With Liminal, Budjerah Is At A 'Transitional Point' In His Creativity

Budjerah has been one of the biggest breakout acts on the Australian landscape this year. At just 19 years old, the performer already has a slew of hits under his belt, including massive collabs and a stack of ARIA and NIMA nominations for 2021. Now, as he takes part in the new Sydney opera House project Liminal, the singer is coming even further as a performer and learning how to make the most out of his stage time. 

“Liminal for me is a very literal transition point and milestone for my music and performances,” he explains. “A lot of goodness has come this year for me and I feel like I’m in a stage where I’m learning so much and growing too, and this performance is really the beginning of my transition into the next phase of my creativity and life. It makes me excited for the future.”

The Coodjinburra artist continues, “I think being a part of this has deepened my interest in the other aspects of performance, aside from just the music side of things. My focus has always been to make the music the best it can be; it’s really cool now that I’m getting to explore with different lighting and staging.”

Working with the Opera House team alongside Sydney creative powerhouse Subversus, Budjerah says it has been a joy learning how to collaborate with a vast and entirely new set of professionals.

“Working with them was incredible. There was such a nice flow to everything and I’ve never done a run so easy and smoothly,” he says. “The team had a very clear and creative vision for the staging and lighting, I loved everything they had in mind. They did a really good job I think of capturing the mood of my music.”

Even the simple of fact of being on a Sydney opera House stage is somewhat of an unexpected turn in the singer’s career, noting, “When I found out from my team I freaked out. I love the Opera House. The best singers in the world sing there and I love that I can say I performed there too.”

Budjerah added, “being at the Opera House, I really wanted to show off my voice. We stripped back the music so there was lots of room for the voice to move and try new things.

With the multi-disciplinary nature of Liminal allowing the artists involved to tap further into their creative palette, the performer says that his is now open to new ways of thinking about performing, and he hopes others like him will get the same chance in the future. “I loved the lighting!” he says, “Lights can be magical and add a lot of emotion and mood to the music and storytelling. I want my lights to be cool everywhere I go.

On the notion of a second round of Liminal, Budjerah states, “I would love to see some more artists my age like May-a and Stevan. The new artists coming up in Australia are really incredible and it’d be great to see more of them.”

Budjerah plays as part of Sydney Opera House's new music series, Liminal - tonight at 8pm. Read more about the project here.