Distilling Nature: Hanadayori Night 2026

Jessica Aszodi with Shoso Shimbo - part of the Melbourne Ikebana Festival 2026.

Experience a captivating multisensory journey where nature and humanity converge through ikebana, music, and fragrance. This immersive performance explores how the essence of nature can be distilled and expressed through creative practice.

Rather than replicating nature’s forms, the ikebana creations of Shoso Shimbo reveal its inner spirit through the thoughtful use of materials, balance, space, and movement. Each arrangement becomes a poetic reflection on beauty, impermanence, and the interconnectedness of life.

Complementing the floral artistry, Jessica Aszodi’s musical program draws inspiration from nature’s rhythms and emotional resonance. Through themes of love, memory, transformation, and the changing seasons, the music creates a dialogue between the natural world and human experience.

Together, ikebana, music, and fragrances created by Yen Huynh engage the senses of sight, sound, and smell, creating a contemplative atmosphere that invites reflection, connection, and renewal, while fostering an appreciation of nature’s enduring beauty, presence, and influence in our lives.

Melbourne Ikebana Festival 2026 website.

Tickets

Standard $85 ($75 Concession)

Please note, seating in the Primrose Potter Salon is General Admission.

A Transaction Fee between $4 and $8.50 applies to orders made online and by phone. Delivery Fees may also apply. A ticket limit of six is in place online to ensure fair ticket access for all. Want to bring a bigger party? Call our Box Office during business hours on (03) 9699 3333 to book.

About the Artists

Jessica Aszodi is a mezzo-soprano, writer, educator and performer. Jessica’s work crosses between opera, experimental music, improvisation, composition, and music theatre. Her unusually wide and flexible range makes it possible to perform repertoire across genres and voice types. From Mozart, to Mahler, to Berio, Boulez and popular music styles, she has built up a truly idiosyncratic set of techniques. Jessica has cycled while singing on the stage of the Royal Festival Hall, performed body percussion so fierce it leaves a mark, and mastered a not small number of extremely extended vocal techniques. She has twice been nominated for Greenroom Awards as ‘best female operatic performer’ - in both the leading and supporting categories.

Jessica has performed as a soloist with opera houses and ensembles around the world. A passionate exponent of new work, she has performed important premieres by collaborators including Liza Lim, Augusta Read Thomas, Dai Fujkura, Anthony Pateras, Cathy Milliken and Laura Bowler.

Jessica also holds a Doctorate from the Queensland Conservatorium, and continues an artistic research and teaching practice focused on the materiality and politics of embodiment practices in the creation of new vocal performance. She has written articles for several books and journals and teaches workshops on the bodily as well as theoretical applications of her research. She takes pleasure in the process of creating thick, touching, thinking, pieces.

Dr Shoso Shimbo is an ikebana artist, award-winning sculptor, garden designer, and Shinto priest active in both the contemporary art and floral design worlds. His numerous accolades include a Gold Award at the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show.

Dr Shimbo frequently collaborates with local and international musicians, including Paul Grabowsky and the Gregorian Brothers, presenting live installation performances at the Melbourne Recital Centre and internationally in Vietnam. In 2023, he was invited to participate in the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) Bloom event. His floral art is regularly featured in International Floral Art by Stichting Kunstboek (Belgium).

As a leading figure in the community, Dr Shimbo is the CEO of the biennial Melbourne Ikebana Festival. He also founded Ikebana Dojo, an online learning platform, and the Ikebana Gallery Award, the world's first online international ikebana competition.

A prolific researcher, he regularly contributes to the International Journal of Ikebana Studies. His recent academic work includes the chapter 'Environmental Art: Ikebana Meets Contemporary Art,' published in Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects (Springer, 2026).

Yen Huynh is a perfumer, author, and founder of NauNau and Metascent. For more than a decade, she has worked with fragrance as a medium for storytelling, creating perfumes, ambient scents, exhibitions, and sensory experiences that explore the relationship between scent, memory, nature, and culture.

Based between Melbourne and Vietnam, Yến’s work often extends beyond traditional perfumery into collaborations with artists, galleries, and cultural institutions. She is the author of several books on fragrance and olfactory culture, and regularly teaches perfumery and aromatherapy courses for both professionals and enthusiasts.

For Hanadayori Night 2026, she has created a new fragrance titled SUIMON (水紋), a Japanese word describing the ripples that appear when something touches the surface of water.

Like a falling petal, a note of music, or a trace of fragrance, the moment itself may be brief, yet its presence continues to expand long after it has passed. Created for Hanadayori Night 2026, SUIMON was inspired by a conversation with artist Junko Kakizaki in February 2025.