Keys of a different ilk

I usually think of Linus Lee as an organist and I love his performances and I love organ, especially for the dramatic, deep, pensive nature of the thing.  But this concert was called Interesting Oz Composers and the music was of the early C20th by composers with obscure names, sometimes with pseudonyms, Hall as Morel, Zelman, Mareo as Marsden, Knox, de Chaneet, and titles with subtitles, like Elaine: Marceau brillant or In the gloaming: romance or Glowing embers: narrative-intermezzo.   It was James who suggested music for silent movies, and it's quite likely, being varied and emotive and narrative.  Other than a few ordinary titles, Hungarian dances op.17 no,5,8 and Elegy for the violin, that is.  These were all on piano, but even the organ tunes to end had a similar presence, so Gates of Baghdad, Norwegian cradle song: tone picture and Lady Pompadour: a court dance, all by F Hall as Gabriel Morel.  But whatever the theme and compositions, they were inviting and pleasant and nicely played for a wonderful outing by Linus, even with limited 32' double open diapason or contra violine.

Linus Lee performed early C20th Australian composers on piano and organ at Wesley.

Movies and more

I caught Stuart Long doing a lighter piano concert than normal.  This was music of films and Satie and Glass and Nyman and Morricone and Ye.  Ye?  Yes, a tune from when he was Kanye West.  It a change from Prokofiev and Schubert and Beethoven that I'd heard from him before.  And from from the compositions of Alan Hinde that we'd recorded recently and that we will complete sometime soonish.  Some film tunes are deeply moving and melodically inviting, like Nyman form The Piano and Morricone from Cinema Paradiso.  Just lovely.  Then an encore from Sally Greenaway which was again lyrical and luscious.  Nice outing.

Stuart Long played film and other musics at Wesley.

Guts most pleasant

It was a very busy night.  We had a jazz gig that I couldn't do, and thank you tickets to Luminescence that we couldn't take up and a Motown show band was live at the Germo, but we'd bought tix to the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra at our local concert hall and we had hosted one of their two MDs for a CIMF in the past, so it was meant to be.  In the end, the other MD came but it was an excellent performance.  This group has a myriad of albums!  They play superbly capable baroque with authentic instruments and their members sit in with plenty of important baroque orchestras around Europe.  I was not so sure of the first set perhaps, perhaps the fortepiano concerto was less frequently played.   The keyboard could get lost in the mix and it wasn't quite so together, but the second set was settled and blissful, probably tunes they play incessantly and they were superb: accurate, together, intoned, expressive.  I was eyeing the bass lying on stage in the interval then Dina Kehl came to tune up and we chatted.  Violine, gut, frets, tuning (perhaps FADF♯A), bow (big, convex, German).  I looked up Dina later and she has all manner of interesting musical projects: take a look.  Mostly her task was pretty simple if nicely done, but there were some semiquaver runs that had me in awe, so fast and clear and not at all faked.  But as it should be with a group at this level.  The music as pretty obvious: JC Bach symph Gmin, Mozart piano conc no.9 Eb, Mozart violin conc no.5 Amaj, Mozart symph no.40 Gmin.  And a final, short encore.  Impressive but also just so lovely.  And nice to meet Dina and to catch up with various friends in the audience.  This was a big and satisfying one.

The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra performed at Snow Concert Hall with soloists Kristian Bexuidinhout (pianoforte) and Gottfried von der Goltz (violin, MD) and bass ender Dina Kehl (violone).

Bass alt.

