Well-known Adelaide artist Robyn Archer, who has an honorary doctorate from Flinders University, will perform a repertoire of German cabaret songs backed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra this month (30 August, Grainger Studio, Hindley St, City).

The program of songs and music by the likes of Wilhelm Grosz, Friedrich Hollaender, Hanns Eisler and Mischa Spoliansky will be performed with Flinders Emeritus Professor of Drama Michael Morley (piano and translations), George Butrumlis (accordian and banjo) and former Flinders lecturer Matthew Carey (conductor and music translation) who has been associate musical director and keyboard player on the Australian blockbuster stage show The Book of Mormon.

Professor Morley says he has worked with Ms Archer on this collection of German music from the 1930s for more than 40 years.

“Starting with our first concert together in 1977, we have researched the material, including the social and cultural context, and presented some of the selected songs in performances around Australia, and in Hawaii, Europe and the UK,” Professor Morley says.

“Both the first and second half of the program will include Australian premieres of orchestral pieces, along with cabaret and popular songs  in versions new to both the performers and audience.”

The second half of the show will present new composers for the first time in Australia, which involved tracking down some of the old material for translation.

Berlin and the German popular music scene of the 1930s was interrupted by the rise of national socialism in the 1930s. Many composers who stayed in Germany did not survive, and those who fled into exile met with various fortunes.

Book for the show, at the ASO’s headquarters, at ‘The Fortunes of Exile with Robyn Archer’.