SONOLITH

During a historic session of the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 in Helsinki, 30 articles were agreed and adopted as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration has since been translated in about 500 different languages, but it took until 2014 for a composer to transform it into living sound. Enter Ekrem Eli Phoenix, a Turkish-born artist who conceived Sonolith  as a 30 minute piano piece written for his friend Roland.   The work is unlike any other piano piece - every element of the Declaration is turned into pitch, rhythm and gesture - and can be presented in different ways, with or without projection of the text.  

The Declaration remains one of the most ground-breaking pledges ever made by the United Nations General Assembly.  Above all it is a timely reminder of how we are scoring as a society, here in Australia and around the world.