performing

Ria Soemardjo is a Melbourne based musician with a passion for collaborating with artists across diverse range of genres and artforms.

recent/upcoming performances

Performing in Hades Fading with Bandung Poet Godi Suwarna, Nuart Sculpture Park, Bandung 2019

Asiatopa Festival February 2020 - Hades Fading/Hades Memudar. Indonesia/Australia collaboration with Mainteater company, directed/written by Sandra Long. Musical direction and performance - Ria Soemardjo

'Cosmic spectacle and apocalyptic majesty in the land of the dead'
Read full review - Sydney Morning Herald

Recent/Current Projects

'Moths are calling' - longterm collaboration with dance artist, Janette Hoe

Echoes Project 2019 - Seafarers Welcome

March 2020 - collaboration with Nithya Nagarajan and dancers for Mpav participatory event

Fine Blue Thread - contemporary world music

Surat-surat - creative development with Rani Pramesti and Ron Reeves, Jakarta 2017

The Echoes Project : Mapping Melbourne Festival December 2017

Chinese Whispers - sound design/composition - a digital, bilingual graphic novel

Indigenous celebration tour - 2018 Bali/Kalimantan

Enfold - collaboration with Opal Vapour Artists

BIO

Ria's distinct, haunting vocal style and reflects her Australian/Indonesian cultural heritage. Although born in Melbourne, her creative process is often inspired by her life long fascination with Balinese and Javanese cultural traditions. Over the last 10 years, Ria has created and performed music for wide range of independent contemporary dance, theatre and mixed media projects in Australia and Asia. In 2019 she spent a month in residency (with Melbourne director/writer, Sandra Long) at the Nuart Sculpture Park in Bandung, West Java, working with Main Teater company to create music and vocal scores for a multi-media site specific theatre performance. Hades Fading premiered in Bandung in 2019, and received warm reviews at 2020 Asiatopa festival in Melbourne.
Ria’s ongoing 'The Echoes Project' reflects her deep interest in developing powerful contemporary performance/rituals, in response to urban sites. She was the lead collaborator in two events for Mapping Melbourne festival, which took audiences on an extraordinary journey through Chinatown (2017) and the Mission to Seafarer’s historic site (2018). Ria’s compositions and live music performance for dance works have received Green Room nominations – including Enfold (2016) and Opal Vapour (2013). Both of these performances also featured her unique textile sculptures, and she continues to explore ways to integrate her formal training in fine arts through her exploration of ritual and ceremony in a contemporary context.

Ria continues to study and find inspiration from different styles of Javanese and Balinese music. She has studied the Javanese vocal repertoire, and regularly performs with ensembles like Melbourne Community Gamelan. This video excerpt is from a 2019 shadow puppet performance, with visiting gamelan teacher, Pak Danis Sugiyanto

All Ria’s work integrates, in quite an exquisite way, an aesthetic coming directly from an Asian tradition (with which she has cultural links) and her Australian context. This kind of work enriches the culturally diverse landscape in Australia and opens new possibilities. It is breathtakingly beautiful, and deserves to be fostered in order to continue and grow....Ria is an artist of great skill and humility, who is quite unique in her ideas, talents and dedication to her work. (Bagryana Popov 2002)