Live at City Hall: Emma Donovan

Highly celebrated, ARIA-nominated, award-winning Indigenous singer and songwriter Emma Donovan has been touring the country for over 20 years, performing soulful songs and sharing powerful stories with audiences around the globe.  

Emma first appeared on the stage with her renowned family band The Donovans, performing church song renditions with her mother Agnes, her five uncles and maternal grandparents Micko and Aileen.  

On her mother’s side, Emma is part of the famed Donovan family of singers of the Gumbaynggirr people, of what is now known as Northern New South Wales. On her father’s side, Emma is of the Yamatji people of what is now known as Western Australia.  

Emma regularly performs songs in Gumbaynggirr and Noongar traditional languages, and shares stories to provide her audiences with an understanding of Country and community.  

Emma is known for her work with greatly admired Melbourne rhythm combo The Putbacks and the extraordinary Black Arm Band project. In 2024, Emma released her debut solo album ‘Til My Song is Done’. Emma has toured and recorded with the best in the Australian music scene including Paul Kelly, The Teskey Brothers, Yothu Yindi, Paul Grabowsky, Jen Cloher, Spinifex Gum and the late Uncle Archie Roach and Aunty Ruby Hunter.  

Supported by alice skye 

 
Growing up aside the sandstone mountains and wildflowers of the Grampians, Skye is inspired by her roots, though now calling Melbourne home she says, "I take great pride in my heritage, and to combine both music and my background brings me an unexplainable amount of pride and happiness." Alice Skye’s vital relationship between her music and own life experience remains at the core of her art, her body of work serving as a lens through which she continues to synthesise who, and what, her essence of being truly is.

 Access