7PM SUNDAY 6 MAY

Featuring highly-regarded songwriters and musicians Grace Turner and Tonchi McIntosh, this special performance event will tell stories of injustice through song and pay tribute to those who have endured.

Telling untold stories that reflect on adversity, injustice, marginalisation and strength, this intimate evening of music and song, developed through creative collaboration and curated by Grace Turner, will be sure to inspire and move audiences.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition justiceINjustice the event will include ballads written by lawyer Ray Watterson alongside original material by Turner and McIntosh, joined by talented Hunter musicians Jason Lowe, Mat Taylor, Brennan Fell and Callum MacDonald.

Turner will premiere the song Bondi Blue as part of the event. Based on a poem by Watterson about the Roni Levi case, with music arranged by Turner, the song continues the collaborations between artists and lawyers as part of the justiceINjustice project.

Alongside original compositions from her upcoming EP, Turner will also sing English ballads from the 1600’s telling the stories of women brutally punished for crimes of self-defence.

Much-loved performer Tonchi McIntosh will make a rare and special return to Newcastle to headline the evening. McIntosh’s album Bridges gained him an array of incredible reviews and imprinted his name as one of Australia’s finest songwriters. The album featured songs about Eddie Murray and Cornelia Rau written in collaboration with Watterson, who had worked on their cases.

SONGS FOR JUSTICE has been specially commissioned to accompany the justiceINjustice exhibition, a significant new project featuring seven contemporary Australian artists and three lawyers.

The event is made possible through a major partnership with Merridy Elphick Lawyers.

Tickets $40 per person. $15 of each ticket sale will be donated to Soul Cafe, a local non-government funded organisation located across the road from The Lock-Up on Hunter Street, which provides hundreds of free meals per week and facilitates a range of services for highly disadvantaged members of our community.

Click HERE to purchase your ticket.

ABOUT GRACE TURNER

Grace Turner has been performing locally and nationally for many years. She has been featured at the National Folk Festival and Cygnet Folk Festival, had Triple J airplay and writes honest, vulnerable and addictive songs. Her recently released single Angry has gained a lot of attention and there is much anticipation for her upcoming EP.

ABOUT TONCHI McINTOSH

“McIntosh was born in England, grew up in Bourke and has Mexican blood running through his veins on his mother’s side. He sings, his voice full of warmth and emotion, of Australia with a clear-sighted passion for the land and its traditional owners, moving from acoustic folk/rock to electric and touches of reggae and country. This mixture of musical forms enfolds his lyricism, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the stunning ballad Give It All Away (Che).
One of McIntosh’s strengths is the meshing of imagery, be it allegorical or as raw and rich as the red earth of the outback. It gives his music an originality that in Australia, is something to savour.” Warwick McFadyen, The Age

Shane Howard, of Goanna fame, has said of McIntosh that he is the most important male songwriter to emerge in Australia since Paul Kelly. A regular feature of Newcastle’s live music scene, McIntosh left for Melbourne in the early 2000’s and now resides in Broome, working alongside Aboriginal health workers, using respect and a shared love of music and song to develop male health strategies for each region that are cultural, grassroots, engaging, educational, empowering and self-sustaining.

 PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY: The NSW Government through NSW Crown Lands and Create NSW, Headjam, The Herald, City of Newcastle and Hunter TAFE.