This year the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary. Originally conceived as a jazz ensemble, it has developed – first under the visionary leadership of founder Paul Grabowsky, and now under artistic director Peter Knight – into one of the country’s leading new music ensembles.

Leaf and Shadow inaugurates the AAO’s Meeting Point Series 2019–20, a cycle of four projected concerts, curated by Knight, which will see the AAO engage in cross-cultural collaborations with musicians from around the globe. Such collaborations are nothing new for the AAO, which has, since its inception, propagated musical and cultural diversity with projects and recordings such as Into the Fire (2000), Crossing Roper Bar (2010), and Water Pushes Sand (2017).