2010s
Stratospheric
Published: 2010-03-29
Stratospheric
Jeff Beck
Her Majesty’s
Adelaide
March 25, 2010
Murray Bramwell
What is it about The Yardbirds ? There was definitely something in the water in 1965. Three guitarists and three legends. First, Eric Clapton, aka God, who soon left for John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and a career via Cream, the Dominos, and then as a bandleader defining blues rock guitar for a long, lucrative, and sometimes repetitive, career. Later, there was Jimmy Page, who as the chords, riff and flash-fingered lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, was quite simply - even more than Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones - the engine behind the archetypal, the most famous, heavy rock band in history. The glory days of Zep were the glory days of late modern rock and Jimmy Page defined it, in all its gaudy splendor.
Then, in the middle, was Jeff Beck, who joined in 1965 and in the following year uneasily shared the stage with Page as the band produced such classic singles as Shapes of Things and Over Under, Sideways Down. Tetchy even then, Beck headed into a career of solo ventures and temporary, if historic collaborations. From single success with Hi Ho Silver Lining, to ventures with Rod Stewart and members of US prog band Vanilla Fudge, and then solo projects such as Blow by Blow in 1979, Jeff Beck has put together a long, stop-start career that sometimes made him seem - compared to Clapton in his Armani suits and Page basking in rock Valhalla - like the also-ran.
Now, touring for the second time in a year, Beck is again showing that slow and steady wins the race. There has always been a method in his singular pursuit of his talent. Always working with talented session musicians, connecting with the more progressive American scene, linking with jazz-fusion operatives like Jan Hammer. It may have seemed like he has dithered, that his fondness for privacy – one suspects a mix of diffidence and impatience with fools and poseurs - has come at a high price as far as recognition is concerned. But recognition has come. And it is considerable and well deserved.
It was perhaps the Live at Ronnie Scott’s set in 2008 that marked the turning point. A ten night booking at the famous London jazz club, it brought in the faces – Plant, Page, Eric even did a guest spot (which has led to tour dates this year). In the intimate club space, joined by a hot band, and step-up singers Joss Stone and Imogen Heap, he put together a list that combined early work from Blow by Blow with new compositions and arrangements that showcased his remarkable gift. The CD and Blu-ray DVD releases also helped, the latter fastidiously documenting his extraordinary technique and unorthodox stage set-up.
The Adelaide show at Her Majesty’s opens Beck’s 2010 Australian tour and the band takes to the stage with intent. Keyboardist Jason Rebello continues from the Ronnie Scott period but jazz rock veteran Narada Michael Walden now replaces Vinnie Colaiuta on drums. Australian fans will be sorry that the smart young Aussie girl-bassist Tal Wilkenfeld is not in the line-up, but American musician, Rhonda Smith, with a CV including time in Prince’s band, is a formidable replacement.
Beck is, of course, the last to arrive, shyly acknowledging the noisy applause. He is as eccentric-looking as ever. His hair combed forward in that mop-top thatch that defined an earlier time, the black waistcoat and foppish white shirt ruffle harking back to London’s King’s Road in the mid-sixties - when the Kinks, Stones, Yardbirds and Pretty Things roamed the earth. With pebble-black granny glasses on the bridge of his beaky nose and his skinny bare arms clamped with Druidic looking silver bands, he is the die-hard English rock star. Coming up for sixty-six this year, he is still bucking the trends and defying gentrification. What matters, as ever, is that white Fender Stratocaster, resting in the crook of his elbow- like it has always lived there.
The band play a wide range of material from Beck originals and group jams to standards and opera classics. But throughout it all, Beck creates the threads, the throughlines, the gathering themes and feelings which make it such an impressive and memorable night’s music. For openers, he goes fast and loud, establishing the band’s credentials and getting everyone a bit of match time. Rhonda Smith steps up to the plate with her funk-inflected, assertive bass work, Michael Walden, presiding over a huge drum-kit, shows the range and also the restraint which keeps him close to Beck, something which will increase as the tour progresses, because the nuances in Beck’s guitar work – and his skilful dips in volume, but never intensity - are a challenge to all the band members.
Like a flash storm the unannounced opening piece slips into, of all things, Benjamin Britten’s Corpus Christi Carol, delicately phrased with synth washes from Rebello. It is a portent of the lyric subtlety to come. And, unlike the full-tilt segue to Hammerhead on the Emotion and Commotion album, it is followed by an impressive bass solo, complete with Jaco glissandos, from Ms Smith.
Peering at printed sheets, taped in various vantage points near monitors, Beck works through his setlist. But it is the covers and standards which are most compelling. His heavy driving version of Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Read is spot-on, Smith providing the Etta James vocals as she also does for the fast-bop take of the Cream classic, Rollin’ and Tumblin’. For a change of mood (and a calculated risk) comes Over the Rainbow, and Beck coaxes, as he so magically does, that vulnerable lyricism, that tremulous tremolo which is, of course, the Garland signature.
The highlights come late – but this is also the inexorable build-up of the band’s performance. A dazzling reading of Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, fluent, fierce and flawless and A Day in the Life. I heard the news today oh boy. Beck snares all of John Lennon’s sardonic swagger before turning back into the song’s ambiguous whimsy. Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Neil Young has given us a scary version. Jeff Beck’s is sharp, it’s almost sweet, and it is inescapably… English. It is a virtuosic point to close the show. The encores are interestingly variant. Toting a black Gibson Les Paul, Beck plays tribute to the late great guitar master by effortlessly matching his rockabilly riffs, while Rebello conjures up an other-worldly sample of Mary Paul crooning Steal My Heart Away.
To close, it is Nessun Dorma, Puccini - poached first by Pavarotti, and then milked, by soccer teams and commerce, of every squelch of emotion that could be wrung from it. Again, Beck is in complete control, stepping – impishly - between the Scylla of kitsch and the Charybdis of even more kitsch. Women in the audience are swooning and it is suavely done, but for me it’s a bridge too far. That said, it has been an extraordinary set. As he pumps sound through old valve amps and winds the tremolo like a magician’s wand, Jeff Beck has managed a kind of alchemy. Without plectrum, smoke or mirrors, he not only makes electricity dance, he makes it sing – like no-one else can .
Almost Coolsville
Published: 2010-06-01
Rickie Lee Jones Her Majesty’s June 1.