It feels a strange outcome for me to be bass in the string section assisting at a jazz big band gig.  But there I was.  Nice that the jazz bassist, Evan, did a great job, and I could enjoy a listen in.  I liked the role of providing colour and hits and tonal washes against the drive and excitement of 13 or so wind instruments and a 5 part rhythm section.  This was ConneXion Big Band and we were playing the return gig of their 64-Bit Big Band Videogame Music Night.  So there were costumes and music very unlike the clicks and buzzes I remember from Asteroids.  Games are different now: sophisticated and complex and filmic with some great composition.  We played two sets, mostly all in, about 1/3 with just the big band, several tunes with singers.  It was a load of fun and, at least earlier on, a challenge for the syncopations which can be a job to read.  I was blown out by sax and brass hits, some blaring guitar solos, some great bass, nice drums and percussion, a few memorable solos from all manner of horns not least from Justin B upfront.  Interesting, too, to see the mix of ages, with some very capable players of little ages, not least Nicole who sat in front of me.  And it all sat together in the end and the audience and band enjoyed it all and I was perfectly happy to sit in the accompanying strings.

ConneXions Big Band performed computer games music at the Belconnon Community Theatre under Aaron Michael (MD) with singers Zanelle Ramsay-Daniel (vocals) and Justin Buckingham (vocals, alto, MC).  Bottom enders were Evan Teece and Eric Pozza (basses) and Nicole Philipse (cello) approached the bottom end.

All is well

I ran into some fellow classical players and one had just started going to CSO concerts because she was approaching 35 and that's the cutoff age for cheaper tickets and another had played in Canberra for yonks and this was his first concert.  We'd been subscribers but missed gigs too often to maintain a subscription and then had got too busy.  But I was glad we got back for this one.  The music was Charles Ives Unanswered question, Elena Kats-Chernin Night and now, a flute concerto with Sally Walker, and Tchaikovsky Symphony 6.  Observations?  We were up the back so interesting to observe the lone trumpeter injecting into Ives, as an alternative voice.  Jessica Cottis had argued this was about a staid life and the alternative.  Then Elena K-C in 3 movements.  I found the first movement pretty steady and repeating, but it enlivened for the second and third movements, even if the flute could be lost amongst the great hubble-bubble.  Then the Tchaikovsky.  Apparently Tchaiks considered it his best work.  I was his last - he died ~8 days after the first performance.  It starts quietly, then a 5/4 waltz and a march and the quieter final movement.  I can't hear Tchaiks without marvelling at his ability to create glorious melody from the simple lines, then meld and mould it.  And the CSO did a great job, nice phrasing and movement and section play, and huge dynamics.  We were in the last row upstairs and i measured volume around 88Db down to a whisper.  And Jessica Cottis virtually dances on the conductor's podium.  Interestingly, the orchestra seemed to be well off her indications, but consistently so, so it all held together, so good.  They were recording, so many mics around the stage.  We left in some elation, and not just Megan and I, but also muso friends we saw afterwards..  Plenty of smiles so all good.  Very glad we went.

Jessica Cottis (conductor) led the Canberra Symphony Orchestra at Llewellyn Hall playing Ives, Kat-Chernin and Tchaikovsky with soloist Sally Walker (flute).

PS.  The following day I had lunch with Elena Kats-Chernin and it was a very pleasant outing.  We talked of music, of course, but not just.  Meeting musicians outside the concert hall gives you a chance to talk of other things.  It's a key pleasure when we host CIMF visitors.  We talked of family, home, history,  music and musicians and previous night's concert (the encore was Eliza's aria from Wild Swans), touched on politics, national and otherwise.  Perhaps more.   Such an interesting, wide ranging discussion and a pleasant interlude.  Elena, lovely to chat.

Observations

 

This was a combination of bassoon and harpsichord from Ben Hoadley and Ariana Odermatt at Wesley.  It's not a common combination, but quite lovely.  And it's not a pairing of baroque instruments as the bassoon was modern, but nonetheless, quite lovely.  And also not all baroque music, and again quite lovely.  Ben mentioned playing the modern bassoon with harpsichord and how it was a different experience, bigger and louder, I guess, and maybe more fluent.  Whatever, they sat nicely together.  He also highlighted the period of the musics: the first three were Marcello, Telemann and Couperin, all early 1700s, and the last Francois Devienne, late 1700.  It was obvious when you were made aware of it.  The earlier period was of royal courts; the later was of the people, entertainment, post-revolution and clearly more classical-styled.  I'd quipped to Ariana earlier that the harpsichord didn't change volume and she'd responded with louder, dirtier sound.  Then sure enough, the first and second courante by Couperin did exactly the same, quiet and delicate, then dirtier and louder.  So lots to observe and some lovely playing to just enjoy.  What's better?

