When Ulrike Klein sits in the audience of the world-class concert hall she founded a decade ago, she’s filled with a deep sense of gratitude and awe that her “daring dream” became reality.
The Jurlique co-founder, who established UKARIA Cultural Centre at Mt Barker Summit as a passion project, never misses a concert.
Since opening in 2015, the 220-seat hall has hosted the likes of Berlin-based Notos Quartet, American Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell and acclaimed British vocal ensemble Voces8, alongside some of SA’s best home-grown talent.
But Ulrike says UKARIA has always been about making music accessible for everyone.
Ulrike says her vision is to bring artists of the highest calibre of sound in Europe – artists with a “different” sound tradition – and share it with artists and young musicians in Australia.
“I learned very soon how hard life is for a musician to make money, so I said from the very beginning, whatever we do, we’ll pay artists well and make concerts affordable and that’s something that’s part of our value system,” she says.
“Having 220 seats, we could make it absolutely exclusive by having very expensive prices and that’s not what this is about … it’s a place to experience music together as a community.
“… We are below the Mt Barker Summit, I know the Mt Barker Summit area, Twin Peaks, always has had an Aboriginal history of educating, of community, and I feel we are so part of that.
“… We don’t want to be exclusive – not at all – how could we be?
“Music is there for everybody.”
Ticket prices are kept affordable by the contributions of donors and patrons, including Ulrike herself, who says she discovered her passion for music as a child.
She began holding concerts in the Adelaide Hills after moving to SA from Germany in 1983 with her husband to start now-global skincare brand Jurlique.
“I came to Adelaide and there wasn’t that much invested in music, especially chamber music – a lot (was invested) into sport,” she says.
“(I thought) don’t complain about it – do something about it.”
Her original “Factory Concerts” – held in a room with “awful” acoustics at Jurlique – became Herb Farm Concerts when they purchased the same Mt Barker Summit property that UKARIA now inhabits.
They were held in a mud-brick seminar room on the farm that Ulrike describes as aged, “very nostalgic” and “beautiful”.
But it was a “crazy” philanthropic idea to purchase four rare stringed instruments – crafted in the 1700s by prominent luthier Giovanni Battista Guadagnini – in 2010 that ultimately set the stage for the $7m UKARIA Cultural Centre.
In an application for deductible gift recipient status for her cultural foundation – then known as Ngeringa Farm Arts Foundation – so those donating to the $6m instrument project could claim tax deductions, Ulrike wrote that she would not only purchase the instruments but also build a cultural centre.
“I had no idea what that would look like, I don’t know where that came from,” she says.
“… But it was a dream really far on the horizon, which is reality.”
In 2016 the name was changed from Ngeringa Cultural Centre to Ukaria to avoid confusion with the nearby Ngeringa winery.
UKARIA is derived from the word Araucaria Cunninghamii – or hoop pine – which was used in the construction of UKARIA.
But it also includes Ulrike’s initials and the word ‘aria’ and, while it wasn’t Ulrike’s intention to create a name linked with her own, UKARIA chief executive Alison Beare says she thinks of UKARIA as Ulrike’s song.
“It’s her legacy,” she says.
Today UKARIA is a charity run by a board, of which Ulrike is a member, with day to day operations overseen by Alison.
“… Now I’m very much in the background,” Ulrike says.
“I’m the founder, but I have very little involvement.”
Alison contests that, insisting that Ulrike is still highly involved, particularly in discussions around programs and artists.
“Those conversations – they’re really alive and really dynamic and really fundamental to the success of this place,” Alison says.
UKARIA also owns a nearby property, ‘Twin Peaks’, a residence for visiting artists, and is custodian to several prized instruments, including the original four Guadagninis – which are on loan to the Australian String Quartet – a Steinway concert grand piano and a 1580s Gasparo da Salò double bass.
Ten years on from opening, UKARIA hosts 40 to 50 concerts a year, many of which sell out months in advance.
Ulrike says her vision is to bring artists of the highest calibre of sound in Europe – artists with a “different” sound tradition – and share it with artists and young musicians in Australia.
“I just don’t want art in Australia to be kind of provincial,” she says.
“We are breathing in and out into the world scene and especially these instruments, with the musicians who play them, connect us in an amazing way to a much bigger stage and that, in our time, I think it’s so important.
“We are borderless in a way … for me, art you can’t own it, we need to share it, it’s so important.
“And this is becoming a place more and more … where the world and music doesn’t have borders.
“We are a place where music is a language – everybody understands it, so it’s humanity’s.”
