Castlemaine musician Lizzy Welsh will return to the Theatre Royal stage 30 years after first performing on it.
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The classical musician will perform the world premiere of a new show - Tilman Robinson and Outlier - she created with fellow experimental musicians Tilman Robinson and Chloe Sobek, on March 30.
Welsh, who grew up in Castlemaine and first learnt to play violin while at primary school, said she was excited to return to her hometown.
"The first time I performed at the Theatre Royal was for Castlemaine North Primary School's production of Captain Midnight," she said. "I played Major Mitchell's cockatoo and my mum made me an amazing ABBA-style wing suit.
"I have played at the theatre since but it has been a while, so it will be good to be back."
The chance to return to the Theatre Royal was helped by Welsh's link to owners Tim Heath and Felicity Cripps.
"Tim and I are high school friends and played in bands together and I have played in Felicty's bands as well," she said. "It is really great to be doing this, making this debut in a place I know with friends I love.
"It's wonderful what they are doing with the theatre. They have done a great job making it a hub. The same as the Bendigo Art Gallery and The Capital and Ulumbarra have. They are amazing regional venues attracting world-class acts and we're lucky to have them."
After learning violin through a state government program that encouraged instrumental music at primary schools, Welsh went to Bendigo Senior Secondary College before studying at the Victoria College of the Arts and in the German city of Cologne.
"I was the lucky kid (in primary school) that had a violin teacher," she said. "From when I knew what it sounded like I wanted to play the violin.
"So I jumped at the opportunity to learn and it was all subsidised and cheap to hire an instrument. I always loved practising.
"It goes to show if you give kids an opportunity at the right time, it really is life changing. If I had been in a different town, I might not have had the opportunity."
She returned to Australia from Germany to study a doctorate of music arts in Brisbane before taking up a career performing across Europe - mainly in Poland, Germany and England.
"I went back and forth (across Europe) a bit too much," she said. "In 2019 I had three trips to Europe, which environmentally is not a good thing to do to the world but I am grateful I got to have an international performing career."
The coronavirus pandemic brought Welsh back home and gave her time to create her new work with Robinson and Sobek.
"We moved back in 2020. That was one of the positive things COVID did for us," she said. "Work changed a bit and I am really glad to be here. I had been lobbying to move home for a few years but my husband didn't want to commute five days a week to Melbourne. Now he doesn't have to.
"(Robinson, Sobek and I) were really lucky during COVID, we got funding through the state government's Creative Victoria and the federal government's Australia Council for Arts.
"So we had some money to work on the project and it gave us something to do over COVID. It was great to have a big project to focus on and we are so grateful for that support.
"It will be amazing to do the world premiere...at the Theatre Royal."
The piece saw Welsh, Robinson and Sobek each create a section of music before combining it all and work-shopping in Welsh's home studio.
It is experimental and involves using classical Renaissance instruments and electronic sounds to create new music.
"Work-shopping in the studio is about figuring out how to knit all the parts," she said. "It is quite unusual music - it's experimental music.
"Chloe and I play Renaissance string instruments that were popular in the 1500s and 1600s, and Tilman plays electronic and digital things through his computer.
"So we are combining two different types of instruments to make this crazy, totally new thing."
Welsh's part of Tilman Robinson and Outlier is inspired by her new son.
"My part was written at a strange time. My son was born two months early and when he arrived they found a serious congenital condition," she said. "So we had a lot of time in hospital between the two Delta outbreaks.
"It is very much about my son being born and some audio samples of the recording were even taken from the fridge in our hospital room at Bendigo Health.
"It just had a harmonic series of sounds and being in the room so much of the time with a tiny baby, I thought I might as well get some recordings.
"So sections of the piece are about the fridge but the piece was written in and out of lockdowns, so you can feel a bit of that isolation in it. It is very much a piece about central Victoria and this intense time in our life."
Combining old and new is something familiar to Welsh who is classically trained and has a doctorate in writing new music for old instruments.
"It's definitely unusual, what I do. I also play music from (the Renaissance period) and modern music on violin," she said. "But my real passion is to explore the intersection of old and new. I have always wanted to see what would happen.
"The idea of combining old and new things in art is not totally new. There was a movement of neo-classicism in visual art and music. So it's entirely new, I have just always liked old and new music."
Following the world premiere of Tilman Robinson and Outlier at the Theatre Royal on March 30, the performers will play at the Melbourne Recital Centre on March 31 with the hopes of performing it more widely across Australia.
Visit www.theatreroyalcastlemaine.com.au for more information on the show.
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