A Place for Dreaming

A PL ACE FOR DRE AMING

FIRST EDITION: OCTOBER 2020

A PLACE FOR DREAMING

Photo: Christopher Morrison

A PLACE FOR DREAMING Words by Dylan Henderson

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Photo: Christopher Morrison

CONTENTS

Foreword 6 The Importance of Place

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Planting Seeds: The Jurlique Herb Farm Concert Series

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From Little Things, Big Things Grow: The Vision to Build a Cultural Centre

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A Tour Through the Auditorium

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The Opening of a Cultural Icon

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From Ngeringa to UKARIA: The Meaning of Our Name

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If You Build it, They Will Come: Developing the Cultural Program

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Twin Peaks: Our Artist-in-Residence Program

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The Gardens of UKARIA

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UKARIA Foundation

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Acknowledgements 142

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FOREWORD

Every community needs its dreamers – those people who see the world a little differently from the rest of us; or who have a clarity of thought or power of intuition that cuts through the everyday.

These people are gold dust to their communities, as they liberate the imagination and provide alternate visions of accepted reality. Our dreamers are the engine of our culture’s development.

While the pathway of progress has no shortage of dashed dreams along its verges, and some great ideas take decades to find the environment in which they might prosper, others take root with an immediacy that is stunning; where the idea is so inspiring, so outlandishly ambitious, so completely right!

Ulrike Klein is one of our dreamers and UKARIA is her remarkable dream, that has emerged, seemingly fully formed from her heart, spirit, imagination and belief in the transformative power of great art and artistry. UKARIA brings us together in a tiny, vastly improved version of our world that values the beauty of nature, celebrates connection to country, respects and supports Aboriginal culture, thrives on the communion of shared experience and gives to its audiences the most glorious invention of the human mind and spirit – music.

In five short years UKARIA has become a beacon for musicians and audiences from our own community, across the country and around the world. The concert program has grown fivefold in that time and the diversity of musical offerings rapidly expanded beyond classical to world, folk and jazz. Across the valley, nestled below Mount Barker Summit, the Twin Peaks property now provides not only superb accommodation for our visiting artists but also a wonderful bespoke rehearsal studio, so that UKARIA may expand its commitment to residencies, workshops and the creation and development of new works.

UKARIA has evolved in an extraordinary way since Ulrike’s astonishing gift to our community opened its doors in 2015. We know the next five years hold exciting plans for its further evolution.

I invite you all to participate in the ambitious imagination of a dreamer to take us to the wondrous place it might – and can – be in fifty.

Please enjoy the following pages that provide some intriguing and inspiring insights into the special dreaming-place that is UKARIA.

Rob Brookman AM Chair, UKARIA 6

Photo: Randy Larcombe

Photo: Randy Larcombe

Photo: Randy Larcombe

THE IMPORTANCE OF PLACE

‘There’s not many places on Earth like this really, that embrace the country, that are a kind of celebration of the country and an invitation to interact with it.’

– Paul Grabowsky AO

‘Places like this leave a memory.’

– Archie Roach AM

‘Australian Indigenous people have the oldest living tradition on the planet. They have been singing for millennia, their music passing through thousands of generations of ears, hands and hearts.’

– Genevieve Lacey

Known as the ‘Fire Makers’ or ‘Red Ochre Peoples’, the Peramangk people inhabited the Adelaide Hills for thousands of years prior to European colonisation in 1836. Peramangk territory extends as far north as the Barossa and east to the banks of the Murray River. Rock paintings, scar trees, and the remnants of creek-side camps and lookout caves provide evidence of their existence throughout the region.

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Each summer, they would set the dry grass alight, marking their territory and driving out animals for hunting. These vast conflagrations were witnessed as early as 1837 by Pastor William Finlayson, who arrived at Glenelg aboard the John Renwick along with 139 other passengers from Gravesend in the UK. ‘We were truly glad to get to the termination of our voyage, but after dark a grand (and to us) mysterious 12

fire began to kindle on the hills,’ Finlayson wrote in his journal. ‘It spread with amazing rapidity from one hill to another until the whole range before us seemed one mass of flame. It was a grand and fearful sight. The new settlers soon learned that at the end of the summer the natives were in the habit of firing the grass that they might secure reptiles and animals for food.’

First sighted by Captain Charles Sturt in 1830, the Mount Barker Summit

was named in honour of Captain Collet Barker, who surveyed the land in 1831. Here, the Peramangk people had access to flint, quartz, and mineral pyrites not found on the lower plains and lakes.

Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Summit itself, and the smaller hill next to it, were sites of special significance, used not only as meeting points for the Permanagk and neighbouring Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna peoples, but also for rituals, funerals and ceremonies. Although much of the language and cultural practices of the original custodians has not survived, the existence of UKARIA ensures the timeless tradition of this site as a meeting place for music and ritual is never lost.

‘The landscape around the Mount Barker Summit and the Twin Peaks holds special meaning for me and my family, and it is a place where I feel a deep spiritual connection,’ Ulrike Klein says. ‘The existence of this place has always been connected to the Summit.

Something up there always attracted me; I felt the real power comes from being in the East-West axis. The place has a demand in itself, a story, and we are just responding to that.’

On 24 August 2015 a smoking ceremony was performed at UKARIA Cultural Centre to cleanse the site and building and to pay respect to the ancestors of the Peramangk and Ngarrindjeri peoples. A coolamon and ceremonial feather stick, together with the ash from the ceremony, remain on display in the foyer as a permanent reminder of the significance of this place.

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PLANTING SEEDS: THE JURLIQUE HERB FARM CONCERT SERIES Ulrike Klein spent her childhood watching things grow. She grew up on a small farm in the tiny village of Blankenheim at the southern part of Germany’s Harz mountain range. She went on to study horticulture, and then pedagogy, at university. She worked as a teacher for five years before she met Jürgen Klein – the man with whom she would start a family, relocate to Australia, and build a natural skincare label from roses, lavender, chamomile and calendula.

When the family of six arrived in Australia in October 1983, they lived on a farm about two kilometres from the site that would later become UKARIA. ‘As a welcome on the table, there was a bunch of flowers that came from the Ngeringa Farm,’ Ulrike recalls. ‘It used to be a farm for young, challenged adults – people with autism and other mental and physical disabilities. They also grew herbs and veggies – all biodynamically. The Adelaide Hills had the right climate, it was a time when the land was unpolluted and affordable, and everything seemed to be right.’

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But all the Kleins had was a vision: to ‘reconnect people with the healing forces of nature’, to ‘inspire people to wellbeing’. It all sounded rather quixotic, and indeed it was: natural skin care products were, in the 1980s, a rarity.

Cosmetics made in Paris, New York and London saturated the market, promising an ever-increasing list of ageless miracles. Products from the Adelaide Hills seemed, in comparison, ‘kitchen-made’. But the Kleins persevered, and in 1985 they launched Jurlique (a portmanteau of their Christian names, Jürgen and Ulrike).

Deeply influenced by Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy of ‘spiritual science’ and biodynamic farming, Jurlique’s production was labour intensive: every step of the process, from seed to skin, was done by hand. ‘Biodynamic farming is all about enhancing the life force of the soil,’ Ulrike says. ‘These principles are the grounding on which Jurlique was built.’

The Jurlique Herb Farm Concert Room

The ensuing years were challenging. A domestic market for this kind of product did not yet exist, and for five years more than ninety-five per cent of Jurlique’s production was exported to the US. Over the next twenty years, outside recognition slowly began to trickle down into Australia.

‘Even though we’d purchased the Ngeringa Farm to produce Jurlique herbs, the connection was immediately there to make it a place of music, of culture,’ Ulrike recalls. ‘The previous owners had built a seminar room with a fully equipped kitchen to preserve the produce they had grown. That’s actually the starting point of the Jurlique Herb Farm Concerts. I saw the seminar room and thought: fantastic! A concert room!’

The modest building was quickly transformed into a makeshift concert hall. The kitchen became a green room, and a mud-brick building adjacent to the seminar room became the designated space for afternoon tea during the intervals. ‘It was really nostalgic, this mud-brick building with blue frames!

People said, “Ulrike, we hope you never change it!”’

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Afternoon tea during the intervals. Photo: Mandy Foot

L–R: Sophie Rowell (violin), Anne Horton (violin), Lucinda Collins (piano), Sally Boud (viola), Rachel Johnston (cello). Photo: Meg Hansen

The intimacy of the venue, the beauty of the landscape and the calibre of the artists she engaged to perform enabled the series to develop a loyal following. By 2004 – at which point Jurlique was already an internationally acclaimed label – the Kleins were ready for a period of renewal. They sold the majority of their shares, and Ulrike’s involvement with the company slowly decreased, but the Jurlique Herb Farm concerts continued.

A few years later, the walkway between the concert room and mud-brick building began to decay, and was in danger of collapsing. Renovations had to be made if the concerts were to continue. Ulrike engaged carpenter Andy Skewes to help. His advice was direct, honest.

‘Look Ulrike,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing to renovate. If you want my opinion, start fresh.’ Bewildered, Ulrike hardly knew where to begin. Thankfully, Andy put her in touch with an architect – someone he thought might be able to help. The architect turned out to be Anton Johnson, who would later go on to design the UKARIA Cultural Centre.

instruments crafted by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1711–1786) for the Australian String Quartet. In order to allow people to make taxdeductible donations, a foundation with the correct legal structure needed to be set up – a process that took over eighteen months to complete.

Once in the foundation, the future of the Guadagnini instruments would be secure: they could never be resold, and would be available to Australian musicians in perpetuity.

‘When I applied for the DGR-1 status, I knew we wouldn’t get it just by saying we’d purchase these instruments,’ Ulrike says. ‘I don’t know where I plucked it from, but I said alright, I will build a Cultural Centre.’ She created the Ngeringa Farm Arts Foundation (now known as UKARIA), and in October 2010 it was granted DGR-1 status as a public cultural organisation.

At the time, she had no inkling of what this ‘Cultural Centre’ might be, nor what it would become. But the seed had already been planted.

The timing was serendipitous. It was 2009, and Ulrike had just embarked on a project to acquire a matched set of eighteenth-century Italian string 19

UKARIA Cultural Centre, October 2015. Photo: Randy Larcombe

FROM LIT TLE THINGS, BIG THINGS GROW: THE VISION TO BUILD A CULTURAL CENTRE ‘Where did those words come from?’

Ulrike Klein asks herself; ruminating on the pivotal moment she made a commitment to build a Cultural Centre.

‘The vision was there, but I could not yet see how to bring it into realisation.’

It was not the first time she had trusted intuition. Twenty-five years earlier, she had boxed up her entire life, relocating from Germany to Australia on the promise of unpolluted land and the right climate. Through consistent hard work and perseverance, she turned a vision into a reality, co-creating Australia’s most internationally acclaimed skincare label. It was intuition, too, that led her to embark on a project to acquire a matched set of Guadagnini instruments for the Australian String Quartet.

She put up fifty per cent of the price herself, trusting that a community of Australian music lovers would contribute the rest. As one scans over an abbreviated history of her life, shrewd, clairvoyant intuition appears at all the crucial junctures.

There was, of course, a more practical reason why building a new Cultural Centre was a good idea. The makeshift concert room and the old mud-brick building adjacent to it were becoming increasingly cramped and restrictive for the growing audience. The toilet

facilities needed an upgrade, and even the heating was becoming temperamental: bowls of hot water were gracefully hauled into the green room to placate the shivering pianists, who would give their hands a pre-concert soak à la Glenn Gould. When the walkway between the concert room and afternoon tea facility began to groan and sigh ominously in the wind, Ulrike feared it might collapse. Something had to be done.

