Piano: Gabriella Smart

Music: Constantine Koukias

Tape Sound Design: Mischa Duncan te Pas

Lighting Design: Jason James

Sound Technician: Daniel Pitman

Photography: Jack Tanner

A musical soundscape that condenses several million years of shifting Tectonic forces as the first complex life form on earth emerged. This is Primordial, a unique merging of science and sound.

A collaboration between composer Constantine Koukias (AUS/NETH) and pianist Gabriella Smart, Primordial conception is inspired by the discovery in Australia of one of the oldest life forms on the planet, the Ediacara, which lived over 550 million years ago.  Primordial is a visceral listening experience that can be performed indoors with staged lighting, or outdoors against chosen dramatic backdrops. The work commences with the the eruption of Tectonic plates that formed the Flinders Ranges and then travels through time to first appearance of the Ediacaran fossils, the first animals of life; when smothered by sand, they were fossilised as mineral ‘death-mask imprints’. The piano as we know it is reinvented, its resonance reflecting a haunting, fragile primal sound world over 50 minutes.

Koukias is critically acclaimed for his striking operatic visual design. His compositions have earned acclaim for their mesmerising, atmospheric qualities. The intimate sounds of the piano are juxtaposed against the re-imagined primordial Ediacara soundscape. This is visceral, immersive art.