When it was released, in 1979, the debut album from Rickie Lee Jones seemed to have everything. Produced by Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman when Warner Brothers was at the height of its patronage and creativity, it included a line-up of the hottest session musicians of the day - among them Dr John, Tom Scott, Andy Newmark, even – on synthesizer – Randy Newman. It was an auspicious event. Those marvelous songs – Chuck E’s in Love, Easy Money, Last Chance Texaco, Coolsville - hummable, various, and filled with intriguing street detail. At the age of twenty-four Jones had stepped up to challenge Joni Mitchell and Carole King, and she had the talent to match.
As well as the looks. Photographed by Norman Seeff, she became a Rolling Stone cover girl and with her maroon beret, long brunette tresses, and down-cast gaze, all she needed was that Sobranie cigarette to complete the Left Bank, neo-Beatnik style. A bit Kerouac, a bit Brel – a whole lot Laura Nyro, if truth be told – it was a credible alternative to the pierced Punk which was also on offer at the end of the 70s decade.
Twenty years later, that promise has been fulfilled but not in the ways we might have imagined. Even at the height of her wealth and fame, selling millions of albums and walking out with that ultimate Hipster de jour, Tom Waits, the rose was sick – with addiction and celebrity anxiety, and the pressure to serve the corporate financial plan. After Pirates and The Magazine came a string of albums for a variety of different companies. They all reveal, nevertheless, a restless creative spirit who had the best of things at the beginning, but has never stopped developing as an artist even as her commercial career has dipped.
It’s been a long time since Jones last toured here and five years ago her Day at the Green bookings were cancelled because of insufficient sales. This time, though, her star is on the rise. She has been feted by Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson at their Livid Festival in Sydney and she is performing new material from her excellent (fourteenth) album, Balm in Gilead.
On stage at (acoustically quirky) Her Majesty’s, Jones sets up in the corner right up back behind the piano. People near me, struggling for a sightline, ask if one of the cabinets could be moved. It’s part of the show, Jones shrugs, pointing to a carefully placed microphone, poised to carry sound from an elderly amp to the mixing desk. These are songs about friendship, she says by way of introduction, adding ominously - friends who have gone. With plangent piano chords she begins, softly accompanied by bassist Jose Marimba.
The opening pieces are all early ones – from Pirates and The Magazine. First the mournful We Belong Together and then brighter songs - Living it Up and the slow swinging A Lucky Guy. She is in good voice, a little tortured - as her vocals often are - but that sense of the Rickie Lee Jones sound is irresistible. By the time drummer and percussionist Lionel Cole joins them on stage she is leading a sinuous extended jam of Weasel and the White Boys Cool, a highpoint for the night.
In a different vein is Remember Me from Balm in Gilead, a pitch perfect triple harmony country crooner that yet again displays Jones’s versatility. For an obscure choice she goes to Firewalker, an ecstacy inspired meditation from the much overlooked and underrated Ghostyhead album. The set is well into the groove by now. Jones, in a cheesecloth blouse and baggy blue jeans, while friendly is often oblivious to the audience, intent instead on her music- hunched over her white Fender, leaning in towards the other musicians who give her constant encouragement.
They head into improvisational territory with the highly inventive His Jewelled Floor, a religious work full of samples, bowed bass, synth washes and low church harmonies. It is a beautiful song and the performance is compelling but Jones becomes increasingly agitated by the microphone feedback which is distracting her. Her eyes dart to the off-stage sound mixer who is madly looking to fix things while the singer becomes ever more baleful.
The problem is not remedied and despite the increased ministrations from the other musicians Jones appears to have decided the spell is broken. The gremlins in Her Majesty’s seems to have struck again and nothing is to be done . Rickie Lee Jones moves through a few more songs, including a haunting version of After the Fair (based on a story by Dylan Thomas) and then, after a perfunctory curtain call, concludes with a solo performance, with acoustic guitar, of Bonfires, surely one of the most poignant goodbye-to-love songs she has yet written. It is a powerful conclusion to a set that has tilted off its axis. It has been a marvelous performance all the same. Not the smoothed out, no-surprises affair we usually get from our old favourite musicians, but something that played out in its own way on the night. Rickie Lee Jones is as always idiosyncratic, a sensitive – an artist whose sensibilities sometimes tingle uncomfortably on the skin. She is, after all, from out there at Edge City - where they stick it into Coolsville.
They’ve got the world on six strings
Published: 2010-12-03
November 27, 2010 Adelaide
Adelaide International Guitar Festival November 25 – 28
The Heart of Flamenco : Pepe de Lucia, Oscar Guzman Roshanne Wijeyeratne Arte Kanela Festival Theatre November 25.
Other Wordly Sounds: Wolfgang Muthspiel, Dhafer Youssef Richard Bona Group Festival Theatre November 26.
Adelaide Festival Centre.
The Adelaide International Guitar Festival has had a fretful history. Based on the New York Guitar Festival it began in 2007 as a ten day event with an almost bewildering range of marvelous performers. Its ambitions exceeded its audience, however, and after the 2008 festival also went into the financial haemoglobin it was time to reconsider. Now biennial, and ably guided by Artistic Director, guitar wiz Slava Grigoryan, it has been re-tuned and refocused into a four day event with a clearer sense of theme and purpose.
This was immediately evident with the opening night double bill The Heart of Flamenco featuring the master Spanish singer and composer Pepe de Lucia accompanied by renowned guitarist Oscar Guzman. The delicate restraint of Guzman’s playing, the lightness of the soundboard tapping golpe and clarity of the finger work, combined with de Lucia’s haunting mournful vocals powerfully reminded us of the archaic Byzantine and Moorish origins of this Andalusian art form. The addition of Adelaide-based dancer Roshanne Wijeyeratne completed the effortless blend of song, guitar and dance.
Sharing the program was Australian company Arte Kanela whose more familiar bravura flamenco style combines the fluently inventive guitar work of composer Richard Tedesco with the exuberant hair flying, foot stomping energy of his brother, the dancer Johnny Tedesco. The combination of the two, as Johnny moved into ever more complex rhythmic excursions, drew an enthusiastic audience response. Ole, indeed.
In the aptly named Other Worldly Sounds concert, guitar virtuosity was matched by intriguing and versatile vocals. Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel is well known to Australian audiences both as a soloist and as a member of MGT, a trio of luminaries including Slava Grigoryan and the brilliant Ralph Towner. This time, Muthspiel’s jazz-inflected, often cerebral style has been modified and simplified by the extraordinary keening vocals and oud accompaniment of Tunisian born musician Dhafer Youssef. In an entrancing set based on their recent recording, Glow, the pair exchanged engagingly repetitive, almost Keith Jarrett-like melodies enhanced by Youssef’s hypnotic singing.