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Ulrike Klein AO. Photo: Randy Larcombe

The recommendation to engage an architect had primarily come from carpenter Andy Skewes, but gardener and environmental sculptor Evette Sunset had also spoken to Ulrike about her collaborations with Anton Johnson, an Adelaide-based architect who had spent many years working in South Africa.

‘It’s usually the case that when a client rings you up, they need to have heard your name from a number of different sources,’ Anton says. ‘When it starts cropping up two or three times, they start to think that maybe there’s something to it. So I got the call. Ulrike simply asked me to come and have a look and see what the potential was to improve the facilities.’

Although Anton and Ulrike both had children who went through the Mount Barker Waldorf School, they had never actually met, and Anton had never seen the existing concert room. ‘The very next week I came to a concert, and queued up to go inside the old building,’ Anton tells me. ‘It had a flat floor, and a ceiling no higher than a standard classroom.

They’d made some improvements by putting a little bay window in at the end of it, where a small ensemble would play. At interval time we would use the covered walkway to get to the mud-brick

building to have wine, cheese, tea and coffee. There was a Sunday afternoon concert once a month, starting in February and ending in November, so there were only ten concerts a year, and that was it. It was delightful in its understated presence, but Ulrike was keen to see if there was anything we could do to that existing building to increase the capacity, improve the toilet facilities, and so on.’

‘We looked at how effectively we could recycle the existing mud-brick building, because it did have connections to the land, and to the history of the place,’ Anton continues. ‘But it was clear from the outset that there was just really no point trying to renovate. We could get a few more seats in, but it was nowhere near appropriate. So Ulrike made the decision to explore a broader vision, and as the potential for the site grew, so did her courage. That’s when we started in earnest to look at designs for a new concert hall facility. That opened up everything, and so at the end of that exercise I presented a broad-brush concept for the site, which at this stage still included the mud-brick building, and Evette Sunset’s concepts of developing the garden. At that point Ulrike had to do some big thinking, and things went quiet for about nine months.’

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Before making the final decision to go with Anton, Ulrike’s children encouraged her to consider at least two alternative options. But consultations with several other architects only strengthened her resolve to trust her original intuition. ‘I think Anton’s main strength is that he listens to his clients,’ she says. ‘The way he translated my vision into a design made me very confident that he was the one.’

Maintaining the existing atmosphere of intimacy, and preserving the almost tactile sense of connection between the artists and the audience, was paramount.

‘Often when I’m in the Adelaide Town Hall I have the pleasure of sitting upstairs, but you’re so distanced from the experience,’ Ulrike says. ‘Of course within yourself you can bridge that, but it’s not always easy. So that was one of the most important things: it had to be a chamber.’

‘Ulrike put the numbers at 150 – she was adamant about that,’ Anton recalls.

‘Chamber music comes from an age where the aristocracy had these vast homes and palaces. They would commission music for a small ensemble, and they would play in these chambers.

The music was actually composed to match the space. Now we’ve got the music, but we have to “compose” the space to match the music!’

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The capacity thus non-negotiable, the next thing was to come up with an overall shape for the design. The conventional shoebox paradigm – adopted all around the globe for its tried-and-true acoustic supremacy – simply didn’t appeal. ‘I love spaces that aren’t square,’ Ulrike explains. ‘If you’re in a square space, you think square!’

‘I couldn’t have agreed with her more at the time,’ Anton says. ‘A shoebox has that natural requirement to be linear, so you automatically get that separation from the musicians and the audience.

The more we could look at an embracing and enveloping shape, the better.’

The first challenge was finding a shape that maximised that sense of intimacy without compromising the acoustic potential of the venue. ‘In terms of geometry, the circle is the most efficient way of enveloping a space within a limited perimeter,’ Anton explains. ‘The hexagon is your next most efficient, then your octagonal, and then you start getting into your rhomboid shapes, squares and rectangles, and so forth.

But each time, the perimeter gets longer compared to the volume you have, so by naturally keeping as close as possible to a circle, you’re going to get that sense of closeness amongst the audience and musicians.’

‘There’s an incredible harmony and simplicity about the hexagon: it’s composed of equilateral triangles, so every side is the same length, and the radius – or distance to the centre – is the same. Every angle is equal. It’s also a very powerful shape in nature.

I found out later that both Ulrike and I used to be beekeepers, and bees are a miracle of nature! The foundational shape of honeycomb is a hexagon. So it soon became apparent that the basic hexagonal shape would accommodate what we needed, and it would also have this connection to nature as well.’

Indeed, the desire to embrace the site, engage with the landscape and commune with the natural world was given equal priority to the music itself.

‘There’s no doubt that you start with function as the primary driver,’ Anton says. ‘“Form follows function” is the architect’s mantra. But aesthetics are always there, like a sunny misty morning, enveloping your design process. By aesthetics I don’t mean how “pretty” something is going to look, I mean the full gamut of sensory engagement, which is so sorely lacking today.’

‘Listening to music is a sensory experience, and you’re not just using your ears. Being in a space that is beautifully crafted with care is going to

affect your mood. If you’re listening to a piece of music and you’re freezing cold, it’s going to affect how much you’re going to enjoy the music. If you can sit in a space that makes you feel exhilarated and uplifted before the music starts, you’re already winning! You could walk into a dungeon that is perfectly acoustically designed, but you’re not going to enjoy it as much. If you heard that same piece played here at UKARIA, it’d be chalk and cheese.’

‘So I always strive to produce something that’s going to be appropriate within its aesthetic context,’ he continues. ‘In any design process, the site is the changing element. In this case, the site was out in the country – the landscape calls out to you. There’s beauty, nature and wildlife; there’s Indigenous culture and history, and so all of that set it apart from anything else! There was just no doubt that whatever we did here, it had to embrace the landscape, and bring the landscape in for the audience. The musicians needed to be essentially playing in nature.’

Anton Johnson. Photo: Dylan Henderson

Photo: Randy Larcombe

One idea explored in the initial sketch was an outdoor amphitheatre. Although it was promptly discarded when the design for the concert hall began to materialise, it remains in the original concept as a powerful symbol of how important the connection to the landscape was in Ulrike’s mind.

A natural extension of the bay window that formerly surrounded the musicians in the old concert room was the concept of creating a wall behind the stage made entirely of glass. ‘I would have loved to have been able to open it all out, but it wouldn’t have worked with the acoustics – you can’t have birds flying in and out,’ Ulrike says. ‘So the glass wall was the answer in order to keep a barrier.’

Venue flexibility was another key element in Ulrike’s brief for the design. The concert hall had to be readily adaptable to accommodate a variety of different functions, including celebrations and special events, meetings and cocktail parties, seminars and workshops. The concert hall seating would need to be retractable to accommodate these various functions.

This added another layer of complexity to the design process, wherein all these incidental settings had to remain subordinate to the primary function: chamber music.

The orientation of UKARIA, and its position within the overall site, was dictated by its relationship to the Mount Barker Summit. ‘Using aerial photography, I was able to plot sight lines, and that’s where I started,’ Anton recalls. ‘There are two sight lines that come from the Twin Peaks, and one from the Summit itself, so we had quite a specific area to work within. The point where those lines met was the spot we placed the concert hall!’

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When I ask Anton if he had ever designed a concert hall before, he laughs (as if anticipating the question), and pulls out a plastic-sleeved portfolio.

‘You’ll get a surprise when you see this,’ he says, leafing through the folder until he finds a photo of a double-galleried auditorium seating up to 150. Some of the detailing in the pattern of the roof bears a striking similarity to what would eventually be adopted for UKARIA. ‘I don’t even know if Ulrike knows about this,’ he says. ‘In other words, the question of whether or not I’d done a concert hall previously didn’t actually come up in our discussions. But I didn’t see it as being a requirement – the fact that I had done one was just a coincidence. In my career I’ve done a hospital, a number of schools, medical practices, central city office buildings twelve to fifteen stories high, and even rugby stadia. And of course I’ve done houses and renovations and – ironically – yes, I had done this chamber music auditorium.’

After graduating from university, Anton spent eleven years working in South Africa. One of his first projects was a Cultural Centre for the Nassau High School in Cape Town. In addition to the roof, one of the key similarities of this building to UKARIA was its versatility.

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‘It had to be developed for music, for drama, for lectures and seminars – for everything really – because it was a school. We did a library too, so it was a whole “cultural centre” in that sense.’

When I ask Ulrike if there was a European concert hall or festival that she wished to ‘recreate’ in Australia, she mentions several. ‘I had been to Wigmore Hall, which has a totally different feel, and the Konzerthaus in Vienna,’ she tells me. ‘I’d also heard about Schwartzenburg [where Schubertiade is held] and Lockenhaus.

Without having been there, I thought: let’s create an Australian Lockenhaus, in our own way! Don’t ask me why, but that’s what I really wanted.’

Mary Vallentine – the then CEO of the Melbourne Recital Centre – suggested that Ulrike look into engaging an acoustician from ARUP (the company responsible for the world-class acoustics of the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall and Primrose Potter Salon at the Melbourne Recital Centre) in order to maximise the acoustic potential of the new building. ‘We were well advanced into the design at this stage – still at a conceptual stage, but the building had a shape and a form, and the potential was growing incrementally,’ Anton recalls. ‘The decision to engage an

acoustical consultant was a huge step, because it really took it beyond its humble origins. It was something that Ulrike thought very carefully about, and was initially unsettled by it in the sense that it could open up all sorts of doors.

But it was an important thing to do.’

Anton Johnson, Ulrike Klein AO and Cameron Hough during the construction of UKARIA. Photo: Mandy Foot

Photo: Mandy Foot

‘We were very fortunate that Andrew Nicol [Head of Acoustics, ARUP] immediately saw that the project was suitable for one of his staff, Cameron Hough, who was fantastic – he was very open minded.’

Cameron was indeed the perfect choice: trained as a classical violinist (previously Concertmaster of the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra and first violinist of the Point String Quartet), his rigorous scientific training as an acoustician is balanced by a musician’s sense of artistry.

But there were significant challenges to overcome: Cameron was initially resistant to the near-circular geometry of Anton’s design. ‘Engineers like to work with things that are not too experimental,’ Anton explains. ‘They’ve got formula, and they’ve got software.

But because Ulrike and I were both on the same wavelength regarding the shape, Cameron had to come on board with it. He applied the discipline of acoustics, but he was not allowed to change the aesthetics. And I think that challenge is why we got a good result: he and I both had to really work hard at it. I had to make the space accommodate his acoustic requirements, and at the same time, maintain our vision.

And we got the two to work together – in fact, to compliment each other in perfect harmony.

The design became a deeply collaborative process between architect and engineer. ‘We’d do workshops together – I’d go down to Melbourne, or he’d come here, and we gradually developed the space,’ Anton explains. ‘It was a case of me advancing the design, starting to do construction details, and the final selection of materials like rammed earth, and then Cameron would run it through his system, and give me feedback.’

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Cameron proposed some crucial revisions and adjustments: the overall height of the roof needed to be increased to gain a greater room volume and reverberance; and tone quality was rectified by adding sound scattering finishes and modifying the domed ceiling to reduce focusing.

These suggestions – and the potential improvements that they could offer – were tested using Boundary Element Modelling (BEM) in ARUP’s SoundLab software, which could simulate the before-and-after sound of the room before it was even built.

‘Ulrike, Alison and I were all there, sitting in this black room, and they’d play us samples,’ Anton recalls. ‘This is what it sounds like in Wigmore Hall, and now this is what it sounds like at UKARIA with the roof where it is currently. And then they’d play the whole thing again with the heightened roof. It was a subtle thing, but there was consensus in the end that lifting the roof would add just that bit more. And it’s that little bit more that eventually made it spot on.’

