Composed for the Australian Art Orchestra, featuring Papua New Guinea’s Tatana Village choir - Ane Ta Abia celebrates Motuan choral traditions of Peroveta (from Choulai’s home village), paired with the distinct sounds of the Australian Art Orchestra.

Born from the 19th century colonisation of Papua, Peroveta transforms the traditional harmony, melody and rhythm of Western hymns into an entirely unique form of choral music - performed throughout daily life and rarely heard outside of these communities.

We are thrilled to premiere this work at Asia TOPA / Arts Centre Melbourne on March 8th 2025, featuring a 12-member choir from Tatana and 8-piece AAO ensemble. Four short films follow members of the choir in community, providing insight and context into 50 years of PNG independence and life in Tatana

To Kill A Magic We Got Used To, a daring and culturally-coded work, with narrative and spoken word performance by Roman MC.

This 60-minute cantata across three movements is a reimagining of Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du soldat for a digital age, and follows a modern artist trading authenticity for social media fame.

Multiple musical worlds and cultural references are kneaded into new shapes in a genre-defying work performed with a 10-piece ensemble, building the story live through Choulai’s unique Sono-Kinetic Conducting system. This work blurs the lines of composition and improvisation around Roman MC’s narrative-led spoken word and freestyle, demonstrating new languages in jazz and hip-hop through the sonic world of a Spike Lee movie score.

This gripping work confronts the cost of visibility and the fragile balance between creative ambition and artistic integrity

Hold Re-Sample Quartet an ensemble based around the SP-404 sampler. With Dilla style techniques applied to hard bop and free jazz samples, the two-horn frontline plays carefully constructed melodies, backing figures and improvisations that re-contextualize and colour off-kilter loops. Added to this are the lyrics and flow of MC Hikaru Tanaka, which creates a blend of jazz meets hip-hop that is at the same time new and experimental, while having its roots in the traditions of Dilla, Horace Silver and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago