This one-hour workshop will offer a relaxed environment in which participants can ask questions about the residency, project and collaborative process behind Songs From Northam Avenue. Learn more about the Vietnamese dan tranh and dan bay, and Arabic qanun – traditional instruments featured in the composition. Discover techniques for cross-cultural collaboration and improvisation, and how to convey character and a sense of place in lyrics.

As part of an Urban Theatre Projects artist residency in 2013, Martin was invited to write songs on residents’ front verandahs and nature strips along Northam Avenue in Bankstown. A year later, he returned to finish a collection of songs inspired by the people he met, which he performed accompanied by band of local musicians as part of BANKSTOWN:LIVE for Sydney Festival. The resulting album, Songs From Northam Avenue, was released by Ivy League records in February 2017 and met with great acclaim, with 4.5 stars from Rolling Stone and 5 stars from The Music.com.

An Inner West local, Martin came to Bankstown as a relative outsider, although his father’s family lived there for a few years when they first migrated to Australia in 1948 after World War II. He relished the opportunity to collaborate with local residents, many of them first generation immigrants to Australia, who contributed musical influences from their native homelands.