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‘There are some things I just ponder and ponder,’ Ulrike says. ‘And then there are other things that either we do or we don’t. And for me there was no question at all. We just had to do it – the acoustics were paramount.’

After all the elements in the design were finalised, construction could finally begin. ‘The design and documentation must have taken about eighteen months,’ Anton recalls. ‘It was a delicate project to get through council because we were creating what people outside perceived as a “high-impact” facility. So we consulted with everyone and were successful in getting it approved. We built through that first winter [2014], and then round to the following August.’

Photo: Mandy Foot

Photo: Mandy Foot

Harrold & Kite Pty Ltd were engaged as the building contractor, along with CPR Consulting Engineers (structural and civil engineers), Bestec Consulting Engineers (building services), and Rider Levett Bucknall (cost management).

Overall, construction progressed smoothly. On 14 November 2014, the Klein Family laid a foundation stone of rammed earth in the outer wall of the foyer, and a celebration was held when the last beam of the ceiling was in place, following the German ‘Richtfest’ tradition. ‘We had a flower wreath which we put up in the roof, and everyone came together,’ Ulrike recalls. ‘That was absolutely beautiful, because my grandchildren were there.’

‘The Living Arts Centre can seat around 220,’ Anton recalls, ‘and all of a sudden – just like that – the concerts were being booked out! Ulrike came back to me and asked: how can we go from having 220 seats at the Living Arts Centre, and then have this grand opening next year at UKARIA with only 150 seats? By this stage, the structure was up, the roof was on, and we were starting to build the external walls. The design was complete! Documented.

Tendered. We had a builder on site who was going frantic to maintain his program, so you can imagine the surprise when at a site meeting we told him we were going to add another 80 seats into the building!’

While the Cultural Centre was being built, the existing concert series had been transferred to an alternative venue – the Living Arts Centre at the Mount Barker Waldorf School. Word had begun to spread that a new concert hall was being built, which in turn increased the demand for tickets to the concert series.

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Photo: Mandy Foot

Fortunately, there was a way to increase the capacity: the space for a visual art display in the upper gallery – an important part of the original design – had to be sacrificed. ‘This area was almost like a second foyer in the original plan,’ Anton explains. ‘It was a flat-floored area, and the idea was that there would be art on display. The audience could mingle up there and look at the art, and then head down into the seats for the concert.

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That’s how we documented it in the original concept.’

‘It was a heart-stopping moment, because it was not expected, but we were able to accommodate it,’ Anton recalls. ‘I set to work with Craig Otto from Acromat [who had designed the retractable seating] and I was able to modify the back of the auditorium to widen it a bit more, but still working within the confines of the footprint

already built. I did a quick redraw of the back section before they started building the inside walls. We expanded the space, and had enough depth in the original concept, so between us, we got the extra 80 seats in the art exhibition area.’

‘There was never a conflict,’ Anton says, reflecting on the entire process. ‘In fact the conflicts are challenges, and those challenges tend to bring out an even better design. And that’s important, because if things are too easy, you quickly slip into laziness, and out of laziness comes something that is mediocre.’

‘Our then Chair, David Minns, made sure we stayed within the budget,’ Ulrike recalls. ‘I never had sleepless nights thinking, “Oh my God, how do we do that?” That planning was really solid. There was skilled craftsmanship behind it all. And the site meetings had a really great atmosphere: whenever I came, I could see the tradies just loved being there, seeing this woman doing something so crazy!’

By August 2015, construction was complete, and everything was ready for the grand opening concert. A vision had become a reality.

Photo: Mandy Foot

A TOUR THROUGH THE AUDITORIUM

Photo: Randy Larcombe

Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Foyer

‘UKARIA has stories within its walls – a rapidly accumulating record of humanity and beauty from the concerts held within. Ulrike and all those who have helped create this shrine to music recognise the rewards of investment not only in the bricks-and-mortar of the venue but also in the musicians and artists who enliven it.’

– Iain Grandage

Every aspect of the foyer has been designed to create a sense of invitation.

Rammed earth walls are bathed in natural light – preluding the events inside the hall – whilst environmentally sustainable timbers exude natural, rural warmth.

‘I don’t think I’ve met anybody who doesn’t like rammed earth,’ architect Anton Johnson says. ‘It’s such an earthy, grounded material.’ Made from locally quarried sand and rubble, the walls are a nod to the old mudbrick building from the Jurlique Herb Farm days, whilst offering a distinctly contemporary feeling of stability.

Blackbutt timber from Queensland is used for the floors throughout the foyer and auditorium for its unique density. ‘It’s one-and-a-half times harder than jarrah, so it can withstand a lot of traffic and wear, and it has a beautiful blonde colour,’ Anton explains.

Overhead, a hemlock acoustic ceiling absorbs a significant amount of noise during periods of congestion, and complements the simplicity of the wall and floor surfaces.

The doors to the auditorium are made of yellow cedar from Alaska – a timber chosen for its colour, durability and fine-grained finish. ‘It’s the solid timber that gives the whole place a bit of a glow,’ Anton says. ‘It’s difficult to get and rarely seen, because it has very distinctive qualities in terms of the smoothness of the surface and the lustre that it gives. It is also a popular timber for making classical guitars.’

Ginger Wikilyiri and Keith Stevens’ magnificent work Piltati (2011) – generously on loan from the Art Gallery of South Australia – is the current centrepiece of the foyer.

An abbreviated history of the cultural program also adorns the walls, with posters of internationally renowned musicians documenting some of the highlights – all individually signed by the artists as a permanent souvenir of their time at this special place.

Andrew Steiner’s Ode to Nature, crafted from beautiful Tasmanian Huon pine, is displayed amid fresh flower arrangements that are handpicked from the UKARIA garden. The foyer also functions as an exhibition space for contemporary Indigenous art: 41

The Wave Wall As you enter the concert hall and turn left, you find yourself on the other side of the rammed earth wall. The undulating, wave-like contour may appear like a neat aesthetic feature, but nothing about this curve is random.

‘I was very conscious of the fact that big long flat surfaces are a problem for acoustics,’ Anton recalls. ‘At first I had this wall stepped, but Cameron Hough [Acoustic Engineer, ARUP] didn’t like this option for diffusion at this low level.’

Several alternative options, including the use of an irregular timber batten screen in front of the wall, and the idea of casting a diffusion profile directly into the rammed earth, were explored. When Anton finally landed on the idea of a wave, Cameron immediately gave it the tick of approval.

‘He ran it through his system, and he actually profiled the wall,’ Anton explains. ‘He sent me an AutoCAD file that I could translate into my drawings so the construction team could build his formwork, and get it right, because you couldn’t leave it up to anyone else! And of course they loved it!’

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The resulting design provides a very even spatial coverage and is an effective scattering surface above 1 kHz – a perfect example, if ever there was one, of that elusive balance between architecture and aesthetics, form and function.

Photo: Randy Larcombe

Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Glass Wall ‘UKARIA’s magical listening space invites us into landscape – the ancient Peramangk Country of the exterior, and the interior of a room designed for contemplation and dreaming.’

– Genevieve Lacey

In much the same way that a landscape is never the same twice, a piece of live music is illuminated in new and unpredictable ways as it interacts with the environment in which it is heard. At UKARIA, light, landscape and the seasonal rhythms of nature become participants in the creation of art, providing an ever-changing canvas upon which our musicians paint masterpieces in sound.

The main feature of the design that sets UKARIA apart from almost any other venue in Australia is its ninemetre wide, four-metre high doubleglazed glass wall behind the stage.

Precisely orientated by the sight lines to the Mount Barker Summit and its neighbouring Twin Peaks, the view is like something out of a Hans Heysen painting: birds glide between swaying eucalypts all year round, while the uniquely Australian landscape shifts between the golden straw colours of high summer to the rich, green hues of winter. To the southeast, blade walls of rammed earth frame views of the neighbouring Ngeringa Vineyards, heightening the sense of immersion and interaction with the rural setting.

The transience of the music itself converses with the shifting, fugitive qualities of nature, creating gorgeous moments of serendipity: a silvery mist might blanket the hillside as the music passes from major to minor; a rainbow might appear as the final cadence fills the hall. On rare occasions, a shooting star may even be glimpsed on a clear night.

Even during the daylight hours, a translucent black shade can be deployed at the push of a button to minimise morning glare without compromising the views. The concert hall can also be transformed from an open space flooded with natural light to a black box with a drop-down projection screen, suitable for audiovisual presentations. For jazz or cabaret nights, a 180-degree curtain wraps around the stage, heightening the sense of envelopment and intimacy whilst also absorbing some of the amplified sound.

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The Keyboard Walls The two control-room walls above the lower gallery proved a significant challenge for the design. ‘We were fundamentally dealing with a circular shape, and domes are terrible when it comes to focusing sound,’ Anton explains. ‘But it doesn’t mean you can’t use a dome, it just means you’ve got to deal with the problem. So we looked at how we might stop the sound misbehaving off those walls, and out of that we developed the idea of the keyboard walls, and because we had to really work at it, they probably came out better.’

In a conference paper for the Australian Acoustical Society, Cameron writes that the scattering profile ‘consisted of a quasi-random sequence of four different “blocks” separated by constant-width spacers, each with a different depth groove (60 mm / 45 mm / 20 mm / 10 mm) routed into the block.’

Like the doors between the concert hall and foyer, Alaskan yellow cedar was used for the ‘white key’ battens.

‘Because these walls have so much articulation in the design, it would have been too busy visually to use a timber that was full of grain, so I wanted something that was really serene and quiet to complement all the detail in the diffusion,’ Anton explains.

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Layered on top of the ‘white keys’ are South Australian red gum highlights grouped in twos and threes (corresponding to the pattern of the black keys on a piano keyboard), rising and falling in a contour that traces the profile of the Mount Barker Summit.

Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Seating ‘There is something magical about UKARIA. Built with exquisite attention to detail, it actively encourages the deep, reciprocal relationship of player to listener. The audience is never far from the performers; the formality of a traditional concert hall is supplanted by a sense of community, a place for music lovers.’

– Paul Grabowsky AO

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Photo: Randy Larcombe

Custom-built by leading Adelaidebased engineering company Acromat, the retractable seating is what makes UKARIA so readily adaptable to a variety of different functions. A total of 220 people can be seated in the theatre-style setup, which can be completely retracted to accommodate a bespoke board meeting setting, with long tables assembled on a flat floor for celebrations, corporate lunches or networking events. This flexibility also permits an even greater intimacy for

jazz concerts, where the audience can sit behind round tables in cabaret style enjoying meals and refreshments as they listen.

‘This was the first time Acromat had ever manufactured curved retractable seating, and it was very complicated,’ Anton explains. ‘It was made here in Adelaide: Craig Otto [Managing Director, Acromat] is a genius when it comes to engineering! Of course I had to design the space for them to disappear into.

I was immensely pleased with the final result. A lot of people don’t even realise the seats are retractable, and it’s impressive when you see the difference between the seating in place and the flat floor.’

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The lower seating gallery consists of four terraced rows (C–F), each comprised of 21–26 seats. An additional two rows (A–B) of 20–22 loose seats are often assembled on the stage itself. These seats can be quickly removed and stowed in the large storage area to the left of the auditorium when not in use, while the seats in rows C–F above fold flat as a block and can be tucked away underneath the floor of the upper gallery, out of sight behind a wooden concertina. Along the sides of the lower gallery are artful metal balustrades that once again are inspired by the design of a piano keyboard.

After the initial idea of a designated area for visual art was abandoned, an additional 81 seats were added on the upper level, comprised of another four terraced, retractable rows of 13–14 seats (H–L), with an additional 28 single seats placed directly behind the glass balustrade.

