MOSSO | Returning
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Saturday, 2 May 2026
1:00 pm
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Gallery, National Film and Sound Archive
1 McCoy Crescent, Acton
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In Association with
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With Support From
An international collaboration uniting four powerhouse Indigenous composers, Nardi Simpson, Nicole Smede, Aaron Wyatt and Davin Ojala, with Swiss ensemble Ensemble Contrechamps in a visually driven program of new chamber works at the highest level.
Artists
Aaron Wyatt The Aboriginal Problem
Nicole Smede The Grassening Breath Returns
Nardi Simpson Signpost, Midwife, Sister’s Return
Davin Ojala New Work
MOSSO is supported by Revive Live – an Australian Government initiative
ARTIST Learn more about the artist
Artist Davin Ojala
Davin Ojala is a proud Anaiwan man, and his music Is informed by his roots in Jazz and improvised Musics with the goal of “using music as a vessel to explore my experiences as a young First Nations artist”. Davin has established himself as one of the premier bass players in Melbourne and is excited to showcase new works at this year’s Canberra International Music Festival.
Artist Nardi Simpson
Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller living in Sydney.
Artist Nicole Smede
Nicole Smede is a Warrimay multidisciplinary artist, composer and poet of cross-cultural ancestry, living and creating on Wadi Wadi Dharawal Country. Working across sound, voice, poetry, and installation, her practice explores the interrelationship between land, language, and memory, guided by ancestral knowledge. Through immersive soundscapes and poetic works, she invites deep listening as a form of connection and return to Country.
Her compositions have been commissioned by leading festivals and ensembles, including Canberra International Music Festival, Ensemble Offspring, and River City Voices. Her voice features on award-winning soundtracks such as Goldstone and Black Cockatoo Crisis, and her poetry appears in Guwayu: For All Times and Australian Poetry Journal, amongst others.
Nicole has been the recipient of several residencies, fellowships and awards and her video and sound works are held in national and state institutions. Nicole is a founding member of Mudjingaal Yangamba choir, a Koori women’s choir revitalising language, based on Yuin Country.
Artist Aaron Wyatt
Aaron is an accomplished violist, conductor, composer, programmer and academic. He has played in a wide variety of ensembles across many different genres, and is a long term member of the award winning Decibel New Music ensemble. As well as performing with the ensemble, he is the developer behind the Decibel ScorePlayer app, the group’s cutting edge, animated graphic notation software for the iPad.
An emerging conductor, he was nominated for a Helpmann Award for his role as musical director of the premiere season of Cat Hope’s opera, Speechless, and is the director of Ensemble Dutala, Australia’s first First Nations chamber ensemble. An advocate for Indigenous classical music and musicians, he premiered Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s work, Nanyubak, for viola and orchestra as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and during a conducting engagement with them he became the first Indigenous Australian to conduct one of the state symphony orchestras in concert. He has since gone on to work with the ASO and SSO, and conducted the premiere of the first opera in Noongar, Gina Williams’ and Guy Ghouse’s Koolbardi Wer Wardong with the WA Opera.
As a composer he has been a participant in the Ngarra-Burria First Peoples composer program, writing for Ensemble Offspring. He has also written a number of electro-acoustic works, using a mix of traditional and animated graphic notation for Decibel, GreyWing Ensemble, Ensemble Dutala, and for Kyla Matsuura-miller’s Freedman Fellowship project, Three Conversations.