After sell-out concerts last year, Benalla Art Gallery is pleased to present a new performance by acclaimed guitarists, the Grigoryan Brothers.

Slava and Leonard Grigoryan have created a suite of music inspired by objects personally selected from the National Museum of Australia’s vast collection tracing Australia’s diverse and complex history.

The evocative nature of each of the 18 compositions is heightened by the projection of a high-definition 3D video of the relevant object. The power this has on the listener/observer is palpable.

Incorporating all their influences from classical to jazz and contemporary music, performed on a variety of guitars (electric, 8 string tenor ukulele, 12 string and classical), audiences will see and hear the Grigoryan Brothers like never before.

This Is Us is also a personal declaration from Slava and Leonard, that this music, composed during lockdown with each living in different states, is a new direction for them. While they have included original compositions within programs in the past, this is the first time they will be performing an entire program of original works.

“We chose objects that try to represent some of our First Nations’ history as well as colonisation, migration, innovation and stories of love and loss. We were deeply moved by all of them.” - Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

The objects and music take us from the deep past of early Indigenous Australians to the making of contemporary Australian society.

Eighteen individual musical compositions relate the brothers’ response to, and feeling for, their personal selection of objects from the 250,000 in the Museum’s collection.

Each composition focuses on a particular object, among them: a 65,000 year old ochre of the Madjebebe rock shelter, a convict love token relating the experience of transportation, the stream anchor from Matthew Flinders’ HMS Investigator, a preserved wet specimen of a whole skinned thylacine, the Kimberley spear point fashioned by Aboriginal people from glass, a cricket bat of the famed Sir Donald Bradman, the prototype Holden motorcar that began the car manufacturing industry in Australia.

About the Grigoryan Brothers:
Guitarists, Slava and Leonard Grigoryan are counted amongst the finest musicians of their generation having developed a reputation for enthralling audiences with the energy of their performances and the breadth of their repertoire – embracing genres such as classical, jazz and contemporary music from around the world. Between them, they have received 4 ARIA awards (Australian Recording Industry Association) and an incredible 24 ARIA Award nominations. They have been touring internationally since 2003, regularly performing throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the USA.

Numbers are strictly limited. Payment and registration essential.

Image: Grigoryan Brothers
Photo: Rohan Thompson