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Clad in beautiful aubergine-toned upholstery, the material was specifically chosen to provide an optimal balance between the relationship between the rehearsal sound (without an audience) and the performance sound (at full capacity).

‘The human body absorbs a lot of sound, so if you’ve got an empty space, and you rehearse in that, and then you bring in 200 people, it’s going to go dry,’ Anton explains. ‘Traditionally concert halls have timber floors, and Cameron was keen on this for a long time. But that’s one thing I had learnt in the auditorium I designed in South Africa – I was complemented on the fact that the rehearsal sound matched the performance sound very closely.

They key was upholstered seating and, in my view (which turned out to be right), carpet on the floor. The audience tend to block out most of the upholstery once they’re seated. Their legs hang down; they put their coats on the floor, and so on. And I hated the idea of someone dropping a hard object and it rolling down the stepped floor – especially in such an intimate space, where you can hear a pin drop.

The carpet helps enormously to soften any noises from the audience.’

Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Glass Balustrade The idea for a glass balustrade separating the upper and lower galleries originated as a practical safety requirement. Even after the original concept of the rear art gallery was abandoned, it remained unchanged in the design.

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Photo: Randy Larcombe

‘When Cameron started doing his analysis it appeared that it didn’t affect the acoustics,’ Anton says. ‘We could have used a metal balustrade and the sound would have gone straight through, but it would have had a stronger feeling of division in the space.

So once he had done all his testing he gave it the green light, which I was very pleased to hear, because it was definitely my preferred design.’

The most beautiful advantage of the glass balustrade was discovered only after the concert hall was built: at different times of the day, it acts as a kind of CinemaScope reflection of the landscape, allowing the musicians to see (and feel) the presence of the natural world as they perform.

of care put into the design, especially the geometry, and the relationship between the audience and the ensemble. The reflection of the landscape for the musicians was a lovely coincidence!’

‘I had not anticipated that panorama!’

Anton says. ‘When those things happen, I believe they don’t just happen randomly – they happen because of the intensity 53

Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Upper Walls The upper walls of the auditorium simulate the effect of being in a much larger concert hall. Comprised of two stepped bulkheads of hoop pine plywood, these walls create a sense of ‘3D immersion’ by dramatically improving lateral reflections.

‘The introduction of the stepping in the bulkheads was there in my original concept, but it wasn’t taken to the level of sophistication you now see – the fine tuning of the actual depths was done following the advice from Cameron,’ Anton says.

Underneath each ‘bulkhead’, battens of yellow cedar rise and fall in a series of wave-like ‘steps’ based on the Fibonacci number sequence. Additional bulkheads were also added on the rear walls behind the audience to provide further improvements to the spaciousness of the auditorium.

‘Initial listening tests (via an auralisation demonstration in ARUP’s SoundLab) indicated that the room’s spatial impression was subjectively very frontal, with little source broadening or immersion,’ Cameron explains. ‘Additional reflection paths were incorporated via a series of stepped bulkheads added to the side walls, in effect creating a series of soffits with varying height (and hence reflection delay) to act as second order reflecting surfaces. The soffit diffusion design was also intended to maximise the horizontal diffusion to improve reflection coverage over a wider area, as well as to disperse potential echoes away from the source position.’

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Photos: Randy Larcombe

The Reciprocal Frame Since the dawn of time, humanity has intuitively understood that beautiful architecture is an inherently necessary component of all ritualised experiences.

Beauty actively encourages and inculcates a state of reverence and wonder, something the architects of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque eras understood better than anybody.

Awe-inspiring cathedrals with steeples 58

ascending into the heavens were erected as places of worship; their ceilings adorned with astonishing fresco paintings that defied the laws of physics.

A classical music concert is, in its own way, a similar form of ritual, albeit with its own set of internalised codes and conventions. Musicians wear tails or concert blacks, striding on stage to the applause of an audience who thereafter sits quietly and motionless for a considerable duration of time. The

spirit of a higher being (the composer) is invoked by the sound of instruments playing melody and harmony and rhythm in highly specified, meticulous ways, with the aim of generating a kind of emotional and spiritual nexus between composer, performer and audience.

Indeed, the greatest concerts are often said to represent a kind of quasinuminous, transcendental experience.

On a much more intimate scale, the UKARIA roof has a similar function: it

Photo: Randy Larcombe

embodies awe and humility, energy and balance in a visually dynamic structure that employs the ancient engineering principles of the reciprocal frame – a primitive structure used in Japan, China, the Philippines and India for building huts and houses as early as the twelfth century.

‘I’ve always had a soft spot for the reciprocal frame,’ Anton admits. ‘Starting out with the idea of a circle, that sense of togetherness, the fact that it had a

dynamic quality about it … it was clear from the outset that the reciprocal frame was very applicable to this space. It has this unbelievable sense of rhythm and movement, and it’s completely self-supporting.’

‘The way it works is that each beam rests on top of the next beam: in the simplest way, you put a pin through the two so that they can’t separate, and then the next one is on top of the previous one, and so you go round

until eventually you come back to the beginning and the very last one is underneath the first one. Every beam is supported by another beam, so the force just keeps going round and round, and it’s completely stable. It also puts no outward force onto the walls – it just sits lightly on the top. It could almost levitate!’

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Twelve oregon and steel composite beams interlock at the crown, spiralling around a central oculus (traditionally a smoke hole in the ancient designs) to allow additional natural light in through the roof. Once the frame was in place, secondary structural members were added to support the ceiling. ‘They all respond to the spiral effect of the roof, so I just took those natural force lines and joined the members up and then gradually broke it down into smaller segments,’ Anton explains.

Spanning each of the twelve primary beams are sixteen smaller triangular hoop pine panels – stained to tone down the contrast with the oregon beams – within a ‘honeycomb’ type tracery of dividers. ‘The architectural desire was for the panels to be generally “shallower” at the centre of the room so that the dividers between the cells were more prominent at the sides of the room and reduced towards the centre; giving an effect similar to the tracery of vaulting in Medieval architecture,’ Cameron writes.

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Each panel is fixed at a different depth to provide scattering based on an inverted Fibonacci sequence.

‘The scattering design broadens the reflection pattern from the ceiling to reduce the strength of focusing as well as avoiding the “back-scatter” that would occur at high frequencies from a ceiling with no infill panels,’ Cameron explains.

‘You don’t really see it, but the panels are all at different depths,’ Anton says.

‘We’re only talking millimetres. But it’s those millimetres that are so important.

I think it works so well because when people walk in, their eyes go up to the ceiling, and they say “Ohhh!” How often does that happen in buildings? Even when you’re listening to music, you know you’ve got this shelter over your head.

You can hear the sound coming back from the ceiling.’

‘Cathedrals have religious connotations for a lot of people,’ Ulrike says. ‘There’s a sacredness [to the UKARIA roof], and that’s part of the height as well – it’s like a clearing, an opening. At one stage I thought: this actually is like a cathedral for music!’

Photo: Randy Larcombe

Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Greenroom A self-contained studio and greenroom adjacent to the auditorium provides artists with a convenient retreat location, featuring a kitchen and dining area, an upright piano, a communal lounge room, bathroom, shower and laundry facilities, and even a day bed to recharge before a concert.

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The Alfresco A kind of outdoor foyer that embraces the landscape, the alfresco area replaced the old mud-brick building as the communal space for afternoon tea during the intervals. It also serves as a dining space for sit-down lunches and dinners during weekend festivals such as UKARIA 24 and Chamber Landscapes in the Adelaide Festival. A fully equipped kitchen designed by Stoddart provides our hospitality team with everything they need to cater for up to 126 people.

Like the auditorium, the materials used in the alfresco were chosen specifically for their sustainable qualities and rural character. The bar is framed externally with red gum and corrugated iron. The Harlequin granite for the bench top of the bar was sourced from Wallaroo in the Yorke Peninsula: Anton Johnson and Gustav Meincke went down to a stone mason’s yard and hand picked the slabs.

‘It’s a fantastic granite,’ Anton says. ‘For me it just talks about the land!’

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‘It’s a gathering space,’ Ulrike says.

‘Of course music will always be at the heart, but it gives us the ability to have other community gatherings as well.

The significance of place, and the role of the garden, is continually evolving, becoming more and more important than ever before. It adds another dimension to that original vision: to create a Cultural Centre.’

Photo: Randy Larcombe

L–R: Gustav Meincke, Ulrike Klein AO and Premier Jay Weatherill at the opening of the Cultural Centre, 29 August 2015.

THE OPENING OF A CULTURAL ICON

‘Astonishing both visually and acoustically … one of Australia’s finest chamber music venues.’

– The Australian

On Saturday 29 August 2015, the UKARIA Cultural Centre officially opened to the public. An inaugural concert featuring performances by the Australian String Quartet and other nationally revered artists was prefaced by a welcome from Ulrike Klein AO and the then South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill. UKARIA (then Ngeringa Arts) also commissioned Australian composer Matthew Hindson to compose a new work to celebrate the occasion.

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Hindson’s String Quartet No. 3 Ngeringa was completed in early 2015, and is comprised of four sections. ‘The first depicts the landscape seen from Mount Barker, which overlooks the current site of the Centre,’ Hindson writes. ‘A place of significance to its traditional custodians since long before European settlement, from its summit one sees an ancient landscape stretching back towards the Adelaide Hills, or in the opposite direction across very flat and dry terrain.’

‘The final section is inspired by notions of construction and realisation – the process of putting a creative idea into practice, and making it a reality. It expresses the idealistic hope that such an achievement will make a positive difference to people’s lives.’

‘The second section is built around the idea of the new housing developments continually moving out from town centres. This has both positive and negative implications: people need to live somewhere and many choose to live in new suburbs that are developed in landscapes that have stood essentially unchanged for eons. But this development also means that new facilities, such as the UKARIA Cultural Centre, are needed: sites of beauty in amongst the urban sprawl.’

‘The third section is based upon “The Idea”, the burgeoning of creative thoughts in making new art. It also celebrates the need for a symbol of creative achievement and the vision of a space for its realisation, such as a new concert hall.’

Ulrike Klein AO and Matthew Hindson after the world premiere of his String Quartet No. 3 Ngeringa.

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The concert began with the world premiere of Hindson’s work, after which harpist Marshall McGuire joined the Australian String Quartet in the Arafura Dances of Ross Edwards. Marshall then performed the beloved Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, followed

by Paul Dean’s As Long As You Learn Something New Every Day. Violinist Harry Bennetts gave a stunningly beautiful performance of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, before Lawrence Lee (violin) played the Fantaisie for Harp and Violin by Saint-Saëns.

The concert concluded with Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, with Geoffrey Collins (flute) and Paul Dean (clarinet) joining Marshall and the Australian String Quartet.

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The Australian String Quartet performing at the opening of the Cultural Centre, 29 August 2015.

L–R: Sharon Grigoryan (cello), Ulrike Klein AO, Marshall McGuire (harp), Harry Bennetts (violin).

In a review for The Australian, music critic Graham Strahle praised the detail and care taken with the design and acoustics, describing UKARIA as the best venue he had yet encountered for small chamber ensembles.

‘The 200-seat auditorium is designed to a level of sophistication that one normally finds only in leading European centres’, he wrote. ‘Helped by rammed earth and timber interior surfaces and a tall domed timber ceiling, the air felt alive with sound, and the timbres of instruments came across with extraordinary clarity. The effect was to put a lens up close to each performance, which in turn seemed to inspire the players to give their best.’

‘When I stepped inside the concert hall for the first time, I just felt overwhelmed,’ Ulrike says. ‘There was an absolute sense of awe. There was just so much beauty there, and I realised that concert hall was an instrument in itself. Of course there was a lot of pride and fulfilment, but it’s very hard to put the journey of that becoming a reality into words. So many aspects came together, and so many people were part of it. It’s something that almost happened beyond me – something that created itself. Dreams do come true sometimes, but often in unimaginable ways.’

