Compassion Feat. Lior

Lior is one of Australia’s most treasured singer songwriters renowned for his beautiful voice and songs that radiate truth and sincerity. He burst on to the Australian music scene in 2005 with his debut album - Autumn Flow - which has become one of the most successful independent debut releases in Australian music history. That year Lior earned 3 ARIA nominations including ‘Best Male Artist’ as well as Triple J’s ‘J Award’ nomination for ‘Australian Album of the Year’. Lior’s second album - Corner of an Endless Road - went to #2 on the Australian Albums Chart and topped the Independent charts for several weeks. Lior has subsequently released a further 5 albums whilst remaining a completely independent artist. He has earned a total of 7 ARIA nominations as well as being a 2-time ARIA award-winner.

Lior has toured extensively both in Australia and internationally, including a national tour with the major state orchestras in Australia. He has been a regular performer at WOMAD festivals as well as various art festivals around the world including an entire season at the Edinburgh festival. He has recently completed an international tour as the featured guest vocalist for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Luminous concert series.

Lior has also undertaken a host of songwriting work for film and television and is a recipient of an APRA Award for ‘Best Original Song Composed for Screen’.

Most notably however, in 2013 Lior collaborated with acclaimed composer Nigel Westlake on Compassion a symphonic song cycle for voice and orchestra. The work consists of original orchestrations set to ancient texts in both Hebrew and Arabic centred around the wisdom of compassion.

Compassion has been performed with the major state orchestras in Australia and won the ARIA for ‘Best Classical Album’ in 2014. In 2016 Lior premiered ‘Compassion’ in the US with the Austin Symphony Orchestra and subsequently won the 2016 Austin Table Critics’ Award for ‘Best Symphonic Performance’.

Kelly Lovelady is an Australian conductor-curator and cultural activist with a passion for experimental programming, concert dramaturgy and composer advocacy. She is the founding Artistic Director of Ruthless Jabiru: a chamber orchestra of Australasian musicians in the UK forging projects which explore humanitarian and social justice stories through New music. Lovelady has devised, self-produced and conducted massed musical and cross-artform projects for festivals around the world and is in demand in the UK and abroad as a Musical Director and Guest Conductor with a focus on contemporary repertoire and composer collaboration. Career highlights have included repeat invitations to Cluster New Music & Integrated Arts Festival (Canada), Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy), Art Pop at Pop Montreal International Music Festival, Grimeborn Opera Festival (UK) and City of London Festival; conducting members of London Symphony Orchestra side-by-side with Guildhall School Orchestral Artistry students; assisting an all-Gloria Coates programme with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; Assistant Conductor for George Benjamin’s Written on Skin at Theater und Orchester Sankt Gallen; headline billing at Joy & Dissent Festival of Cultural Activism (UK); performance interventions for Greenpeace; masterclasses with London Sinfonietta; and a jump in as rehearsal conductor for Simon Rattle’s Young Orchestra for London.