Completing the evening was the Cameroon musician Richard Bona. A highly-rated contemporary bassist, he is also a fine singer, composer and entertainer. In an up-beat set he played material from his recent, globally eclectic Ten Shades of the Blues album. Accompanied by an excellent band including French guitarist Jean Christopher Maillard and New York trumpeter Tatum Greenblatt, Bona mixed Afro-beat and Indian rhythms in Shiva Mantra, sang tenderly of his Mbemba Mama, improvised intricate vocal overdubs and treated the audience to some Weather Report period Jaco Pastorius – showing us, without a hint of hubris, that he is a worthy successor to the great jazz fusion bassist.
Murray Bramwell
“They’ve got the world on six strings” The Australian, November 29, 2010, p.21.
Jack’s back with a whisper and cheers
Published: 2011-10-20
October 4, 2011
Adelaide Music
John Farnham Whispering Jack…25 years on
Adelaide Entertainment Centre October 4. Tickets: $99 - $ 149. Bookings Ticketek 132 849 Until October 8. Sydney: State Theatre. October 11-22. Bookings Ticketmaster 1300 139 588 Brisbane: Lyric Theatre QPAC. November 1-6 Bookings 136 246 Melbourne: Palais Theatre . November 9-19 Bookings: Ticketmaster 136 100 Perth: Burswood Theatre. November 22-26 Bookings: Ticketek 132 849
In just two weeks time, John Farnham celebrates, to the day, the 25th anniversary of the release of his 12th album, Whispering Jack. Produced at a time when people still bought records and companies still sold them, Whispering Jack not only had the distinction of being the first Oz record released in CD format, it went 24 times Platinum, selling 1.7 million copies – a figure unlikely ever to be matched in this century of file sharing and unsanctioned replication.
Epitomising what radio calls Adult Contemporary Rock, Whispering Jack represents, to those millions who bought it and loved it, a golden age of popular music, and Australian pop at that. Here was an Australian artist outselling Michael Jackson, Dire Straits, Abba, and even -recent MCG disappointment- Meatloaf.
Back in Adelaide, scene of some of his earliest 60s TV success, John Farnham begins yet another return tour : 28 nights in five cities, performing an opening set of familiar hits in unplugged mode, followed by a full serve of the 80s album that really changed it all. Surrounded by a first-rate band, including longtime collaborators Brett Garsed on guitar, drummer Angus Burchall, Chong Lim on keyboards, and veteran back-up singers Lisa Edwards and Lindsay Field, Farnham is his familiar cheery self. Greeting the ecstatic faithful he rolls out the self-deprecating gags, the comeback jokes, the whole breezy cockney-ocker patter which has endeared him to audiences who never wanted the mystique of Nick Cave or Spandau Ballet anyway.
Vocally, he is in fine form, that stretching, keening voice working its way through radio hits like That’s Freedom and Age of Reason. The band is all genial encouragement. Garsed provides some unexpected banjo for Talk of the Town, Steve Williams adds harmonica to Simple Life, the four back-up singers excel everywhere, and Farnham surges through the octaves with Everytime You Cry and, his showstopper, Lennon and McCartney’s Help.
But it’s the second half’s full stage, just-like-the-record-only-on-steroids rendering of Whispering Jack - in sequence and in its entirety- that fires the crowd. With big monochrome screen images of Jack from back in the day, the band, in 21st century black, recreate the big-note signature tropes of 80s rock.
On Pressure Down, Angus Burchall’s rifleshot drumming and splash cymbal is matched by the fanfare fills from Chong Lim, hunched behind a stack of Roland synthesizers. Then comes the clappy intro and You’re the Voice, anthem for the ages – at least for the Farnham army. He sang the whole album, both sides you might say – Reasons, No One Comes Close, Trouble, A Touch of Paradise and Let Me Out. From there, where else to go but back to You’re The Voice for one last grand encore ? Jack’s back, it would seem, and he is very welcome.
Murray Bramwell
“Jack’s back with a whisper and cheers” The Australian, October 6, 2011, p.18.
Parks and Re-creation
Published: 2013-03-10
Van Dyke Parks with Daniel Johns, Kimbra and the Adelaide Art Orchestra Thebarton Theatre March 8.
Murray Bramwell
Artistic director, David Sefton had always planned to include Van Dyke Parks in his first Adelaide Festival and among the hit-and-miss, mix-and-almost match fare of this week’s Brassland events, this Thebarton show has been a highlight. Much has to do with the genial, outgoing presence of Parks himself. But equally, the enthusiastic participation by Daniel Johns and electro-pop favourite, Kimbra turned an eclectic assemblage of parts into something wholly surprising and satisfying.
Van Dyke Parks’ career as performer, composer, producer and arranger spans nearly fifty years. His collaborations over that time have given him cult status – the list is long, from Brian Wilson (Parks wrote lyrics for the Beach Boys’ Smile album) Ry Cooder, the Byrds and Frank Zappa to more recent performers such as Rufus Wainwright, Joanna Newsom and – Silverchair.
Parks was twenty three when he wrote his ambitious first album Song Cycle. That was 1967 and I remember it well because, on the strength of a review in Sing Out! magazine (comparing it favourably with the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper, released at the same time) I bought it - and still have my battered vinyl copy. It was a strange, beguiling album, with its densely layered production, shifting tempi and lyrical orchestrations, not to mention the intriguingly quirky lyrics. And, at a time when musicians looked like frizzy birds of paradise with moustaches and beads, Van Dyke, in his brown tweed and earnest horn-rimmed specs, looked like he worked in a university library.
Forty six years later, he is looking plumply professorial in his pink shirt and striped tie. He is no longer a brunette, he drily observes in his distinctive Mississippi drawl, but with almost stentorian authority he commands the stage from behind the piano, surrounded by the excellent musicians of the Adelaide Art Orchestra led by Tim Sexton. The show opens with a spirited version of Black Jack Davy – the Rosetta stone of Appalachian music as Parks calls it. Daniel Johns and Kimbra take the stage to a noisy welcome. Johns is in comfortable grunge leather jacket and skinny jeans, Kimbra, elegant in a sculptured strapless white frock, with scarlet lipstick to match the Veronica Lake fringed hair. They move easily with the material as Parks conducts from the keyboard, the AAO finding their stride in among it. Vine Street and Palm Desert, from Song Cycle follow, Parks’ vocals mixed high and clear, and reminding us of his links with the Great American Songbook, lyricists like Cole Porter and innovators like Sondheim.
