemporary classical—offers a rich, resonant foundation, while Dai’s erhu playing carries the lyrical, vocal-like quality of Chinese musical heritage. Together, they create a dialogue that moves fluidly between structure and spontaneity, weaving textures that are at once earthy and ethereal. Their performances invite listeners into a space where cultural boundaries dissolve, and sound becomes a shared language of nuance, emotion, and discovery.
Katie Noonan with the Australian Vocal Ensemble (18 August)
With vocal works that respond to Winton’s unmistakable language in music that feels expansive and unmistakably Australian, the ensemble will also pay tribute to the golden age of vocal polyphony with AVÉ’s interpretations of music by Bach and Tomás Luis de Victoria.
Izhar (21 August)
Izhar (اظہار ) is an Urdu noun of Arabic origin meaning “expression,” “declaration,” “revelation,” or “disclosure”. It refers to the act of making thoughts, feelings, or secrets known, often used as Izhar karna (to express/confess) to articulate love, gratitude, or opinions.
Farhan Shah & Alain Valodze combines the sounds of Flamenco, the Balkans, Maqam and Jazz merged into Ghazal music.
A Journey Through Breath and Strings (28 August)
A musical journey exploring the dialogue between Persian and Indian traditions, where distinct cultural voices meet and interact on stage in Australia
Baroque Strings (11 September)
Following our highly successful ‘Old Worlds and New’ project in 2024, we now continue our journey eastwards to explore the historical musical worlds of current-day Greece, Syria and Persia, amid the overarching influence of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. We will weave a narrative in music and words telling of this time and of travelling musicians, exchange of arts and instruments, and the diasporas from religious persecution.
Adelaide Baroque brings together their period instrument expertise with guests from both Adelaide and Brisbane, performing new arrangements created especially for this occasion featuring contemporary flavours, rhythms and improvisation, creating a dynamic fusion of elements. Not to be missed!
Stories of Water and Earth (28 September)
Stories of Water and Earth features Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson alongside a quartet of Ensemble Offspring’s genre bending instrumentalists, weaving together instrumental chamber music, long term collaboration, dreaming stories and reimagined times.
This hour-long show features a performance of Freshwater Woman by Nardi Simpson, where she shares Yuwaalaraay women’s creative and cultural practice through song and interactive moments. To complement and give context to this 40-minute work, a handful of deadly works from the last 10 years of Ngarra-Burria: First Peoples Composers will speak to country and culture.
