The second instalment of The Resonant Heart miniseries offers a close, intimate look at the musical musings and transformative journeys of the SARAY Iluminado Femme trio, lIve streamed at 7:30pm on Monday November 29th, from the beautiful Ok-Topia Yoga Studio in Thornbury.

SARAY Iluminado Femme is a derivative of the ensemble SARAY Iluminado, a Melbourne-based group that specialises in Sephardic Jewish and Sevdah, the traditional music of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The group explores contemporary, diasporic reimagining of Sephardic Jewish Romances and Sevdalinka songs. The Femme Trio made their European debut at the Sicilian traditional music circuit in August 2019.

Between memory and possibility, hope and history, the potential for our ascension is rooted deeply in the songs, stories, food and coffee rituals of our grandmothers, their grandmothers and the ones before them. The songs we (re)sing/(re)play and the stories we (re)tell are the replanted roots and reimagined dreams for an individually united sense of a better tomorrow.

Originally conceived in the 2020 and premiered in 2021, The Resonant Heart is a uniquely curated and crafted multidisciplinary project that celebrates the work of an international group of BIPOC and CALD female artists who reside in Melbourne. Collaboratively developed between musician, curator and storyteller Nela Trifkovic and all the artists, the project navigates the quintessential themes of love, grief, joy and suffering, exploring a different aspect of these themes each year.

In 2021, our focus is on musical, theatrical, movement and poetic exploration of dreams – woven and scaped – after a long time being off-stage, imagining and consolidating our creative-rituals-of belonging, the artists are here to communicate more about their day-to-day creative processes, rather than just sharing their art works at the completion stage.