Premiered in January for Sydney Festival 2025, Elena Kats-Chernin’s music features live on stage, with the composer at the piano, in celebrated photographer and performer, William Yang’s new show, Milestone.
On 20 February, Asia TOPA opens with a landmark new commission by one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, at Hamer Hall, in the Arts Centre, Melbourne.
Having reached his milestone 80th birthday, pioneering artist William Yang reflects on his extraordinary life in this epic new performance. Yang’s iconic photographs and captivating stories are complemented by a haunting score performed live by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Internationally-acclaimed Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin — a long-time friend and collaborator of Yang’s — composed a moving score especially for Milestone, and will perform live on stage alongside the Orchestra for this performance.
Yang is a trailblazing champion of Asian–Australian culture internationally. He documented the birth of Australia’s LGBTQI+ rights movement from the early days of Sydney’s Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras to the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 90s. Unassuming, evocative and honestly examined, Yang looks back on his vast archive of photography, contemplating five decades of social change and the evolution of Australia’s bohemian artist community.
Read reviews of the Sydney season here:
“Music by Elena Kats-Chernin is as fresh and expressive as always, highlighting the twists and turns it the story beautifully. It enters for interludes, to accompany a slide sequence, to succinctly develop an emotion already so well described and to also at times be a soundscape over which Yang speaks.” – Sydney Arts Guide, 2025
“Yang also knows exactly when it’s right to let the photos and Elena Kats-Chermin’s music do all the required storytelling, resulting in a number of movements full of silent, powerful emotion.” – CityHub.com.au, 2025
“new orchestrations by Elena Kats-Chernin … lend certain moments extra emotional resonance or cinematic scope.” – Cultural Binge, 2025
