Australian-Malyasian multi-talent Omar Musa is an award-winning author, poet, rapper and visual artist from Queanbeyan, NSW who performs alongside Mariel Roberts; an internationally renowned American cellist, composer and improvisor.
Presented in partnership with Headland Writers Festival
The Offering combines storytelling, poetry, hip hop, cello and original music using field recordings taken from forests and oceans in Malaysian Borneo. The Offering brings together two unique voices for a deeply personal voyage into sound and story.
Exploring themes of seafaring, environmental destruction, belonging, borderlessness and Omar’s family history in South-East Asia, the work is an immersive music, poetry and theatre performance composed by Omar Musa and Mariel Roberts.
“Rapper, poet, author and visual artist, Musa is arguably one of most exciting creators in Australia right now.”
Artists
Omar Musa: Author, Visual Artist, Rapper and Poet
Mariel Roberts: Cellist, Composer and Improvisor
Tickets
Meet the Artists
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Omar Musa
Omar Musa is a Bornean-Australian author, visual artist and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He has released four poetry books (including Killernova), four hip-hop records, and received a standing ovation at TEDx Sydney at the Sydney Opera House.
His debut novel “Here Come the Dogs” was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and Miles Franklin Award and he was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
His one-man play, “Since Ali Died”, won Best Cabaret Show at the Sydney Theatre Awards in 2018. He has had several solo exhibitions of his woodcut prints.
Mariel Roberts
American cellist Mariel Roberts is widely recognized not just for her virtuosic performances, but as a “fearless explorer” in her field (Chicago Reader). Her ravenous appetite for collaboration and experimentation as an interpreter, improvisor, and composer have helped create a body of work which bridges avant-garde, contemporary, classical, improvised, and traditional music. Roberts is widely recognized for her “technical and interpretive mastery” (I care if you listen) and for performances which seethe with “excruciating intensity” (The Whole Note).
Roberts has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across four continents, most notably as a member and co-director of the Wet Ink Ensemble (named “The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018” by The New York Times), as well as with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Mivos Quartet, Bang on a Can All Stars, and Ensemble Signal.
She performs regularly on major stages for new music such as the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC), Wien Modern (Austria), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Klang Festival (Denmark), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), and Aldeburgh Music Festival (UK).
Roberts has been featured wide variety of outstanding recordings, including titles on Innova Records, Albany Records, New World Records, New Amsterdam, Carrier Records, New Focus, and Urtext Records. Roberts’ compositions have been performed at venues such as Merkin Hall and Miller Theater in New York City.
Roberts has released two solo albums of new works commissioned for her. The first, “Nonextraneous Sounds” (2012), was noted for it’s “technical flair and exquisite sensitivity” (Composers Forum). 2017’s “Cartography” (2017), solidified Roberts’ position as “one of the most adventurous figures on New York’s new music scene—one with a thorough grounding in classical tradition but a ravenous appetite for and tireless discipline in new work.” (Bandcamp).
Her close collaborators have spanned a wide range of genres and include some of the most important figures on the contemporary and experimental scene, such as George Lewis, Alex Mincek, Tim Hecker, Nate Wooley, M. Lamar, Patrick Higgins (Zs), Ingrid Laubrock, Jeffrey Mumford, Sam Pluta, Eric Wubbels, and Ambrose Akinmusire.
