By Helen Musa

Composer and founder of the Griffyn Ensemble, mandolin player Michael Sollis is taking stock of a remarkable musical life in a free concert at Llewellyn Hall on March 15.

But he is adamant about one thing.

“This is not a farewell,” he says firmly. “The main thing I don’t want is for people to think I’m giving up. 

“We never know what’s around the corner with new treatments, or what my body can handle. I haven’t given up for almost five years and I won’t stop.”

There’s no easy way to say it, in 2021, Sollis was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer. Initially given between three months and a year to live, he has since seen the disease spread to his lungs and bones.

Yet here he is – still composing, still programming festivals, still leading creative bush walks along the Murrumbidgee and still dancing.

Only recently he was spotted dancing exuberantly with the Indonesian Suara Dance Group at the launch of this year’s National Folk Festival, of which he’s a co-artistic director – hardly the public face of a man retreating from life.

“If I’m going to do this concert, now is the time it has to be done,” he says simply. “But it’s not a swansong. There’s no sense that this is the end. It’s up to my body to fight it.”

Instead, he describes the concert as a celebration of community and of place.

“I want to celebrate a life of creativity with the Canberra community,” he says.

“I was born here, on Ngunnawal country. I’ve been so blessed to have that connection – to this place, to music, to people. Canberra has been an amazing place.”

Many of the works in the coming concert carry deep personal resonance, reflections on life, what lies before it and beyond it, and the mysterious territory in between.

“From the time I was diagnosed, I’ve been preparing this program,” he says. 

“There are some really important works in it… looking at life, what it could be, trying to celebrate an uplifting life. I’ve been so lucky.”

Music connecting to the stars threads through the program. There are major works evoking southern skies, and pieces created with Ngunnawal custodian Ritchie Allan that honour birdlife and the land beneath our feet.

“We always have our heads in the stars and the dirt beneath our feet,” Sollis says. 

“We’re always there, before life, during life and after life.”

The idea of the stars, he says, is meaningful, though “not in a wacky way”, he says, speaking gently about mortality, acknowledging that to stage such a concert is, in part, about confronting it.

“People will read between the lines,” he says.

But self-pity is not in his vocabulary. If anything, gratitude dominates.

Central to that gratitude is his extended family, his “brilliant” wife Kiri, and their two sons, Bryn, seven, and Lyle, four, who was born the day after Sollis began chemotherapy. The boys have grown up with their father’s illness as part of daily life – but also with music as an equal presence.

“They’re just normal boys, getting into things,” he says, “but it’s been a joy to teach them music,” including a song in the program Mimi in the Sky by Stephen Pigram, a song that connects to ancestors and the stars.”

The concert will also be something of a gathering of the clan. Musicians are flying in from across the country: harpist Meriel Owen from Hobart, soprano Susan Ellis from Brisbane, fellow Folk Festival directors Chris Stone and Holly Downes from Melbourne, along with Wyana and Matt O’Keeffe.

Sollis’ career has been richly layered. In addition to founding the Griffyn Ensemble and his long association with the National Folk Festival, he has served as music artistic director of education for Musica Viva Australia, shaping programs for young musicians nationally. His involvement as a convenor of the Canberra Arts Action Group reflects a commitment not only to making art, but to advocating for it.

He’s also a lifelong devotee of the rugby league team, the Gungahlin Bulls.

Meanwhile, creative bush walks along the Murrumbidgee have become another strand of his late work – blending composition, landscape and community in an expression of connection to country.

Through it all, he continues to defy the timeline first handed to him.

“The easiest way to put it is – if I’m going to do this concert, now is the time,” he says. “But there’s no sense of finality. No sense that this is the last thing.”

Griffyn Ensemble concert, Llewellyn Hall, March 15. Free concert. Confirm attendance at griffyn@griffynensemble.com