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Ulrike Klein AO unveiling the new name. Photo: Christopher Morrison

FROM NGERINGA TO UKARIA: WHY WE CHANGED OUR NAME

Formerly known as ‘Ngeringa Arts’, we changed our name in September 2016.

Unearthing the new name was a unique and welcome opportunity to reflect on our rich history and compose a new chapter. It also eliminated any brand confusion with Ngeringa Vineyards, which sits alongside the Cultural Centre.

The name ‘UKARIA’ was conceived

by Genevieve Lacey (Artistic Advisor), Ulrike Klein AO (Founder) and Alison Beare (CEO) during a trip to Lockenhaus in 2016. It takes inspiration from Ulrike’s vision and legacy, represented by her initials UK. The second part of the portmanteau, ‘ARIA’ (a song within opera and oratorio), is derived from the Greek and Latin word ‘aer’, meaning air and freedom.

UKARIA is also hidden within the botanical name for hoop pine – Araucaria Cunninghamii. This wood is used extensively in the interior of the concert hall. It is a rich golden colour and plays a vital role in the acoustical performance of the hall. It is one of the building’s most distinguishing features and is our reference to nature, growth and renewal.

The UKARIA Cultural Centre is constructed using distinctive materials of earth, wood and steel. The straight wooden ceiling beams join at sharp angles, the ceiling revolves in angular geometry, the rammed earth walls gently sweep around the interior and the main structure is circular, representing the ideals of intimacy and closeness. The icon of the brand has been designed drawing on this inspiration.

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IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME: DEVELOPING THE CULTURAL PROGRAM

Over the past five years, UKARIA’s cultural program has grown from a modest ten concerts a year into a vibrant, eclectic offering that spans several genres, including classical, jazz, contemporary and world music.

Programmed by Alison Beare (CEO) and Ulrike Klein (Founder and Director), it is the physical manifestation of UKARIA’s philosophy and ethos.

‘Artists are at the heart of UKARIA,’ Ulrike says. ‘Musicians create projects and experiences here that they can’t realise elsewhere, inviting colleagues to join them as they bring long-held dreams to life. It’s our privilege to enable these outpourings of sound and soul. And in doing so, to provide opportunities for audiences to be in the presence of the profound flow of creativity.’

‘We take our responsibility to music seriously. Each year, we travel across the country and overseas, visiting festivals and meeting artists. It’s a time of forging relationships, expanding perspectives, and dreaming of possibilities.’

‘Travelling to festivals and concert halls is intense, inspiring and exhausting in equal measure, but above all it’s aspirational,’ Alison says. ‘We see and hear what’s happening and what’s possible in the world of music, and this 76

informs our programming. We plan our itineraries so we can hear the artists on our “wish lists” and meet them in person, human to human. This is where we find the international artists who “speak” to us. We listen critically, and of course not all concerts ignite us: we analyse why they didn’t resonate, and what was missing. We form our own views (not always the same), and then debate for hours!’

Travel also helps nurture relationships with artists, venues, and festivals in a way that cannot be achieved by email or phone correspondence alone. ‘It’s affirming,’ Ulrike says, ‘being amid artists, audiences and programmers who wholeheartedly embrace creativity.’

One of the most special of these emerging relationships is with the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Under the artistic direction of Daniel Barenboim, the 682-seat elliptical space has become an international destination for chamber music, presenting around 150 worldclass performances a year. ‘Alongside our time at Lockenhaus in other years, this place stands as a beacon,’ Ulrike says. It represents a model for what UKARIA could – on a smaller scale – someday become.

Ongoing partnerships with the Melbourne Recital Centre, the Utzon Room at the Sydney Opera House, Perth Festival, the Monash Academy of Performing Arts, the Canberra International Music Festival, and Chamber Music New Zealand have created the possibility of a transTasman touring circuit for artists and ensembles based in Europe and the United States. Each presenter is able to share the costs of international airfares and accommodation expenses, making visits to Australia more financially viable for world-renowned artists and ensembles.

Chaired by Rob Brookman AM (former Executive Director, Adelaide Festival), an arts-heavy Board of Directors includes Mary Vallentine AO (former CEO of Melbourne Recital Centre and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra), Paul Kildea (Artistic Director, Musica Viva Australia), Toby Chadd (Content Manager, ABC Classic and ABC Jazz), and Amanda Duthie (Head of SBS Scripted).

Since 2018, recorder virtuoso and serial collaborator Genevieve Lacey has served as UKARIA’s Artistic Advisor.

‘Genevieve is our creative sounding board,’ Alison explains. ‘She has a deep knowledge of music and brings an external, national and international

L–R: Lior (voice), Rebecca Lagos (percussion), Sophie Rowell (violin), Kirsty Hilton (violin), Christopher Moore (piano), Bernadette Harvey (piano), Catherine Hewgill (cello) and David Campbell (double bass) during UKARIA 24, September 2019. Photo: Dylan Henderson

perspective that allows us to think differently. She lives outside of Adelaide and that’s important as we never want to become parochial.’

Throughout the past five years, UKARIA’s approach to programming has been largely artist-led: an exceptional artist or ensemble is identified, and are then invited to put forward a program that fits within the parameters of the series. ‘At the centre

of our approach is artistic freedom,’ Alison explains. ‘We don’t want to be prescriptive in terms of what repertoire an artist or ensemble should play. We are merely the catalyst – we inspire by giving freedom. This honours the importance of letting the artist create.’

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SUNDAY AF TERNOONS

Our signature concert series, Sunday Afternoons, dates back to the Jurlique Herb Farm days. Showcasing outstanding national and international classical chamber ensembles and soloists, some of the highlights have included VOCES8, Trio Wanderer, Ksenija Sidorova (accordion), Paul Lewis (piano), Anthony Marwood (violin), Li-Wei Qin (cello), Amy Dickson (saxophone), Teddy Tahu Rhodes (baritone), Emma Kirkby (soprano) and Jakob Lindberg (lute), Nemanja Radulovic´ (violin), Piers Lane (piano) and Steve Davislim (tenor).

The social aspect of conversing with fellow music lovers during the interval in a beautiful, rural environment is all part of the experience. ‘It’s the combination of intimacy, great acoustics, and the presence of nature that transports both artists and audiences,’ Alison says, reflecting on the success of the series.

‘The proximity between the artists and the audience creates a true exchange – there is a different energy that inspires the artists to engage and come alive in a different way, and express their humanity through music. It’s an energy that transcends genre.’

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VOCES8. Photo: Dylan Henderson

FOUR VOICES / JAZZ AT UKARIA

Following the success of the Sunday Afternoon series, it was logical to expand the program to include other genres. ‘A board member suggested we program some jazz, and through my connections I heard that Paul Grabowsky was playing with Kate Ceberano as part of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival,’ Alison recalls. ‘While he was in Adelaide, I offered to take him to UKARIA. I’ll never forget the moment he entered the hall – it was almost like he was in a trance. Our new Bösendorfer (then only a few months old) was sitting in the centre of the stage with the lid open, and it was calling to him. He sat down and began improvising. It had a profound effect on me – just the two of us in that space, with his response expressed through music. That experience marked the beginning of our friendship.’

‘I was lost in the moment, so rare is the discovery of a room that is itself such an expressive instrument,’ Paul later recalled. ‘What Ulrike has given us is a gift, a treasure, a cultural jewel, sure; any and every hyperbole stands up to examination. It is all of those things. But more importantly, it is an investment in our cultural present and future, an opportunity and a benchmark.’

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‘From that first meeting Paul had the idea of doing a series of concerts with four voices – just him and a great singer-songwriter,’ Alison recalls. ‘In 2017 he invited Lior, Vince Jones, Kate Ceberano and Megan Washington, and it was a triumph!’ A sequel series was added for the 2018 Season, which included collaborations with Deborah Conway, Lisa Gerrard, Paul Kelly and Archie Roach. The performance with Archie Roach was a particularly memorable one.

‘He [Archie] held the audience spellbound here; the spontaneously joyful and emotion-laden reaction that followed was electric, really as if a switch had been thrown, that his current had directly animated each person in the room,’ Paul recalls. ‘That night we had a long talk. We discussed the knowledge that he had picked up in his many travels around this nation, and around the world, especially from First Nations peoples: knowledge about country, ancestry, the interconnectedness of all things, and the importance of this knowledge at a time when we are increasingly concerned about the health of the planet.’

‘Archie was looking at the splendid view from Twin Peaks, the stunning accommodation, indeed the icing on the UKARIA cake, that we musicians are fortunate to have at our disposal when performing here. He said he felt at peace here, that the country spoke to him, that here would be a good place, the right place, to write songs about that learning.’

In February 2019, Archie and Paul returned to UKARIA to spend a week in residence, distilling the wisdom of a lifetime into the simple immediacy of song. On Saturday 8 August 2020, their album Tell Me Why won ‘Album of the Year’ at the National Indigenous Music Awards. In the same week, Paul Kelly and Paul Grabowsky’s album Please Leave Your Light On – a direct continuation of their collaboration at UKARIA – reached number three on the ARIA charts.

‘Paul has had a profound impact on our program. He truly understands what UKARIA offers to the artist, and what we stand for,’ Alison explains.

‘That deep understanding inspired him to invite high-profile artists who usually play at much larger venues.

He thought they would be enriched by the experience and convinced them to perform for us.’

Paul Kelly AO with Paul Grabowsky AO. Photo: Dylan Henderson

UKARIA 24

In 1980, virtuoso violinist Gidon Kremer envisioned an annual chamber music festival where young musicians would have the opportunity to work with some of the world’s leading artists each summer in an intimate musical exchange.

Artists would perform free of charge, and programs would only be announced forty-eight hours before the given concert, written out by hand on butcher’s paper. The result was the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival – what Kremer 82

described as ‘the realisation of my dreams’, ‘a gathering of friends who want to make music with friends for friends’.

In 2016 Alison and Ulrike travelled to Austria to experience the magic that is Lockenhaus. ‘The format at Lockenhaus really inspired us, but we wanted a weekend – not a festival – where an exceptional artist was given the freedom to create,’ Alison explains. Each year, the canvas is wiped clean as a new artist is invited to curate. They’re given

the freedom to invite an eclectic array of friends into a dialogue across four or five concerts that offers an intrinsic distillation of their artistic vision.

‘The criteria in selecting the curator is that it must be a musician of the highest calibre,’ Alison says. ‘Finding an artist who challenges, pushes the boundaries, takes risks, inspires, and continually strives for artistic enlightenment, is a balance between creativity and trust. Audiences have come to trust our choices and we

L–R: Young Adelaide Voices, Phil Slater (trumpet), Umberto Clerici (cello), Genevieve Lacey (recorder), Christie Anderson (conductor), Karin Schaupp (guitar), Marshall McGuire (harp) and Chloe Hooper during Ngeringa 24, April 2016. Photo: Christopher Morrison

must feel confident about the artist in which we place that trust.’

Genevieve Lacey curated the first UKARIA 24 weekend on 23–24 April 2016. The inaugural two-day event saw Genevieve team up with the Young Adelaide Voices, harpist Marshall McGuire, guitarist Karin Schaupp, cellist Umberto Clerici, jazz trumpeter Phil Slater, and writer Chloe Hooper to perform five concerts over two days that chronicled light’s metamorphosis through sound.

‘Her themes were around time and light and she planned a cycle of one-hour concerts within a period of twenty-four hours,’ Alison explains. ‘While we were thinking of a name, our graphic designer put Ngeringa 24 (our then name) down as placeholder text. When we thought about it, we decided it was the perfect description: it’s timeless and even though subsequent events have been over a longer period, the name is now synonymous with what has become our flagship event.’

