The Tailor of Time - 40 Years of ELISION

Name: The Tailor of Time - 40 Years of ELISION
Start: 2026-07-16T09:30:00+10:00
Location: Melbourne Recital Centre

Schedule

Thu, 16 Jul, 2026 at 09:30 am

UTC+10:00

Location

Melbourne Recital Centre | Melbourne, VI

Celebrating 40 years of Australia's premier new music ensemble.
To celebrate its ruby jubilee, ELISION presents the Australian premiere of The Tailor of Time, Liza Lim's landmark commission for the Ensemble Intercontemporain of Paris. This work for a 30-piece ensemble is steeped in the world of Sufi poet Rumi's images of longing, desire, bewilderment and annihilation in the face of Divine love.
Featuring members of the ELISION family from around the globe, including soloists Marshall McGuire (harp) and Peter Veale (oboe), the title – The Tailor of Time – is inspired by lines from Rumi's Mathnawi:
I have known pigeons who fly in a nowhere,
and birds that eat grainlessness,

and tailors who sew beautiful clothes
by tearing them to pieces.

In another verse, Rumi says:

The tailor of time has never sewn a shirt for any man without tearing it to pieces.
Of the work, composer Liza Lim says: ‘Rumi’s poetry is suffused with paradoxical images of making and unmaking, absence and presence... In Rumi’s lines, Time is a ‘tailor’ continually tearing, altering, molding us and the world.’
Earlier in the celebration, the magical world of Mexican composer Julio Estrada explodes in a new celebratory and ecstatic version of his Yuunohui cycle; Kate Milligan’s ecological sensibility is embraced within her new work Great Dog! (as seen by the River), and Richard Barrett’s elsewhen delves into the psyche of early human culture as expressed in the beginnings of language, and the sculpting and creation of artefacts.
Having forged through with uncompromised commitment and fierce devotion to their art for over forty years, join ELISION as they further their reputation as one of Australia's ‘most convincing [contemporary music] advocates’ (The Age).