Singer-songwriter Jessica Hitchcock blends genres at His Majesty’s for Perth Festival with the Penny Quartet

It’s another year, another Perth Festival for Melbourne singer-songwriter Jessica Hitchcock, who sang the female lead in Noongar opera Wundig wer Wilura in 2024, and this year brings her own songbook to His Majesty’s Theatre with The Penny Quartet. “Wundig wer Wilura was incredibly well received, an opera entirely in Noongar language. It was so much fun and really beautiful to be part of (former artistic director) Iain Grandage’s last festival as well,” Hitchcock says. “So I’m looking forward to being part of the festival this year and bringing my own music along with the Penny Quartet.” Classical and contemporary music have been twin tracks in Hitchcock’s musical development since high school, training initially as a pianist before releasing her first album in 2019. “They’ve been side-by-side for quite some time,” she says. “This cross-section between my folk-country style music that I write and my classical world have come together with this Musica Viva project, putting my songs into a new, classical artform. “It’s been really interesting. I’ve worked with 11 different composers/arrangers, and they have taken my songs and reworked them how they imagined. “The only piece of advice that I gave them was the story and the lyrics are the most important part of the works to me, so to keep that at the centre and create around that. “They’ve all done a really brilliant job of working with that, and then obviously working with The Penny Quartet, we’ve really finessed these pieces so that audiences are in for hearing something quite different but also familiar in terms of my voice being there and my stories being there as well.” With multiple composers involved, including WA’s own Grandage, Hitchcock is confident she has nonetheless retained the essence of her originals. “It’s more what’s happening underneath the melody,” she says. “So the string quartet are doing these incredible extended techniques in part, but they’ll also bring it back and play really simple melodic lines that complement what I’m doing as well. “Some arrangers have gone right to the very end of changing it, and others have just worked around the mould that I had already given them.” No one genre prevails, which is the way Hitchcock likes to work. “I enjoy the rigour of classical music, how every note has to be blended together on the page,” she says. “But then I really love the excitement of performing on stage in a rock band as well. “You still have the diligence of learning your part and working together but there’s a bit more excitement, working in front of a big outdoor theatre. “I really love all aspects of music, creating and collaborating with people in whatever genre they are able to bring to the table.” Her Indigenous identity made Hitchcock a perfect fit for Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse’s Wundig wer Wilura last year, and it is something she readily embraces. “Being Indigenous has been part of who I am, growing up, for my entire life,” she says. “My mother and I, we are Torres Strait Islander as well as Papa New Guinean. “My mother grew up in PNG so her first language is actually Motu. I think the culture and knowledge she has brought us, mixed with the Western style that she now lives in and that my father is from, has always had a big influence on me personally as I’ve grown up and the decisions that I’ve made. “In terms of music, I definitely was a musician long before I was an Indigenous musician, playing classical piano when I was younger. Then obviously as I got older I realised the importance of Indigenous people having a voice in the music industry. I realised that was a pathway I wanted to pursue and have continued to pursue. “So yeah, definitely an Indigenous musician, but also a musician in my own right as well.” Later this year Hitchcock will tour nationally with singer-songwriter Paul Kelly in a long-term collaboration going back to their joint recording of Kelly’s Every Day My Mother’s Voice in 2019. “He’s such an incredible musician and obviously a major ally to Indigenous people as well,” she says. “He and his band are fantastic, and I’m really proud of seeing Fanny Lumsden on the line-up as well. She’s a friend of mine and I’m really excited to see her performing in the arenas before us.” Beyond that, Hitchcock is working on a new album and an opera of her own, themed on her Torres Strait Islands and PNG heritage; the first of a new genre, perhaps? Jessica Hitchcock tours nationally with The Penny Quartet for Musica Viva, starting with a Perth Festival date at His Majesty’s Theatre on February 26. Tickets at perthfestival.com.au.