The program covers his idiosyncratic discography – an instrumental from Jump!, Johns singing lead on Come Along from the Brer Rabbit sequence. The marvellous Orange Crate Art, title tune from Parks’s 1995 album recorded with Brian Wilson, is a highlight. On the Wings of a Dove, has some of the structure and mood of Kurt Weill but the lyrics, like those of the John Hartford composition Delta Queen Waltz epitomise southern Americana.
Always outspoken politically, Parks reminds us of the greatness of the New Deal Democrat President Roosevelt with FDR in Trinidad from his calypso-inflected Discover America album from 1972 and closes the first set with the anti-imperialist Cowboy and the chirpy 30’s optimism of Sail Away.
Showcasing Parks’s arrangements for Silverchair’s Diorama and Young Modern albums, the second half opens with a tide of Silverchair nostalgia. Johns leads the charge, with Kimbra adding vocals, Paul Mac on piano and the orchestra navigating the tricky changes. Johns’s assured performances of All Across the World and Strange Behaviour reminds us that the collaboration with Parks was a creative jolt in the band’s development at that time.
Parks returns to direct Johns’s duet with Kimbra on the show-stopping He Needs Me, co-written for the ill-fated Popeye movie with Harry Nilsson - “the only musical genius I ever met. “ Always astride a range of American styles and idioms, Parks hammers the klavier for Johns’s wailing version of the Rev Gary Davis’s tormented spiritual – Death Don’t Have No Mercy. After that, Lowell George’s Sailing Shoes are a welcome lightness of step.
Van Dyke Parks closes with a solo version of Song Cycle’s vexed 60’s critique, The All Golden and, to great delight, some bars of Waltzing Matilda. He has captivated the audience with his mordant, narrative wit and united a very diverse audience (many heckling for Kimbra in the early stages of the night). His conspicuous regard both for the younger collaborators and the tireless orchestra is like a welcoming smile . To borrow from the Louis Moreau Gottschalk tune he played earlier - it has been a hot night in the tropics; the hall was steaming and breezes non-existent. But the band, led by this diminutive maestro, was totally cool.
also published on The Barefoot Review website, March 9, 2012
Robert Plant
Published: 2013-04-02
March 30, 2013
Old Graft, Green Shoots
Robert Plant Adelaide Entertainment Centre March 26.
Murray Bramwell
What do you do when you have already climbed the stairway to top-of-the-charts heaven, when you have hopped to the top of the misty mountain ? As part of Led Zeppelin, one of the most successful rock bands of all time, what was lead singer, Robert Plant, going to do when it was over ?
After the sudden death of drummer John “Bonzo” Bonham , Led Zeppelin disbanded in December 1980. They were the second highest selling band in US music history, shipping somewhere between 200 and 300 million records (all albums, they refused to release singles). They epitomised mega rock. Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page were the prototype poodle rock stars - big hair, big egos and a gigantic, carefully constructed sound that, quite literally, altered the sound of everything that followed.
They were credited with inventing, or at least perfecting, the music known as hard rock. They set in motion the relentless 40 year flow of heavy metal – now fragmented into such metallurgical sub-sets as thrash, death, nu and metalcore. And when the form was lampooned in the brilliant mockumentary, Spinal Tap, it was Plant and Page who looked like prime suspects.
But for all the pyrotechnics and foppish strutting, Led Zeppelin ‘s music was far more, as we say nowadays - nuanced. The acoustic layering, the melodic light and shade, the romantic, bardic lyrics, were more like that of folk rock. Not surprisingly - since Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones both played on such acid folk classics as Donovan’s Sunshine Superman. Nor should it be forgotten that it was Robert Plant who, encouraging the band to retreat to the remote Welsh cottage known as Bron-Yr-Aur, wrote lyrics laced with references to Celtic mythology and JRR Tolkien. He even had a dog named Strider.
In a long and varied solo career Robert Plant has traversed both familiar rock territory (with albums such as Now and Zen and Manic Nirvana), and the other road – acoustic folk and world music influences – as in the under-rated Fate of Nations and Dreamland, albums full of Plant originals as well as covers of Tim Hardin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Tim Buckley and Moby Grape’s Skip Spence. Equally inspired (and far more celebrated ) was Raising Sand, his 2007 collaboration with country singer Alison Krauss which gathered plaudits, Grammys and a whole new audience for his grainy vocal harmonies and Wolverhampton-Nashville sensibility.
On tour in 2013 with his Sensational Space Shifter Band, with a line-up (and setlist) not too different from his 2006 Strange Sensation travelling players, Robert Plant is a musician with nothing left to prove. He has nibbled more forbidden fruit than almost anyone in the later 20th century, he made money when managers like Zep’s Peter Grant reversed the flood of profits back to the bands, he has continued to make terrific music and, apparently, can take or leave offers such as the rumoured quarter of a billion dollars waved under the noses of the three surviving Led Zeppelin members to take on a world tour and fight one last battle of Evermore.
On stage this week at the Entertainment Centre, Robert Plant is relaxed and roguishly affable. He once looked like a Botticellian angel or a pre-Raphaelite prince. Now, with his long, crimped straw-coloured hair and Vandyke beard, he could be a Cavalier survivor from the court of James II. He is almost 65, and looking wrinkly - but every line in his face is a smile. He is charming from the first note, hunched over the microphone ready to release that big voice – now half an octave lower, perhaps - to an audience enthralled just to lay eyes on him.
He opens with Heartbreaker – from Led Zeppelin II . The vocals are wrapped in echo and reverb and the lyrics register as fragments – “…see how the fellas lay their money down …another guy’s name when I try to make love to you…Give it to me…Go away, Heartbreaker. “ The vocals are enveloped in the heavy rhythm sound of the Space Shifters – woozy, hypnotic keyboards, percussive drumming and thrumming guitar. No screaming Fender Telecaster leads , instead, an insistent, brooding bass and thud. Plant segues into Tin Pan Valley, its scathing satire on the life of retired celebrity mostly lost in the mix while everyone gets their bearings.
It is the opening lines of Ramble On – “Leaves are falling all around. It’s time I was on my way …” that registers with the crowd and the set begins to find its thread. Plant greets the punters and in his clipped, not-very-Midlands-anymore accent, announces Another Tribe. Guitarist Justin Adams lays out his acoustic riff, John Baggott generates the squelchy keyboards and Plant glides and sashays, upending the mike stand and expertly pitching his trademark vocals. He is a cool performer- no unbecoming Jaggerisms here. He is circumspect and restrained in his moves; it is like a courtly dance - all bows and scrapes and the gentlest self-irony. He is delivering the goods and having fun but nobody is pretending it’s 1974.