Ben Hoadley (bassoon) and Ariana Odermatt (harpsichord) performed at Wesley.

Being the blues

The Canberra Blues Society jam session is a blast from the past in several ways, not least that I return to an e-bass.  Fretted or fretless was the decision this time.  I was conservative and stuck with my fretted JB.  Someone asked why not double, but it's so enjoyable to race over the neat neck with soft strings and it's a more apt sound anyway to my ears.  Maybe Peter Barta was in two minds as his instrument was an Ibanez with a mixed fretted 4-string/fretless 3 string neck (SRAS-7 Ahula).  It's weird, but proof that Ibanez is adventurous.  I got a chance to play with Gary France for a first time, if only for a standard 3-song jam, and our group was all round a great pleasure: John van Beuren, Ross Buchanan, Gary, Steve Hartnett and singers Dan Litts and Lily (not sure of these names).  But of course it's the one group I don't have a photo of.  The host band this month was Blues Accelerators: a guitar blues band with horn section, here baritone and tenor saxes, but normally also with a alto.  They were playing tight and tonal as I arrived and the bari in Midnight hour just confirmed how nice the horns were in a blues context.  There were 4 or 5 other jamming groups and some younger performers and a few dancers.  And it's a relaxed event with excellent sound and tables and chairs and German beers so a nice, dark, sun-free way to spend a Sunday arvo.  I had a great time.  And for those who don't know of it, that's a genuine piece of the Berlin Wall outside club.

The Canberra Blues Society jam session is held monthly at Harmonie German Club.

Jack

Luminescence Chamber Singers needed a host for a member joining temporarily from Melbourne.  We do this stuff and it's fun and intriguing to chat with musicians and generally just with people from other places.  Thus Jack came to stay with us for a few days during the preparation for the next Luminescence concert.  Interestingly, they replaced a woman with a man and changed various roles within the choir.  Jack ended up singing tenor although he can sing considerably higher.  They are touring NSW over coming weeks including a gig at the ACO pier, no less.  Sadly our calendar has a triple conflict on the night they are performing in Canberra, so we will not even see Jack with LCC.  But nice to meet Jack and chat regardless. 

Jack Jordan (singer) visited Canberra to rehearse then tour Carlo Gesualdo Tenebrae Responsories with Luminescence Chamber Singers.

Loss, grief and healing

As I write this I regret that I hadn't read the generous and informative program notes before this performance.  This was Oriana Chorale performing at Wesley Church and the title/theme was We are not ready : Music of loss, of grief and of healing.  Not an easy topic and the program even came with a warning of possible emotional triggers.  The music was of various eras, several modern, several regarding a passage of the King James version of the Bible on a son's loss, several on other losses, in various wars or otherwise.  I might have listened differently.  I just noted the modern dissonances and chromatics and the comparisons with the sweet harmonies of Monteverdi.  The lyrics were not included in this program and maybe they would have guided the appreciation.  Whatever, I've recorded it so look forward to a relisten after reading the excellent program notes .  But otherwise, this is a wonderful choir, with high notes towering above with SATB males and female voices with wonderful skills and clear enunciation under two excellent directors, one having composed one piece, and the other arranged another.  The tunes were from Weelkes, Olivia Swift, Prestini, Makaroff, Monteverdi, Eric Whitacre, Ella Macens and that arranged Trad piece.  This is music of richness and complexity and variation and I feel I just touched on the experience in my first outing.

Oriana Chorale performed music of loss, grief and healing at Wesley Church under Dan Walker (director, conductor) and Olivia Swift (conductor).

