With his shamanic appearance and emblematic headdress, AURUS (AKA Bastien Picot) has established himself as a true musical and visual UFO. Having absorbed the sounds of the world, from the Bronx, NYC, to the tribes of Africa and British pop, he evokes the Maloya of his roots (traditional music from Réunion Island) in an orchestral pop and percussive shell.
All of this is expressed with majestic tenor vocals that are capable of creating their own polyphonic orchestra. Describing himself as a modern mirage, AURUS's concerts tend towards performance, leaving the audience ecstatic and touched by grace, as he sings in Creole and English. His most recent release is Still Alive, the video for which was released in April 2023. For WOMADelaide he will be joined by guest vocalists from Adelaide’s Aurora Vocal Ensemble.
Aurora is the senior vocal ensemble of the internationally renowned youth choir Young Adelaide Voices. Under the direction of Christie Anderson, the diverse and talented ensemble performs a range of repertoire from early music to contemporary pop, and is committed to performing contemporary Australian music. Such is their widespread appeal, Aurora has sung with the Rolling Stones at the Adelaide Oval, in the orchestral pit for the Australian Ballet, and at the 2021 Adelaide Festival in The Pulse, a show they created with circus company Gravity & Other Myths. Their album Joyful Girl was released in 2017.
Workshop:
This workshop will give an introduction to the traditional music from Reunion Island, which is called Maloya. AURUS will teach the audience vocal loops and harmony parts from some emblematic songs from Reunion, along with some of his original creations. The audience will get to learn the main Maloya rhythmic pattern before getting to sing the polyphonic vocal pieces with AURUS and also sing some ‘Kréol’ words and sentences.