Blues music was always central to Led Zeppelin, as to the Yardbirds, Stones, Animals and others who preceded them. On stage Plant invokes the names of Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson and the sixties blues revival performers Son House and Skip James. He describes them as Black Angels and muses on the fact that he is now the age they were when they were re-discovered and returned to the concert circuit.
He doesn’t mention Willie Dixon whose family sued Zeppelin for its wholesale appropriation of his tunes and lyrics and were meagrely compensated in an out-of-court settlement. The Space Shifters chug into one of his most famous compositions all the same. Spoonful - and it is one several highlights of the night. West African musician Juldeh Camara joins the band onstage reminding us perhaps that the blues didn’t originate in the Delta but came from the continent where so many Africans were captured and transported. Camara adds his ritti, a single stringed African violin, to the insistent Spoonful riff and later in the extended jam, Liam “Skin” Tyson’s spicy guitar is replaced by Camara’s distinctive kologa – an African form of the banjo.
A cluster of big hits follows. Black Dog, with its instantly recognisable opening chords and blues bragger lyrics – “Hey mama, said the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove…” The band are in full form – but the force is in the drum and bass (the excellent Dave Smith and Billy Fuller) and, as in many songs, with bodhran, inventive keyboard fills and acoustic guitars. There are intense bursts of electricity from Tyson, but the effect is of thunderous skiffle. It is reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s electric string band from the Modern Times tour.
Not everyone is well pleased. Someone in the row behind me laments the absence of Jimmy Page. Certainly, there is none of his brilliant guitar flash, delivered as he languidly slouches against the Marshalls, lips curled into that Aleister Crowley sneer. But these Space Shifters have shape-shifted an old song and refreshed it - as they do, with Justin Adams on mandolin, in the melodic reading of Going to California that follows.
The Enchanter (from the aptly named Mighty Re-Arranger album) is given a fine stretch – the music wafting and beguiling, Plant at his most relaxed, crooning and keening as only he can. It is back to the blues with an extended version of Bukka White’s hell-hounded lament, Fixing to Die, and then the band steps up another level to fill the roof with Whole Lotta Love - in medley with the Bo Diddley classic Who do You Love ?
For the encore it is Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp and, with Plant’s amiable intro – “Here is the answer to all things complicated : Simple !” – it is one last go-round with Rock and Roll. “Carry me back, baby…it’s been a long time, been a long time. “ Yes, it has, and the faithful old trolls, as he jokingly called his sit-down audience, needed to hear the old refrains. However, Robert Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters not only gave us things borrowed and blue, they were also unexpected and refreshingly new.
Stockport to Memphis
Published: 2013-06-11
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013
Stockport to Memphis Barb Jungr (with Simon Wallace) Dunstan Playhouse June 9.
Barb Jungr’s latest Cabaret Festival show, Stockport to Memphis, is also the title of her latest (eighteenth !) record album and features a mix of contemporary classics and her own compositions. It is a Look Back in Jungr, perhaps.
The daughter of European émigré parents, Jungr was born in Rochdale in Lancashire and grew up in Stockport, a town ten miles south of Manchester. In a varied and successful career she has made it from busking in London’s Portobello Road to alternative theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe to her present eminence as a chanteuse on the cabaret club circuit.
Some of her more recent success has resulted from Every Grain of Sand, her 2002 tribute album of Bob Dylan songs. She has since followed that with Just Like a Woman, a Nina Simone tribute from 2008, and in 2011 another Dylan compilation - Man in the Long Black Coat.
On stage at the Dunstan Playhouse, Barb Jungr, dressed in Bohemian black, opens proceedings with a snappy version of Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows. It is not as fast-paced as her jittery Gala version from a couple of nights before, but it is still too brisk for its own good. Cohen’s own recent versions have been perfect studies in the understated sardonic and Jungr’s over-enunciated, broadly gesticulated reading, while lively, leaves little of the world- weary wit in this very timely song.
Following with two recent compositions of her own – Sunset to Break Your Heart and Till My Broken Heart Begins to Mend – both expertly phrased and soulfully sung, Jungr reveals what is inevitably going to be an unresolved divide between her own capable, but less memorable, song-making and the startling renditions of well-known material she is also showcasing. It is immediately evident with her near- perfect reading of Joni Mitchell’s River, a version that finds hidden depths even its writer never knew existed. Musical Director, Simon Wallace’s peerless piano phrasing and Jungr’s assured vocals make this a highlight of the set.
Other revelations follow in quick succession. The melancholy gospel tinges of Hank Williams’ Lost in the River also display Jungr and Wallace’s expert control of nuance and mood. Then, after a funny reminiscence of the spotty, feral young mods of her teen years, Jungr takes Rod Argent’s Zombies hit, She’s Not There and with a shift in gender perspective, re-engineers it into the upbeat, but mordantly reflective, He’s Not There.
Taking Neil Young’s well-known, much loved, Old Man and turning it into a hymn to acceptance is yet another revelation in this dream set-list. Then, Tom Waits’s apocalyptic Way Down in the Hole (theme song for The Wire) is deconstructed into a slow blues, garnished with another of Jungr’s splendid harmonica solos. When, finally, we get a Dylan song, it too is a surprise. Lay Lady Lay, Bob’s ultimate seduction song, is no longer - as Jungr observes - a macho conquest, but a song of experience hard-won ; the singer in command and the pianist in perfect unison.
From Stockport to Memphis, a belter written by Jungr, not only charts her progress as a transatlantic ballad and blues diva, but closes the set. Again it falls short of the excellence of the cover versions – so it is only fitting that the encore goes to a Sam Cooke classic : Change is Gonna Come. It is a powerful anthem of hope, peerlessly delivered by both Jungr and Wallace. And yes, many things in this world need to change, but not Barb Jungr’s gift for breathing new life into the music and poetry of late 20th century popular song.
Murray Bramwell
Published online in The Barefoot Review, June 11, 2013.
Cabaret Central
Published: 2013-06-17
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013
Cabaret Central
Que Reste-T’Il Robyn Archer with Michael Morley and George Butrumlis Adelaide Festival Theatre Stage. June 15.
Just when we were wondering what cabaret is any more, along comes Robyn Archer to give us a splendid master class. Archer has long been recognised internationally as one of the foremost interpreters of the music of the German Weimar period - most especially the works of Bertolt Brecht and his musical henchmen , Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau. But with her current show Que Reste-T’Il we are taken to the very origins of cabaret.