Shirley's sun shines

 

I should advise a potential conflict of interest but it is nice when the Canberra Theatre Centre invites you to a performance.  I guess it's my blog that does it.  Does this make me an influencer?  Maybe, but very much i- not I-.  I wonder if this is relevant for the performance I attended, Shirley Valentine.  Perhaps so.  It was a film about 30 years back, and massively popular, here resurrected for our times.  A story of a woman who wishes to make her life, break free of a limiting marriage and social conventions, escaping England for Greece when her best friend wins two tickets for a 2-week holiday.  Well there's always truth in that: travel is very immediate and enlivening and breaking habits enlivens the soul.  It may have downsides but mostly it's just days of escape.  She hesitates but finally takes up the offer and has a fling and expands her horizons and her husband chases her to return and the final words are hers, sipping white wine on a beach and hailing her husband who has come to find her but who hadn't recognised her in her satin and relaxation, to sit for a drink.  It's not Tolstoy but it is relevant and obviously understood by a welcoming female-dominated audience and even held some touching and telling moments.  And the performance was something to take awe at, a one-woman show of almost 2 solid hours, excluding  the interval, speaking to walls and rocks and a pretty-much full house.  I liked that she could question herself along with others: she has a go at men through her husband, but it's not an identity-wide anger.  And I found a few stories that cut to home, not least about how men can take over conversations.  So an impressive performance of a worthy little piece of rom-com-ish fiction that has real-world resonances.  As for Greek beach life, I might choose otherwise, but then I'm not a moderately-deprived Liverpudlian.

Natalie Bassingthwaighte (actor) performed Shirley Valentine at Canberra Theatre. 

Thanks to old workmate Kirsty Young for some great pics from the previous day's media call.  (And one of mine).  See more of her pics on Instagram kirstyyoungdigitalart

Two Roberts

It's been a break for family visits and long drives but now it's back on for young and old.  First up is my regular Wesley Lunchtime concert, this time with pianist Robert Schmidli, one of my early classical recordees, playing Robert Schumann.  As ever, nicely prepared and performed with aplomb.  These were his well known Arabesque and the set of variations called Symphonic Etudes op.13.  Lovely and varied on the piano and powerful and later loud in the space of the Wesley concert hall, and a worthy and demanding outing for Robert.

Robert Schmidli (piano) performed Robert Schumann at Wesley.

Doing the drum rounds

I'd played with Hugh Magri-Bull but it was only at a jam session and a jam session is just a few tunes on different gear and nothing like a decent gig over three hours.  This was a Tilt outing at the Dickson Taphouse and it's a great place to up the energy for essentially jazz musicians.  Most of the DT bands are blues or rock so the background is noisier and the audience is involved.  At least the audience that's close in and there are spots throughout for eating, listening, sunning and more.  We had some recurrent listeners from pervious gigs and some musos and dancers to please and even a few staff of Better Music.  Otherwise, a little quiet given Enlighten Festival but much enjoyed.  Hugh was our latest invitee in the drum stool and a worthy player, inventive in solos and responsive in ensemble.  A great night even if I forget a pic until too late.  And many thanks to Hugh.

Tilt performed at Dickson Taphouse comprising James Woodman (piano), Hugh Magri-Bull (drums) and Eric Pozza (bass).

Somewhere around baroque

I'd talked of baroque music, but this is really earlier, I guess, still baroque but early?  It's certainly not Bach.  Perhaps I think baroque given the gut violin strings and plucked string tones of the harpsichord.  This was John Ma and Marie Searles playing duo.  Marie with several solo tunes, one imitating birds and another guitars and castanets.  Apparently.  It's intriguing and challenging even if not particularly identifiable in these days of samples that really do copy and manipulate sounds.  Otherwise, John and Marie together played another imitation or representation of Turkish music, and a standard style of Adagio and Courante, and a dedication to a composer's fellow musician, La Sabbatina dedicated to Roberto Sabbatini, and a perhaps an even stranger one to our ears, Diverse bizzarie sopra la vecchia sarabanda or pur ciannona.  These were interesting and various oddities...  The composers were all around 1650-1770 and with some pretty obscure names.  Henry Eccles was obvious enough, but otherwise be Blaineville, Pogletti, Forquerau and Matteis.  But as always from John and Marie, much joy, much playful, bouncy, capable playing and even much education in composers and the times.  You couldn't want for more.

