Kutcha Edwards, Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Brett Kelly - Warta-Kiki: Come Together (2026) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Prologue (Arr. for Orchestra by Sean O'Boyle)
02. Singing Up Country (Arr. for Orchestra by Sean O'Boyle)
03. Mother Tongue (Arr. for Orchestra and Choir by Matt Amy)
04. Yesterday's Forgotten (Arr. for Orchestra and Choir by Joseph Twist)
05. I Have a Dream (Arr. for Orchestra and Choir by Matt Amy)
06. Photographs (Arr. for Orchestra by Emma Greenhill)
07. Silence (Arr. for Orchestra and Choir by Jessica Wells)
08. The Day You Were Born (Arr. for Orchestra and Choir by Cassie Parke)
09. Wait'n (Arr. for Orchestra by Jamie Messenger)
10. We Sing (Arr. for Orchestra and Choir by Alex Turley)

A landmark collaboration between legendary songman Kutcha Edwards and the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Warta-Kiki brings together First Nations songlines and symphonic music, performed by MYO’s young musicians under the direction of Music Director Brett Kelly, with new orchestrations by leading Australian composers.

For Kutcha Edwards, the collaboration marked an unexpected and deeply resonant turning point. ‘In my sixty cycles around the sun, I had never attended an orchestral concert, let alone contemplated recording an album with an orchestra – until now,’ Edwards says. ‘This album, Warta-Kiki (a Mutti Mutti word for ‘Come together’), is proof that perceptions can change.’

The seeds of the collaboration were planted in 2022, following a performance by Edwards at Monash University, where he met MYO CEO Dorian Jones and conductor Brett Kelly. In early 2023, more than eighty young orchestral musicians came together with Edwards to create the nine songs that form Warta-Kiki. ‘This was an opportunity for me to share with them the depth of the Songline within each song,’ he said. ‘It’s the passing of knowledge that is important to me – the dropping of the pebble in the imaginary pond where the young ones determine the outcome of the ripple.’

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