They began in Paris in the 1880s – nightclubs where patrons sat at tables, drank, and watched variety acts calculated to unsettle sensibilities, excite enthusiasms and generally frighten the horses. At the epicentre of this activity was Le Chat Noir (The Black Cat), opened in Montmartre in 1881 by the impresario Rodolphe Salis and frequented by the leading musicians, poets, painters, exhibitionists and culture jammers of the day.
Robyn Archer opens the set with a prose manifesto – a panegyric to “The Street”, where there is life, energy, crime and colour. This is the cabaret of grit and struggle; not Romantic Paris, as Archer observes, but a place of contrasting realities. And so, after opening with Aristide Bruant’s signature song, Le Chat Noir, things switch to less agreeable matters. After a parodically sung liturgical intro from pianist and collaborator Michael Morley, Archer bursts full-throated into There’s the Cholera, a grim reminder of the dangers of urban epidemic in Europe of that time. Red City highlights the proletarian point of view and another acerbic song from Bruant, It Takes Cash, wryly says it all.
Archer and Morley have discovered and spicily translated a variety of pungent, roistering songs from the French archive. The Song of the Rag and Bone Man has Archer in great, droll, gusto as with Coin ! Coin !Coin ! – that’s Quack, Quack Quack to you – and as the singer lists the faults of journalists, stockbrokers and politicians, she soon had the whole audience joining in with the mocking refrain.
As Archer moves from the fin de siecle to the 20th century she adds the Dadaists and Surrealists to her list of prose readings – Andre Breton and Picabia feature, as do their lively diatribes against solemnity, self-importance and conformity. Ah, how beastly are the bourgeois ?
The mood shifts, though, with Plaisir d’Amour – Archer shrewdly exchanging the vinegar for wine. Cole Porter’s (You know Paris) But You Don’t Know Paree fits nicely, and reminding us that Paris in the 1930s was not just about Piaf , Archer sings Pluie, a song by the Parisian cabaret chanteuse Marie-Louise Damien, better known as Damia. Once asked what was the secret of her marvellous voice, Damia is said to have replied –“Three packs of Gitanes a day.”
But it wouldn’t be a French cabaret show without Edith Piaf, and Archer opens with L’Accordioniste, the perfect cue for an excellent solo from accordionist George Butrumlis. Where others perhaps interpret the fragility of Piaf, Robyn Archer reminds us that Edith was a tough little sparrow who made good use of middle registers and gutturals to add some punch.
Satirist Leo Ferre is well-represented with two songs, in lively translation by Michael Morley – Le Piano du Pauvre, complete with topical references to Lang Lang, and, in another swipe at the mealy-mouthed bourgeois, Monsieur William. Jacques Brel is celebrated both in the form of a poem by Patrick McGuinness and Robyn Archer’s compelling, dizzily accelerating version of Carousel. It is one of many vocal highpoints – and reminders of her extraordinary expressiveness and range.
The set is a hugely entertaining mix of satire, melody, and fun – a medley of French kitsch, starting with Windmills of Your Mind and on to The Singing Nun’s Dominique, is followed by Serge Gainsbourg’s Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde, sung by Michael Morley who is having such a good time there should be a law against it. Archer’s curtain song is also a winner - Charles Trenet’s Que Reste T’Il- What Remains (of our Love) ?
We may not be able to answer that question, but what remains of this terrific show are the encores. First, a parody to the tune of Je Ne Regrette Rien, consisting of every familiar French word or phrase – from RSVP to Maitre d’ to ménage a trois (you get the idea) - all sung in mournful deadpan to mischievous effect. There’s no way to top that, but Robyn Archer manages it, with the entire audience roaring through more verses of Alouette than you would have thought possible. Je te plumerai la tete ? Que Reste T’Il ? Any more of that, and all that remained would be feathers.
Murray Bramwell
Published online at The Barefoot Review, June 20, 2013.
Modern Family
Published: 2013-06-20
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013 Martha Wainwright Dunstan Playhouse June 20.
What was it Tolstoy said about families? That all happy families are the same but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Not that the Wainwright -McGarrigle family was all that unhappy. Rather, they made unhappiness a favourite subject in their prolific and very memorable songs .
The McGarrigle Sisters – Anna and Kate – wrote plangent songs about hearts like wheels, and dancers with bruised knees. Similarly, over dozens of albums, Loudon Wainwright mapped both his heart and his family in songs – celebrating his infant son Rufus (Rufus is a Tit Man) recalling altercations with his young daughter Martha (Hitting You) among numerous other wry and disturbing confessionals about his anger, disappointment and remorse for the end of his marriage to Kate, and the deteriorating family relationships that followed.
It was keeping up the family tradition then, when Rufus Wainwright’s star was rising that he praised his mother and denigrated his absent father, and Martha took it one further, on her self-titled first album, with her famously plaintive diatribe to Loudon – Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.
Time has passed and hatchets have been buried and Rufus and Martha have not just become successful in their right but are as celebrated as their parents- perhaps, even more so. Also, much has changed for the family – most particularly the death, from cancer, of Kate McGarrigle in January 2010. Raised in Montreal by their mother, both Rufus and Martha were devoted to Kate, inspired and encouraged by her music, and devastated by her untimely passing.
Not long after Kate’s death, Rufus spoke at length about his relationship with her in a film documentary charting his career and music including his then current opera project, aptly named Prima Donna. Now, three years later, in far more modest mode, Martha Wainwright is touring a new CD – Come to Mama, in part, a tribute to Kate, also a reflection on her relationship with husband Brad Albetta and their son Arcangelo.
Martha Wainwright’s Cabaret Festival set at the Dunstan Playhouse is a reminder of how brilliant, volatile, appealing and irritating she can be – often all at the same time. The opener is This Life, from her first album - “ This life is boring, this life right now is snoring, that’s alright , that’s OK… “ Dressed in polka dots and yellow shoes, she threads herself into her restless lament, tossing her blonded bouffant hair, jerking her arms, bending her left leg in what seems like involuntary spasm. The bass thrums, the drum pulses, the vocal is softly robotic – Laurie Anderson style, like the bridge change later – then her voice soars into agitated repetitions: “there’s a song, a song, a song in my head” – and it is classic Martha.
The new material predominates. With its jaunty tempo, 4 Black Sheep belies its dark theme of youthful risk-taking– and the synth effects and vocal reverb (as elsewhere in the set) obscure the lyrics. But the singer is gathering momentum. Can You Believe It adds girl-pop chords (check Blondie and Chryssie Hynde) and Some People, with more woozy keyboards and a deathwatch drumbeat is a mournful night ballad – “I don’t mind the rain on my head.”