John Ma (violin) and Marie Searles (harpsichord) presented and performed at Wesley.

This is CJBlog post no. 2,950

Chopin as is or should be

I think of Chopin as I remember playing it, a very inarticulate student take.  It wasn't pretty.  But to hear Chopin played by someone committed to it, who studied at the Fryderyck Chopin Academy in Warsaw, no less, was instructive and awe-inspiring.  Suddenly I could understand and appreciate the fame of this busy composer.  The tunes were Chopin favourites, so well known, but the presentation was anything but mid-level AMEB.  Raindrop prelude, Nocturne Eb, Grand valse brillante Eb, Minute waltz, Waltz C#min, Fantasie impromptu, Heroic Polonaise Ab and an encore of Mazurka Amin to calm things down.  The tempos were gloriously variable as were the dynamics, so we got minute waltz relaxing into a gentle pace and huge handfulls of energy appearing throughout.  And that Mazurka which was much less known but apparently a common encore in Poland, to calm the audience for an ending.  But such a committed and informed performance that told of Poland and its history and peoples like I hadn't heard before.  Stunning and quite an eye-opener.

Mark Jurkiewicz (piano) performed Chopin at Wesley.

A matter of will

I hadn't realised the extent of Andrew Koll's programming until after this latest Canberra Bach Ensemble concert at St Christopher's.  We chatted after and he told us of the theme, the will of God.  I had been amused by a translated line, Lord, as you will! (Herr, wie du willt!, apparently by extension, the Mind of God) but it's a clear statement of religious trust and faith especially of the time and place.  These cantatas covered this issue, mostly be being written for the same weekend of the religious year (third Sunday after Epiphany on consecutive years 1724,1725,1726), other than one written a week later (Septuagesima 1725).  I guess I could have read the program.  But from the start, I just closed my eyes to experience the rolling harmonies in repeated lyrical lines, through the various voices, all clear and precise and deeply beautiful.  The start was a quote from St John Passion on the same topic, God's will, presented as choir without backing, leading into BWV 111, then BWV 92, then an interval and BWV 73 and BWV 72.  Throughout this was openings and closings of choruses with arias and recitatives within variously from soprano, alto, tenor and bass.  It's a formula that's repeated in this these cantatas, once written each week for Leipzig churches.  To conceive of the intensity of this work, a cantata a week, is overwhelming but Bach did it and we have the pleasure of it.  The choir was 36 through SATB and the accompaniment was 16 between strings, winds and continuo.  There was a segment with two solo violins and Andrew highlighted that it was similar to Bach's double violin concerto and that's just indicative of his sharing themes in the whirlwinds of producing all this music.  And there were segments of quick, non-stop cello from Clara and delightfully precisely articulated and fast contrabass (not really a violone) that floored me.  I had my eyes closed for the baroque horn but heard baroque oboe and bassoons often enough.  But these are just things noticed amongst a night of glorious Bach religious cantatas played and sung with real love and considerable understanding.  A great, great pleasure.

Andrew Koll (musical director, conductor) led the Canberra Bach Ensemble at St Christopher's Cathedral in a choral excerpt from St John Passion and BWVs 111,92,73,72 on the Will of God.  Key performers were Stephen Freeman (Orchestra Leader), Greta Claringbould (soprano), Maartje Sevenster (alto), Timothy Reynolds (tenor) and Andrew Fysh (bass) and some favourite bottom-enders of mine, Clara Teniswood (cello) and  Kyle Ramsay0Daniel (bass).