Singer-songwriter Katie Noonan’s collaboration with the Australian String Quartet, The Glad Tomorrow, takes its name from the final line of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poem A Song of Hope, which ends: “To our fathers’ fathers / The pain, the sorrow; / To our children’s children / the glad tomorrow.” Katie Noonan and the Australian String Quartet in The Glad Tomorrow. Photo © Prudence Upton It is this juxtaposition of pain and hope that threads through the poems by Oodgeroo Noonuccal chosen for this new song cycle, which premiered at the Sydney Opera House last night and has recently been released as an album. The Glad Tomorrow follows a similar roadmap to Noonan’s With Love and Fury with the Brodsky Quartet, which saw 10 Australian composers set poems by Judith Wright, many of whom have returned for this project. The work of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, who was known until 1988 as Kath Walker, has proven popular with Australian composers, with Clare Maclean, Paul Stanhope, Andrew Ford and others setting her words. Malcolm Williamson’s choral symphony The Dawn is at Hand, composed in 1988, draws on several of her poems, ending – as Noonan did in this performance – with A Song of Hope. Matthew Doyle. Photo © Prudence … Continue reading The Glad Tomorrow (Katie Noonan, Australian String Quartet)