She counts as one of her career highlights, singing for MONA - the acclaimed Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania.
The mezzo soprano performed two of her own haunting compositions works and a voice workshop for the MOFO festival at MONA in 2013, inspired by dreams, nightmares and birds.
Now thanks to a $10,000 City of the Arts grant, Mountains audiences will get the chance to experience the work of Wentworth Falls songbird Jo Truman as she explores themes of bushfires and climate change in the Blue Mountains through the eyes of a cockatoo.
Ms Truman has received the funding to present a performance of Traversing the Void a collaborative project and new chamber opera co-written with esteemed Icelandic composer Hildigunnur Runarsdottir. It is expected to be performed at the Wentworth Falls School of Arts or the Hub in Springwood early next year.
"I was truly delighted, surprised and a little anxious....but feeling good to be able to contribute something really worthwhile to the Blue Mountains community and provide a great new performance opportunity for other musicians as well," she told the Gazette.
The project grew out of an an "amazing chance encounter" with Ms Runarsdottir. They met at a small choir fest in Glenbrook when she was visiting Australia with her husband Jon, after a piece of hers was premiered in Sydney.
"I didn't know her from a bar of soap. This unknown couple came up to us and asked about local bushwalks and we took them for a walk the following day.
"We had a lot in common re: our fascination and love for the voice. We exchanged CDs of our work and kept in touch. The idea grew through an online dialogue thereafter. I wrote the libretto (text) and she wrote the work for my voice, and the idea was to go and perform it in Iceland ... but COVID got in the way."
During a window of respite COVID restrictions she was able to perform a solo work for SIMA's Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival '21 in Circular Quay - piano and voice improvisations she made at home during lockdown. But she said otherwise it had been "a bit hard to regain confidence [after the COVID lockdowns]".
"I also have been doing less performing over the past few years as I am getting older and one experiences more prejudice as an aging female performer. I also compose, paint and write."
This current opera is inspired by the Mountains environment. It was written for a soloist and six musicians. The Kanimbla Quartet will perform with two other musicians - a clarinetist and oboist - but it has not yet been decided if she will be the singer.
Ms Truman said the title 'Traversing the Void' has multiple meanings. It refers to the "flight of the cockatoo, the void of self and the also alludes to the work being developed over the 'void' of the internet".
"The cockatoo 'hovers' between ... a wild place ... as it traverses the skies, and the growing urban grid, which it finds discomforting. The narrative then switches to bushfire and its causes, touches on climate change and the human aspect of existential anxiety. But everything eventually had relevance to the Blue Mountains and the experience of living here."
Ms Truman said she learnt from an early age to mimic birdsong and other sounds.
"I was quite highly tuned to the sounds around me and prone to mimicry. This ranged from the sounds of birds, opera singers from my father's records and a favourite squeaky toy. I worked at a convincing rendition of this last sound particularly, and soon found, as the last child in a large family, performing this sound on request guaranteed peals of laughter and a relaxing of sometimes icy tensions.
"I became fascinated with all the voice was capable of."
The Sydney Morning Herald critic John Shand called her music "enthralling ... she can sound like a smashing crystal, a fountain playing, or a flock of birds."
The Blue Mountains City of the Arts grants allocate $50,000 per year. Council is trustee, but funding is decided by the Trust Advisory Committee.
The four other artists who receive $10,000 funding include:
- Linda Swinfield who is researching the role of motherhood as an artist in residence at the Woodford Academy and will utilise the academy archive and historic objects on site;
- Kalani Gacon for a youth mentoring film project with Katoomba High;
- Margaret Davis for her work on the Look Out/Look Out production, which will cover a week's rehearsal of the script, culminating in a work-in-progress showing before the final stage of rehearsals and performance; and
- Chris Caines, for his quad sound performance with projections of the Inn at Twenty Mile Hollow (Woodford Academy).
Twenty seven applicants applied in 2022 for the grant. The grants program increases opportunities for local artists and art workers and its role is to encourage arts innovation, strengthen the local arts sector and engage with the community and visitors.
Ms Truman teaches voice and piano at Abbey Street Studios in Leura.