The excellent All Your Clothes, with its simple acoustic arrangement showcases Martha Wainwright at her best. The first of the tribute songs to her mother, it gently captures the need to find traces of a departed soul – in memory, in objects such as garments and, for Kate, in music. A little known song from the McGarrigle repertoire (about to be released on a CD named Oddities) My Mother is the Ocean Free also features Wainwright at her vocal best with harmonies from bassist (and husband) Brad Albetta.
Mixing things around again with Jesus and Mary from her second album, Wainwright drily remarks on the fact that her show so far has been short of cabaret numbers. Remedying this are two songs from her Piaf record - Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, a Paris. After a lengthy, light-hearted intro and translation, she launches into an excellent, if histrionic, L’Accordioniste. Recently I wrote that Bernadette Robinson had over-oeufed the same song, but in her zeal Wainwright not only over-eggs she near scrambles it. At times her music is the sound of one hand wringing, and it is a pity because she has real power and presence and doesn’t need to vamp it. Her other Piaf selection, Soudain une Velle, by welcome contrast, is a sudden glimpse of a subtler musical landscape.
The highlight of the night, and Martha Wainwright makes sure that it is the case, is a song written by Kate McGarrigle only a few months before her death. Proserpina is the centrepiece of the new album and it also for Wainwright’s set. The song recalls the myth of Persephone and the origin of the four seasons, most especially the return from the death of winter to the rebirth of spring. It is a marvellous song, beautifully rendered with acoustic guitar and a simple, bell-like Kate McGarrigle vocal.
It was quite the place to draw a close, but - encores being what they necessarily are - Martha comes back for her signature diva song, Stormy Weather. Again, it is snazzily sung and enthusiastically received- but, for me, accompanied with so much writhing, hair tossing, face rubbing and general meteorological voguing, it diminishes a great blues song - and once again proves that, to touch the true heart, simple is best.
Murray Bramwell
Published online at The Barefoot Review, June 22, 2013.
Music World
Published: 2014-02-25
Murray Bramwell previews a selection of the singers and sounds from Womadelaide 2014, opening March 7 to 11. Botanic Park, Adelaide.
For more than twenty years the first week in March in Adelaide has heralded, not just the Festival and Fringe, but Womadelaide, the enduringly popular music event with the portmanteau name that is both a local and national institution. First staged in 1992, under the wing of Rob Brookman’s Festival, Peter Gabriel’s UK concert venture Womad (that’s acronym for world of music and dance) introduced Australian audiences to an extraordinary range of exceptional musicians – the Afrobeat sounds of Youssou N’Dour from Senegal, Tanzanian Remmy Ongala, Indian music from Dr L Subramaniam and Sheila Chandra and the unforgettable Qawwali vocals of the Pakistani master, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
So many names have been added to that list over a succession of Womad festivals organised in Adelaide by Arts Projects Australia, each year extending and intriguing crowds with new sounds, both ancient and modern, from every part of the world. And with that, a number of constant factors have ensured Womadelaide’s undoubted success. Most significant is the location – Botanic Park, right in the CBD, an oasis of green in the parched South Australian summer, with ample shade trees - including the enormous Moreton Bay figs which give the venue its unique character.
And from that has developed a sense of ritual and fond familiarity. There is a very high rate of recidivism among Womad patrons – many have attended every year since the festival began. Some who first came with their parents are now adults continuing the tradition. From the moment people enter the park they settle into its easy vibe. Everyone knows the drill and there is a gentle orderliness about sharing the space, keeping the park tidy and peacefully co-existing. The layout of the stages – in recent times expanded from five to seven – has remained the same, as have the excellent production values.
But there is nothing predictable about the program. Most festivals depend on well-known headliners to attract the crowd, whereas at Womad maybe two thirds or more of the artists are completely unknown to Australian fans. There are headliners, of course. Nigerian singer Femi Kuti and his band the Positive Force continue the Afrobeat presence at Womad, following such artists as Salif Keita and Baaba Maal. Performing from his latest CD No Place for My Dream, Kuti’s songs, many in English, such as “No Work No Job No Money” and “Action Time”, are rallying reminders of Developing World injustices. Femi Kuti and his band will perform the closing set on Monday night.
Billy Bragg is making a welcome return to Australia- and features for a first time at Womadelaide. In recent years, since his Woody Guthrie project, Mermaid Avenue, Bragg has turned his interest to American country styles and, with its mid-Atlantic accents, his most recent album Tooth and Nail, produced by US singer Joe Henry, sounds a very long way from Essex. Let’s hope in his once-only Monday night set there might still be greetings to the new brunette.
US hip-hop pioneers, Arrested Development also perform just once- on Saturday night. After more than twenty years, Grammy awards and such recent albums as Strong – with tracks such as “Let Your Voice be Heard” and “Freedom” - they still deliver beats with heart.
Among the Celtic folk artists at Womad this year are Scottish band Breabach , a five piece band featuring rousing Highland pipes, but, as their 2012 CD Bann indicates, they have their lyrical shading as well. Also at the forefront of contemporary folk is English singer Sam Lee and Friends. With vocals eerily reminiscent of the late Bert Jansch, Lee’s recent recording, Ground of its Own -with cornet and chimes on “On Yonder Hill” and loops and beats on “The Ballad of George Collins” – promises much for their Saturday 5pm sit-down set.
And while blues and Americana are often in short supply at Womad, fans will be pleased to see Australian master guitarist Jeff Lang at Speakers’ Corner, and from the US, Pokey Lafarge and his band conjure the jugband ragtime swing of the 20s and 30s on such staples as “Wontcha Please Don’t Do It” and “Kentucky Mae”.
Women artists feature prominently at Womad and this year is no exception. Indie country singer Neko Case, who is touring the Eastern states in early March, performs only on Friday night. Featuring her ninth album, unfurlingly titled The Worse Things Get the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight the More I Love You, Neko Case will be gathering admirers in Adelaide. Australian based artists include Ngaiire, former singer from Blue King Brown, with her debut CD Lamentations, Brisbane singer Thelma Plum, Adelaide newcomer Loren Kate and, leading the sweet-sounding folk pop band Tinpan Orange, Emily Lubitz. Fado is never far away at Womad and highly-praised Portuguese singer Carminho performs at twilight on Monday.
Womad is nothing if not eclectic and numbers of bands draw on a farrago of influences – like Brooklyn-based brass and percussion unit, Red Baraat with its North Indian, Bollywood and jazz influences, Japanese outfit Osaka Monaurail devoted to the works of James Brown, and the Spanish surf sound of Los Coronas. The seven piece French Algerian group Dub Inc play Saturday afternoon and Monday at 7pm – they have a rich vibrant sound and should be terrific. As will New Zealand favourites Fat Freddy’s Drop whose new album Blackbird has taken their assured mix of soul, techno and reggae to a new level. They only play on Friday and they will be a blast.
