Glass percussion with Shock Lines and campfire storytelling with Mark Atkins

The Music Show

The Music Show comes to you from Canberra International Music Festival this week.

Percussionist Niki Johnson is no stranger to unusual instruments (she's played vacuum cleaners and ceramic bowls on The Music Show before), and her latest collaborative project Shock Lines is all about glass. Working with sound designer and composer Natasha Dubler and glass artist Caitlin Dubler, Niki explores all the different sounds and textures you can get out of glass by scraping, hitting, crunching and ringing. We meet the trio at Canberra Glassworks where they're doing a site-specific performance as part of the festival.

Mark Atkins invites us to sit beside the campfire with him to experience Mungangga Garlagula. Co-composed with Finnish-Australian musician Erkki Veltheim, the collaborative project blends spoken word, yidaki, violin, electronics and nature soundscapes to create a work that blends the lines between storytelling and music. Mark Atkins has had an impressive and wide-ranging career as a musician, composer, instrument maker and storyteller, and he reflects on working with the likes of Black Arm Band, Led Zeppelin and Philip Glass, ahead of the Canberra performances of Mungangga Garlagula.