MICK HARVEY Waves Of Anzac / The Journey

Waves of ANZAC is represented by 13 tracks selected from the score for the ABC documentary on forgotten war stories and lives lost. The documentary is a personal history by the actor Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, The Piano) set against a contemporary increasingly divided political backdrop. ‘Why ANZAC? with Sam Neill’ (Dir. Kriv Stenders, 2015) is named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who served together in the Gallipoli Campaign, their first engagement in World War I and continued as a military unit until after WW2. The film is a look at this pivotal point in our shared history, and the impact it still has on a personal and on a geopolitical level. Harvey recently examined this period via the prism of a fictional soldier/poet for his collaboration with Christopher Richard Barker, The Fall and Rise of Edgar Bourchier and the Horrors of War.

The Journey is a four-part composition, recorded with The Letter String Quartet, in support of people seeking asylum who have found themselves in Australia’s offshore detention program. The piece was composed as a study of the hardships endured by the detainees on Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island before and during their internment and as an expression of hope for a humane outcome to their plight.