In 2017, Scottish classical accordion virtuoso James Crabb curated the second UKARIA 24. The music of Ástor Piazzolla and Osvaldo Golijov framed a disparate journey from the Baroque sonatas of Scarlatti to a contemporary tour de force by Sofia Gubaidulina in a weekend celebrating the Argentinean Tango Nuevo. The following year, the stakes were raised even higher.

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‘After attending our first Lockenhaus in 2016, we dreamed of having its Artistic Director, Nicolas Altstaedt, curate,’ Alison recalls. ‘We knew that would never happen by simply approaching his agent.

We had to find a way to meet him in person. After a great deal of persistence, he agreed to have lunch with us in Berlin.

We knew he loved Australia, so maybe that’s why he agreed to meet. But it was only through this exchange of ideas where we could talk about our aspirations for UKARIA and he could tell us about his dreams that we established a rapport.

By the end of that lunch he wanted to curate for us and although it was very challenging to find time in his schedule, he made it a priority to come for one week in June 2018. He would have never agreed to do it if he was motivated by money or prestige.’

Nicolas brought with him Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, British violist Lawrence Power, and Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin – artists who live and breathe chamber music in its purest form.

Writing in The Australian, Graham Strahle described the weekend as ‘breathtaking in its originality and unabating sense of discovery.’ Nicolas’s performances of the first and fifth Cello Suites of Johann Sebastian Bach with solo dancers from Australian Dance Theatre were described as ‘the summit of artistry’.

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L–R: James Crabb (classical accordion), Iain Grandage (host), Ariel Zuckermann (conductor), and musicians from the Australian Youth Orchestra’s Momentum Ensemble during UKARIA 24, August 2017. Photo: Dylan Henderson

‘Working alongside the curator is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job: some of them have programming experience, while others have never curated a weekend before,’ Alison says.

‘I’m there to encourage, nurture, guide and facilitate as needed.’

When it was time to choose the next curator, oboist Diana Doherty was at the top of Alison’s list. Some months before, Diana had given a spectacular performance of the chamber version of Spirit of the Wild by Nigel Westlake at UKARIA. ‘At first, Diana was slightly reticent to accept the invitation as she’d never done anything like it before,’ Alison recalls. ‘But she had the courage to take it on and she rose magnificently to the challenge.’

Highlights of her weekend included special tributes to author Tim Winton and composer Nigel Westlake – creative minds who have both made immeasurable contributions toward our sense of national identity. For the very first time, UKARIA’s concert hall was transformed into a cabaret club, with guests enjoying a three-course meal while Lior, Julie Oguey and Paul Hankinson performed French chanson, cabaret classics, and selections from their own songbooks with string accompaniment in an unforgettably 86

intimate exchange between artists and audience.

In 2021, celebrated British violist Lawrence Power will curate UKARIA 24, with international guests including Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano) and Torleif Thedéen (cello).

L–R: Vilde Frang (violin), Angus Hamra (visual artist) and Nicolas Altstaedt (cello) during UKARIA 24, June 2018. Photo: Dylan Henderson

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL

Each March, a leading Australian artist is invited by the Adelaide Festival to curate Chamber Landscapes – a four-day long weekend of concerts featuring a variety of national and international artists. Past curators have included Anna Goldsworthy (2017), Iain Grandage (2018), Genevieve Lacey (2019), and Marshall McGuire (2020).

Some of the highlights have included a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise

by Steve Davislim and Anthony Romaniuk, and a twilight recital from the great Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter.

Since 2018, Chamber Landscapes has offered a guided sunset experience at Twin Peaks. Musicians are stationed at various points along a walking trail, and the experience culminates with a performance atop the smaller summit as the sun melts into the horizon and the sky turns to flame.

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L–R: Leif Kaner-LidstrÜm (piano), Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano) and Fabian Fredriksson (guitar) during the 2018 Adelaide Festival. Photo: Dylan Henderson

WOMEN OF SONG

‘UKARIA was the first place I played off the back of an exhausting few weeks in Tel Aviv as a finalist in the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest.

There was something so refreshing about this gorgeous little theatre, its state-of-the-art acoustics and luxury accommodation. Rejuvenated by the company of my closest musical friends, I could be myself here in a way I couldn’t with millions of people watching.’

– Kate Miller-Heidke

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In 2019 beloved Australian composer Iain Grandage curated Women of Song, a unique series of collaborations with some of Australia’s finest female singersongwriters. Iain accompanied each artist on cello and piano, and made new arrangements of many of their most popular songs, allowing their art to speak with unprecedented intimacy.

‘These are creative artists at the peak of their powers, able to compose songs that distil complex ideas into radiant truths, and able to deliver them with immense heart and effortless brilliance,’ Iain wrote in the 2019 brochure. Missy Higgins opened the series, followed

by Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall, Emma Donovan, and Meow Meow. In 2020 Kate Miller-Heidke was invited to curate the next iteration of the series.

L–R: Missy Higgins, Stephen King (viola) and Iain Grandange (cello). Photo: Dylan Henderson

MORNINGS WITH THE AUSTRALIAN STRING QUARTET

In 2010 UKARIA embarked on one of the most significant philanthropic projects in Australia’s musical history – the acquisition of a unique quartet of stringed instruments crafted by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1711– 1786). Often referred to as the last of the great master luthiers, Guadagnini’s instruments are among the most prized in the world, in company with those of Stradivarius and Guarneri del Gesù.

Currently on loan to the Australian String Quartet, this matched set of instruments is held in trust by UKARIA and made available to Australian musicians in perpetuity.

The instruments included in the collection are: 1784 Guadagnini Violin (Turin) 1748–9 Guadagnini Violin (Piacenza) 1783 Guadagnini Viola (Turin) c. 1743 Guadagnini Cello ‘Ngeringa’ (Piacenza)

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The exquisite sound of these instruments can be heard four times a year on Friday mornings in the popular series Mornings with the Australian String Quartet. Some of the greatest works in the chamber music repertoire are often paired with premieres of new works by Australian composers.

L–R: Dale Barltrop (violin), Francesca Hiew (violin), Stephen King (viola) and Sharon Grigoryan (cello). Photo: Jacqui Way

SPECIAL EVENTS

UKARIA has been privileged to host the Australian debuts of some of the leading international artists and ensembles of our time. On Saturday 1 December 2018 five-time Grammy Award winner Dawn Upshaw (soprano) was joined by Tamara-Anna Cislowska (piano) and Nicole Divall (viola).

Presented in partnership with ABC Classic, the concert was a unique milestone in our history.

In 2014 New York’s Carnegie Hall secured the internationally celebrated Quatuor Ébène six years in advance to perform the complete Beethoven String Quartet cycle in 2020, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. This invitation engendered the idea of playing Beethoven around the world across five continents and eighteen countries, at venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and London’s Wigmore Hall. Miraculously, the tour also brought them to Australia for the very first time, where they performed at just two venues: the Melbourne Recital Centre, and the UKARIA Cultural Centre.

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‘String quartets have always been a great passion of mine,’ Ulrike says. ‘To have Quatuor Ébène at UKARIA has been a dream since I first heard them live at Verbier Festival in 2016. When I started the Jurlique Herb Farm Concert Series in the mid-1990s, I could never have imagined that artists of this calibre would someday be passing through our doors. As each year goes by, it becomes more and more apparent that this is a magical place.’

Quatuor Ébène. Photo: Dylan Henderson

Photo: Dylan Henderson

TWIN PEAKS: OUR ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM ‘I go out there on the veranda just looking at this country – it’s beautiful. Being here has been so idyllic.’

– Archie Roach AM ‘It’s got a very calming energy about it. We know the world’s going on out there, but everything feels a bit easier to deal with. It’s like the land is helping us to do what we’re doing. It’s talking to us. And really – that view, it’s kind of extraordinary, it really is. That’s Australia – they are the colours of the Australian summer, in all its glory, I would say.

That’s as good as it gets.’

– Paul Grabowsky AO

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A five-minute drive up the road from the Cultural Centre takes you to a place of quiet contemplation, offering clear unobstructed views that stretch as far and as wide as the eye can see. Twin Peaks – our bespoke artist accommodation and rehearsal studio – sits adjacent to the Mount Barker Summit. This district is recognised as one of the most significant sacred sites for Indigenous people near Adelaide, with strong connections to the 98

Peramangk and Ngarrindjeri peoples. It was opened up for farming in the mid nineteenth century and the Twin Peaks property has had a long history as sheep and cattle grazing land. It is our intention to return the twenty-nine-hectare property back to nature, increasing the biodiversity and habitat values for native flora and fauna and enhancing the nature experience for guests.

In a moment of perfect serendipity, the property came up for sale in 2015, shortly before construction on the UKARIA Cultural Centre was completed.

It was purchased by Ulrike Klein AO and subsequently gifted to UKARIA in 2019. The main house contains six bedrooms and three bathrooms, along with a spacious kitchen and dining area and two separate lounge rooms. On the lower level is a retreat space for yoga and meditation and an additional selfcontained suite that includes a bedroom,

Photo: Dylan Henderson

bathroom and kitchenette. Floor to ceiling windows throughout offer a breathtaking panorama of the Adelaide Hills.

Behind the house is a four-bedroom, two-bathroom cottage that has been extended to include an exquisite new rehearsal studio designed by Anton Johnson in close collaboration with acoustician Cameron Hough (ARUP).

UKARIA strives to become known as a place where new work is born and where artist-led collaborations result in new ideas, new experiences and extraordinary outcomes. Through our residency program with the Australia Council for the Arts, UKARIA provides opportunities for high-calibre artists to think, develop, collaborate and create. In 2021 we will extend our program, providing new opportunities for artists. There are also plans to establish a masterclass program to support and inspire young artists.

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New Work Developed in Residence 2015–2020 Deborah Cheetham: Eumeralla Prelude (premiered at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, 2016) William Barton: Square Circles in the Sand (premiered at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, 2016) Lachlan Skipworth: Echoes and Lines (premiered at the Perth Festival, 2017) Stephen Pigram: Minybal (premiered at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, 2017) Lou Bennett: Resting Among the Treetops (premiered at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, 2017) Ursula Yovich: Dubboo (premiered at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, 2018) Katy Abbott: Hidden Thoughts Gordon Hamilton and Tom Thum: Rosella Resurrection Paul Kelly, James Ledger, the Serahim Trio and Alice Keath: Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds (premiered at the Adelaide Festival, 2019) Nick Wales and Shun Ito: Kinetic Wonderland Archie Roach and Paul Grabowsky: Tell Me Why Andrew Schultz: Dark Well Thomas Meadowcroft: So Long Country

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Marshall McGuire. Photo: Andrew Beveridge

Photo: Randy Larcombe

Ulrike Klein AO in the Crescendo Garden. Photo: Dylan Henderson

THE GARDENS OF UKARIA

‘My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.’

– Claude Monet (1840–1926)

Ulrike Klein has never lived without a garden. Growing up in the German countryside, she was exposed to the healing powers of herbs from an early age. Her parents grew all of their own vegetables to feed and nourish the family – a tradition she has passed on to her own children.

‘It’s what home means for me,’ she says, reflecting on the role of gardens in her life. ‘When I come back from travels, the first thing I do is put my hands into the soil. I love gardening – for me it’s a way to play, and to experiment. Growing flowers has always been an act of creativity, an expression of the joy of life.

Part of the intention and purpose behind Jurlique was to reconnect people with nature, because we are part of it. With all the constant change in the world, we are being alienated from that essential life force, which takes us away from ourselves. For me, being in a garden is like a homecoming each and every time.’

‘My own garden at home is constantly changing with the seasons, reminding me of the impermanence of life,’ she continues. In much the same way that a garden is never the same twice, a piece of music is illuminated in new and unpredictable ways as it interacts with the environment in which it is heard. This connection between music and nature was the inspiration behind the Jurlique Herb Farm concert series, so it was inevitable that a garden would also play an integral role in Ulrike’s vision for the UKARIA Cultural Centre.

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Her brief to architect Anton Johnson was simple: every aspect of the Centre had to be designed with the sensory experience of the visitor in mind.

Visual artist Winnie Pelz came up with a conceptual design that saw parking bays nestled into the edges of the garden, with multiple entry points providing access to different areas.

Serpentine paths twist and turn their way up the slope towards the Cultural Centre, passing through native flora, traditional roses, lavender and other aromatic flowers and herbs. Large sculptures, a dry-stone labyrinth, shady trees and a water feature complement the idyllic setting. Adelaide Innovative Landscaping completed all the hard landscaping, and Dean Butcher orchestrated an initial planting layout in time for the official opening of the Cultural Centre in August 2015.

Four years later, the garden had grown exponentially, but a more detailed plan was needed to ensure it continued to thrive into the future. In 2019 Steve Hailstone was engaged to come up with a comprehensive strategy for rejuvenating some of the areas that had not yet reached their full potential.

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He broke the garden up into various points of contemplation, articulated their function within the overall UKARIA experience, and suggested ways in which they could be improved. This vision continues to be implemented today by our gardening team and a group of passionate volunteers, who generously lend us their hands every second Tuesday of the month, from February to November.

The Gardens of UKARIA from above. Photo: Randy Larcombe

The View 2 by Karen van Ommeren. Photo: Christopher Morrison

The View Designed to welcome visitors and prepare them for the cultural experience ahead, the entrance provides a seamless transition from the rural beauty of Williams Road to the car park.

The ‘Hills Sculpture Trail’ is a journey of discovery that winds through the rolling landscapes of the Adelaide Hills and Fleurieu Peninsula, linking towns and regions, art and people, nature and beauty. The Klein Family Foundation commissioned sculpture No. 23, entitled The View 2, which sits between the two gates at the entrance of UKARIA. Made of black granite from Black Hill, Walker Flat in South Australia, the work shows a round form with a twisted square.

During business hours, a smaller gate provides pedestrian access from the sculpture through to the car park and garden. Small native shrubs, such as Grevillea and myoporum, add colour and variety to the modest flower display. Overhead, pink and grey galahs chirp from the gum trees, the low hanging branches providing shade in the summer months, filling the air with the scent of baked eucalyptus.

The artist, Karen van Ommeren, was born in The Netherlands and studied sculpture in Brussels. She uses stone to form a mixture of elegance and beauty, and to portray ideas about eternity, our origins and ourselves.

‘We look through the space in the middle to the scenery behind’, Karen writes, describing The View 2. ‘We see our road, our goal; walking around we see a square, a triangle and the back, always watching the landscape.’

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Roses and ‘Allardii’ lavender in the Heritage Garden.

Photos: Dylan Henderson (top) / Randy Larcombe (bottom)

Heritage Garden Framed by hedges of ‘Allardii’ lavender, our Heritage Garden is the first area visitors pass through as they leave the car park and head up towards the concert hall. The planting here is low throughout, to create a sense of walking amongst the roses, which have a very special history and provenance.

‘This was the Jurlique Show Garden,’ Ulrike recalls. The ingredients behind every Jurlique product were all grown here, in what was once the Jurlique Herb Farm. When Ulrike sold the company in 2004, the then-investors wanted to buy the Herb Farm and Show Garden as part of the package. The deal almost broke, because she couldn’t bring herself to give up the farm.

They eventually settled on a peppercorn agreement whereby Jurlique retained the right to use the site to produce herbs for twenty-five years. ‘But I was the landlord,’ Ulrike says, ‘so every bit they wanted to change, they had to ask.’ Five years later, Jurlique decided to purchase its own farm in Mylor. At that time, some of their production was still generated here, but having two farms so far apart eventually proved commercially unsustainable. The company released Ulrike of her twentyfive-year commitment, and she could do whatever she liked.

‘That was around the time when we still had Jurlique Herb Farm concerts – totally financed by Jurlique,’ she recalls. ‘The ticketing – everything – came through the Jurlique office.

When it was no longer the Jurlique Herb Farm, there was no incentive for Jurlique to have concerts, but I didn’t want to give the concerts up. And that’s when I established the Ngeringa Farm Arts Foundation and continued doing concerts here. So people continued to come up, and walking through the garden was part of the experience.’

When construction for the UKARIA Cultural Centre began, extensive earthwork had to be undertaken: the roses, among other things, had to be dug out. ‘The manager of the Jurlique Herb Farm in Mylor nursed them for me,’ Ulrike recalls, ‘and then when we were ready we brought them back.’

One old tradition may be gone, but thanks to Ulrike’s perseverance, the air at UKARIA is still being perfumed by the scent of the original Jurlique roses. Each year in summer, they bloom in scarlet reds, cherry-blossom pinks, lemon yellows and snow whites as the crisp staccato clicks of cicadas fill the garden.

Culinary herbs also feature prominently throughout the area, such as ‘Blue Lagoon’ rosemary and Salvia officinalis (sage). Judiciously placed perennials such as Salvia leucantha, limoniums, Achillea and scabiosa provide a teaser for the Crescendo Garden ahead.

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Santa Rosa Labyrinth by Gustav Meincke. Photo: Christopher Morrison

Santa Rosa Labyrinth ‘Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.’

– Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) Installed in 2016 by Gustav Meincke, the Santa Rosa Labyrinth is one of the defining features of the UKARIA garden. ‘One thing I always wanted to have was a labyrinth’, Ulrike says. ‘If I find a maze, I walk it – these things are just instinctual for me.’

Based on the neo-medieval Santa Rosa design by Lea Goode-Harris (1997), the UKARIA labyrinth is divided into four quadrants, blending elements of the seven-circuit classical design with the quarter and half turns of ancient medieval labyrinths. Consisting of 3,600 large oval-shaped beach pebbles, it follows a West–East direction, passing through eighteen different turning points of meditation.

‘We are always so busy we often forget to be self-aware,’ Ulrike says. ‘To walk a maze is to be totally focused in that process, to find your way through the labyrinth of life. It is an invitation to enter a different space, to give ourselves over to it, to meditate.’

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Sound and Space As you exit the Santa Rosa Labyrinth, the paths of the garden converge to a central focal point: Luke Zwolsman’s Sound and Space. Ulrike first met Luke at the 2012 Adelaide Hills International Sculpture Symposium, and watched him craft a magnificent portal in black granite, which is now installed in the Bluestone Estate at Mount Barker.

‘At this stage he did portals, and I thought they were fantastic,’ Ulrike recalls. ‘A portal is a transition, they have so much meaning.’ She was so drawn to his work that, although he lives and works on the Gold Coast, she approached him about a commission for the UKARIA garden. He enthusiastically agreed. ‘At that point we didn’t even have a garden – we had only just started the building, and only the foundations were there,’ she says. ‘But he knew the space, and had a sense of the environment. It’s all so connected.’

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A gift to UKARIA from Jurlique to mark its thirtieth anniversary in August 2015, Sound and Space is constructed of Kimberley Pearl granite from Western Australia. ‘The two halves, split and cracked from the one block of granite, curving inward, draw the viewer into the work,’ Luke writes. ‘A portal where the physical body cannot enter, only light, mind and soul may pass through. This journey and transformation happens also when listening to sound, music and meditation.’

A less horticulturally showy space, the surrounding garden is designed to complement the sculpture rather than detract attention away from it.

The Stipa gigantum cotinus grass – with its ethereal, floating seed heads – provides an airy atmosphere and soft colours throughout the winter months. Plomis and sedums flower in the summer, as the indigo clusters of agapanthi explode like fireworks, providing an enticing prelude to the Crescendo Garden ahead.

Sound and Space by Luke Zwolsman.

Photo: Christopher Morrison

Grass Garden

Meeting Circle

The Grass Garden sits directly above the Heritage Garden, and is currently in development. The design and vision of the area has been inspired by the grass garden at Frogmore in Victoria. In the years to come, this area will showcase the shades of various grasses, and their subtle differences in texture.

Just above the Grass Garden is a meeting circle for celebrations and special events. A row of Manchurian pear trees enclose the space with lush greenery in summer, while banksia cones melt colour like candle wax, attracting a variety of birds, such as the Adelaide Rosella. Peter Maddox’s trio of corten steel instruments – The Strings – is nestled amongst a patch of red-stemmed cornus shrubs, capturing a physical expression of the ‘music in nature’ ethos that is at the heart of UKARIA.

It will come alive from mid-summer through to mid-winter, when the deciduous varieties are in flower. In April, the maiden grass Miscanthus sinesis ‘Flamingo’ will provide feathery ribbons of pink amidst the evergreen blades of Hakanochloa (a Japanese forest grass). In May, the red flowers of Panicum virgatum ‘Rotstrahlbusch’ will complement the gold-rimmed leaves of Rhuss typhina ‘Laciniata’ and Gleditsia triacanthos ‘Sunburst’ trees.

Native Australian varieties, such as Themeda triandra ‘Kangaroo Grass’, Xanthoorhea semiplana (a tufted grass tree) and the lemon-scented Cymbopogon ambiguous, will appear in clumps and drifts. The effect – contrary to the comparatively low plantings in the Heritage Garden – will be one of immersion and envelopment. It will be a place you become keenly aware of the air, as it hisses and sighs through the grasses, creating a special kind of music of its own.

The Strings by Peter Maddox.

Photo: Randy Larcombe

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Crescendo Garden. Photo: Randy Larcombe

Crescendo Garden The walk up to the concert hall culminates with the Crescendo Garden, containing a huge variety of herbaceous perennials in a naturalistic style. Here, the visitor is immersed in abundant flower, foliage and scent, preluding the events inside the hall.

This area of the garden is the heart of Steve Hailstone’s vision, and requires the most maintenance from our gardeners.

In order to enable the area to become what it is today, sacrifices had to be made. A large Casuarina cunninghamiana (or ‘She-Oak’) tree was a former centrepiece of the garden – indeed, the design of the concert hall was influenced by its presence.

For Ulrike, the tree had a sacred, spiritual significance.

‘I had a lot of conversations with that tree, looking out and listening to concerts,’ she recalls. ‘I saw it throughout the seasons, blooming with these little red-orange flowers, and I really loved it.’ But there was a problem.

Nothing would grow underneath its evergreen needles. An essential area of the garden remained undeveloped, colourless, dull. Over the years, a few people suggested to Ulrike that the tree should be removed. Her response was always the same: ‘Over my dead body!’ But when Steve presented his plan in 2019, the evidence was too difficult to ignore.

‘For me it’s incredibly painful to let go of trees, but I couldn’t have it both ways,’ Ulrike concedes. ‘I couldn’t have an alive garden, and save a tree that shouldn’t even be there. Underneath, it was really dead. At one stage I thought: it is a tree, and I have the commitment to plant new trees. Sometimes you have to contemplate give and take – removing the tree was a really essential decision for the garden, because suddenly there was an opening – a spaciousness.’

From early spring, red and yellow geums begin to flower, followed by drifts of Salvia nemorosa. Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’, clary sage and Veronicastrum varietals rise up like miniature cathedrals; Aster ‘Ruby Buttons’ and ‘Jolly Bee’ geraniums erupt in vibrant purple explosions. Monarch butterflies flit between tansies, buddleias and euphorbias; the spiky spheres of echinops flash blue amid ‘Lemon Queen’ helianthus and rudbeckias.

The enchanting fragrance of Burkwood virburnum swirls in the air, attracting an abundance of bees.

Listening to them work their magic, wings aglow in a golden twilight, makes the world seem a better place: the serenity that buzz evokes, the promise of renewal it carries.

As winter arrives, the perennials are left to decay. The seed heads begin to glisten as sunlight refracts off tiny beads of morning dew, exuding a stark, sepulchral beauty.

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Hillside Garden ‘There is nothing I like better at the end of a hot summer’s day than taking a short walk around the garden. You can smell the heat coming up from the earth to meet the cooler night air.’

– Peter Mayle (1939–2018) The Hillside Garden is one of the most beautiful areas for quiet contemplation.

Small benches offer an invitation to dream under the eucalypts and soak up the serenity, while low woody shrubs, such as Correa, Leptospermum, Prostanthera and Ixodia complement and background the neighbouring Crescendo Garden, and allow a view out to the south.

At the heart of the Hillside Garden is a water feature, surrounded by lush Acacia cognata ‘Limelight’ foliage and pink-rimmed echeveria succulents, evoking a ‘creek edge’ appearance.

As night falls, the meditative trickling of water plays counterpoint to a chorus of Southern Marsh and Eastern Banjo frogs.

Hillside Garden. Photo: Christopher Morrison

Photo: Dylan Henderson

Adjacent to the pond is another beautiful black granite sculpture: Silvio Apponyi’s Whales. Based in Balhannah in the Adelaide Hills, the GermanAustralian sculptor’s primary inspiration is Australian fauna: frogs, kangaroos and eagles feature prominently among his oeuvre. When Ulrike saw Apponyi’s Whales for the first time, she felt an instant attraction to it.

‘I’m usually much more of an abstract person,’ she admits, ‘but it’s just absolutely beautiful. There is this story – I have no idea if it is genuine or not – about the Mount Barker Summit in ancient times. There was a flood, and a whale sacrificed itself so that people could survive by riding on its back.

Someone told this story to me. Is it truly an authentic Aboriginal story? I wouldn’t know. But whales are the most amazing, mystical creatures. They’re musical too:

looking at the sculpture, you can almost hear their song. It could almost be a whale in the landscape.’

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Photo: Randy Larcombe

The Deck ‘I can think of two very different concert venues which were unforgettable experiences for me as a pianist. The first is the UKARIA Cultural Centre, in Australia’s Adelaide Hills. The concert stage is completely surrounded by glass and while playing, one can see far over the beautiful hills and valleys of South Australia. I have never felt more close to nature, the essence of art, while performing.’

– Ammiel Bushakevitz The garden bed below the deck is the last area to experience before entering the foyer. It complements the colour scheme and aesthetics of the hall, and foregrounds the distant views from within it, its beauty revealing itself to those who take the time to quietly soak it in during performances.

The more colourful elements are nestled shyly amongst the more voluminous foliage of conifers. In autumn, our Japanese maples, sitting on both sides of the stairway to the main entrance, become crimson testaments to transience.

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L–R: Ulrike Klein AO, Gustav Meincke, and Jan-Olav Hinz after the installation of Listening / Radiating. Photo: Dylan Henderson

Embedded into the landscape, off to the left of the main path, is the last sculpture you will encounter: Jan-Olav Hinz’s Listening / Radiating. When it was installed on Thursday 9 November 2017 – just days before we launched our 2018 Season – it was impossible to ignore the powerful symbolism the object exuded.

‘To make something for a specific site is like a puzzle,’ Jan-Olav says. ‘You have to have an idea of what the place should do, what Ulrike has created here – the hopes, the visions. I then have to look to the hall itself, I have to hear a concert, and look out. I see the colours of the landscape – green, red, brown, black. I needed to find a stone that takes these colours in, so Gustav [Meincke] and I went to Wallaroo to find this stone.’

Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of this monolithic block of Harlequin granite is the way its appearance changes with the rhythms of nature, refracting the morning sunlight like a silver lake, and glistening after summer rain like the scales on a fish.

‘But when music is the centre of this place, I also have to think about sound,’ Jan-Olav continues. ‘How can I visualise that? A drop on the surface of water makes waves – that’s what you can see. But maybe these aren’t really water waves – they’re waves that go from the centre, to the world. And Ulrike’s idea was to have a spot, and from a spot, put something out into the world. I made the waves go farther out than the piece itself, so it goes more into the world than what you can see.’

As rainbow lorikeets pruned the bottlebrush, we toasted the installation of the sculpture with sparkling wine and a delicious home made lemon tart, and looked out towards the Mount Barker Summit, dreaming of the years to come. Listening / Radiating speaks to the vision that lies on the perimeter of consciousness – a realm of possibilities that feels endless.

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Kitchen Herb Garden Nestled in the corner of our alfresco setting is a small kitchen herb garden – home to edible flowers including nasturtium and pansy, which add a splash of natural colour to our desserts. In spring, the red poppies begin to bloom – a universal symbol of remembrance – while plantings of Gaura lindheimeri add colour to the garden year round, floating in the air like pink butterflies.

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Photo: Randy Larcombe

‘Pencil Pines’ and Ash trees in the Mediterranean Garden. Photo: Christopher Morrison

Mediterranean Garden ‘They are constantly occupying my thoughts, it astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them. The cypress is as beautiful of line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk. And the green has a quality of such distinction.’

– Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) Our terraced Mediterranean Garden frames our alfresco setting, enveloping the area in a wall of soft greenery.

‘Pencil Pines’ obscure the road above, while Ash trees provide yellow hues in autumn.

In spring, an abundance of tulips begin to sprout, arresting the eye with their petals of iridescent velvet. In December, blue fairy wrens nest in the thickets, flecks of electric blue plumage flashing and dancing amid the rosemary bushes.

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Our Gardening Team Adam Hancock ‘Gardens are a combination of the natural world, human creativity and art. They are a great teacher of life lessons: patience, delayed gratification, hard work vs. reward.

They’re also a place of excitement and new beginnings. They force you always to look to the future. You are always planning the next job, season or year, so you are always kept busy looking optimistically to the new things to come.’

Adam is a self-employed gardener based in the Adelaide Hills. Whether working on large gardens or small, he brings a practical approach to garden design and plantings.

Adam’s passion is natural style gardens that are inspired by the beauty of natural ecosystems. This approach considers both the aesthetic as well as the importance of reconnecting people with their environment. His guiding principle is to work with nature rather than trying to compete with it. His holistic approach incorporates all elements of nurturing the garden to bring it to its full potential.

Adam feels privileged to live and work in the beautiful Adelaide Hills where he has the opportunity to collaborate and learn from the wonderful gardening community.

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Adam Hancock. Photo: Dylan Henderson

Andrew Plumer Andrew is a latecomer to the gardening world having decided on a major career change following the sale of a publishing and online training business he ran with his partner.

After being invited to help out planting some of the initial UKARIA garden in 2017, he fell in love with the place and has been working with the team ever since. He went on to complete a Certificate 3 in Horticulture at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. When not tending a garden somewhere you will usually find him at Goolwa or somewhere on the Murray River with his partner messing about on boats.

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Andrew Plumer. Photo: Dylan Henderson

Jacob Hurrell Jacob joined the team in 2017. He has over three years of experience working in the garden, and continues to provide a helpful role using the skills he has learnt from industry professionals. On other occasions, Jacob works alongside the facilities team to help set for our concerts. He provides a friendly, caring and helpful nature to the team, and to visitors of the Cultural Centre.

Jacob is very passionate towards the study of neuroscience and aging. He is currently studying a Bachelor of Dementia Care with the University of Tasmania.

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Jacob Hurrell. Photo: Dylan Henderson

Friends of the Garden Our Friends of the Garden volunteer program offers patrons the opportunity to participate in morning events held on the second Tuesday of each month from 9.00am–12.00pm, from February through to November, giving those who have a passion for gardening the chance to spend a few hours working on our grounds as a member of the gardening team, catching up with like-minded garden lovers over a cup of tea, and soaking up the sunshine in the company of a close-knit community. Gloves and all garden equipment are provided, and no experience is necessary.

To register your interest, please visit our website at: www.ukaria.com/-friendsofthegarden

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Friends of the Garden. Photo: Dylan Henderson

Photo: Randy Larcombe

UKARIA FOUNDATION

The UKARIA Foundation was established in July 2018. Chaired

by David McKee AO, its aim is to support UKARIA’s cultural program in perpetuity. Musicians from across Australia and around the world have established UKARIA as a South Australian cultural icon. Through the generosity of our patrons we have established a corpus and the endowment will ensure we remain independent and proudly focused on our artists and audiences. Since its inception Ulrike Klein AO has matched all gifts to the Foundation and will continue to match donations dollar for dollar in the year ahead.

We invite you to join us by making a donation in one of the following ways: Giving to the Endowment Fund Your gift will build the corpus and the investment income will support the cultural program in perpetuity. It will enable us to engage great artists, commission new work, and develop the residency program.

Giving to the Music Fund Your donation will be used to support outstanding national and international artists in the forthcoming concert seasons.

Leaving a Bequest Your legacy can be directed to the Endowment Fund or a special project.

For a confidential discussion about leaving a musical legacy, please contact Alison Beare, CEO on (08) 8227 1277 or by email alison@ukaria.com.

How to Donate Online www.ukaria.com/support-us Phone (08) 8227 1277 Donations of $2 or more are tax deductible and the UKARIA Foundation is able to receive distributions from private and public ancillary funds.

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Photo: Andrew Beveridge

The Board of UKARIA recognises and thanks everyone who has made a donation.

Patrons ($50,000+)* Ulrike Klein AO Klein Family Foundation David McKee AO and Pam McKee Didy McLaurin Guardians ($20,000+)* Daniel and Susan Hains Lang Foundation Joan Lyons Hugh MacLachlan and Fiona MacLachlan OAM Peter and Pamela McKee Gustav Meincke Pauline Menz Mary Louise Simpson Anonymous (1) Supporters ($5000+)* Valerian Adamek Kim and Bron Anderson James and Carol Banman Amanda Harkness and Karen Barrett Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett Janet McLachlan Josephine Prosser In memory of Mrs Chris Steele Scott OAM Mary Vallentine AO Anonymous (3)

Friends ($1000+)* Aldridge Family Endowment John and Sue Arthurson Alison Beare Rob Brookman AM and Verity Laughton Colin and Robyn Cowan Mark de Raad Sue and Ross Dillon Katherine Fennell Michael and Janet Hayes Tim and Vicki Jordan Delysia Lawson Jocelyn Parsons Judy and George Potter Nicholas and Annemarie Pyne Petrea and Mick Roche Jill Russell In memory of Joan Scott Fred and Susan Mann Peter Tonkin and Rosalind Martin Robert and Chris Waltham Janet Worth Pamela Yule Anonymous (7) *Cumulative donations made from 1 July 2018

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Board of Directors

Staff

Ulrike Klein AO | Founder

Alison Beare Chief Executive Officer

Rob Brookman AM | Chair Toby Chadd Amanda Duthie Amanda Harkness Paul Kildea David McKee AO Sam Saunders Mary Vallentine AO

Emma van Lierop Business Manager Kingsley Schmidtke Facilities Manager Pia Labozzetta Events and Sales Manager Dylan Henderson Communications Manager Rachel Bruerville Communications Coordinator Artistic Advisor Genevieve Lacey Design Orange Fridge Cover Image Randy Larcombe

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Photo: Christopher Morrison

UKARIA Cultural Centre | 119 Williams Road Mount Barker Summit SA 5251 | Australia UKARIA Head Office & Postal | 911 / 147 Pirie Street Adelaide SA 5000 | Australia T +61 8 8227 1277 | E info@ukaria.com

www.ukaria.com