Also among the acts I am keen to see is the UK based Balanescu Quartet. Led by Romanian born violinist and composer Alexander Balanescu, they last played in Adelaide at the Barossa Music Festival in the early 90s when they accompanied the Meryl Tankard Dance company with their witty arrangements of Kraftwerk songs. This time they will perform live with a screening of Marie T, a tribute to Romanian singer Marie Tanase. Perhaps in their Monday set there will room for “Robots”, “Autobahn” and “Pocket Calculator”.
There are always some artists that make Womad memorable, whose music we have never heard before but they become immediate favourites. Latin piano wiz Robert Fonseca is a likely contender, as are Living Room, from Austria, a minimalist duo featuring percussion, bass clarinet and an invention called a pepephon. Scandinavian singer-songwriter Ane Brun is another: reminiscent of Beth Orton perhaps, or even Joni Mitchell, she plays twilight sets on both Saturday and Sunday- you will want to go to both. And don’t miss the keening vocals and oud, synth and percussion sounds of Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi. Her current album, Kelmti Horra, reminds us how wide the world of music can be.
Published online The Daily Review, February 25, 2014
Time Changes and Tempo Too
Published: 2014-09-03
Bob Dylan Adelaide Entertainment Centre August 30.
Murray Bramwell
It’s not just the times that are a-changing. Things have Changed. Bob Dylan is back on stage in Adelaide and his opening song, Academy Award winning theme tune to the 2000 film Wonder Boys, tells us – “People are crazy, times are strange/I’m locked in tight , I’m outta range/ I used to care but things have changed.” Except, with Bob, the more things change, the more they also stay the same.
He’s been locked in tight for a long time now. The so-called Never Ending Tour (a tag he himself ridicules) began in 1988 and notched up 2000 concerts by 2007. Seven years, and hundreds of performances further on, and Dylan is now 73 and still on the road. Still hidden in plain sight, still that Alias character from Sam Peckinpah’s western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Dressed in a broad brimmed hat and black and grey patched suit Dylan has become the song and dance man he once whimsically called himself. The songs are drawn from the deepest wells in popular music. And the dance, well, he’s got some moves, you might call them a sardonic, slow jive.
Dylan doesn’t play guitar nowadays, instead it’s piano, not that tinny electric from last tour, but a half size grand. Or else he stands at the microphone and croons wolfishly, biting at the lyrics here, gliding lightly through the octave there. His voice is gravelly, sometimes it sounds utterly shredded, but often he moves it with startling invention and with such emotive phrasing that you have to catch your breath.
The set continues with “She Belongs to Me” – from Bringing it All Back Home, 1965- transition folk rock: Highway 61 to arrive in a few months and the thin wild mercury sound of Blonde on Blonde the following year. The band is relaxed – bassist Tony Garnier is settling back. Dylan’s longtime MD, he doesn’t have to explain the ways of God to the other musicians any more. On this year’s tour the set list is tight and relatively unvarying. The band is well-rehearsed. No more having to guess which song Bob has launched himself into, re-engineering the tempo and the intro.
“She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back.” Charlie Sexton is playing some sweet phrases on lead, but it is Dylan’s haunting harmonica, clarion from another century, which reminds us that it is not quite fifty years since many of us bought that album, and marvelled at “Mr Tambourine Man” and “Maggie’s Farm”, and even more at “Gates of Eden”.
After “Beyond Here Lies Nothing”, it is on “Workingman Blues #2” where things really start to lift. Dylan’s voice is surer and the latter day, hard-luck lyrics have a post-GFC edge to them. He’s standing at the mic – in fact there is a cluster of four of them, designed, you start to think, to obscure Dylan’s face; like the strange, shadowy stage lighting which was intriguing for those us in the front rows, but baffling, and at times frustrating, to some of my friends seated much further back. But that’s Bob – locked in tight, outta range - hidden in plain sight.
The little-known “Waiting for You”, another movie soundtrack song, gets the cowboy waltz treatment. Donnie Herron on pedal steel, Bob on piano – it is the first of several wistful ballads. The mood changes with the jaunty “Duquesne Whistle” and the mephistophilean “Pay in Blood”, both from last year’s Tempest album.
The first half closes strongly – with a slowed down, expertly phrased reading of “Tangled Up in Blue”, the band playing melody with an almost modal insistence, Bob adding more heraldic harmonica, to be followed by “Love Sick”, his bitter blues. Sexton supplies the keening lead, while the excellent Stu Kimball’s rhythm guitar has a relentless dread to it. This is from Dylan’s late masterpiece – Time Out of Mind, shades of W.B.Yeats’s Last Poems : The Circus Animals’ Desertion, Crazy Jane on the Mountain and Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? “High Water (for Charley Patton)” opens the second half. Featuring Donnie Herron on banjo – alas, volume not high enough in the often bass heavy mix. Dylan makes the lyrics echo with prophetic import, just like it is so easily done, out on Highway 61.
Returning to Blood on the Tracks for a deftly simple twist on “A Simple Twist of Fate” again he adds crooning harmonica highlights. The band regroups for a thumping version of “Early Roman Kings” – Early Roman Hoochie Coochie Men, more like. Listen to Kimball’s driving chords, George Recile’s dead-arm drum and Bob barrel-housing the piano, it is drawn from the clear springs of Muddy Waters, and is a reminder that Dylan has always played great blues.
With the sprightly string band melody of “Spirit on the Water” Bob tells us we can have a very good time and with the creepy ballad, “Scarlet Town” and its grimly hypnotic banjo riff, he reminds us that the world is also too much with us - and it doesn’t wish us well.
Perhaps though, it is the melancholy of regret that falls most heavily on the night. In “Forgetful Heart” (why can’t we love like we did before ?) Dylan takes the schmaltz of a cowboy ballad and, accompanied by Herron’s mournful violin, turns it into something far less generic. Instead it sounds heartfelt, personal, as if he is running out of aliases, and certainly running out of time.
It is the same with his closing song, again from Tempest, the slow strummed, half-crooned, half-spoken “Long and Wasted Years”. “For one brief time,” he dreamily recalls, “I was the bang for you. Maybe it’s the same for me as it is for you.” Sexton plays his trickle-down riff over and over as Dylan, still masked by shadows and microphones, delivers like a disembodied voice on late night country radio – “so many tears, so many long and wasted years.”
The encores follow briskly. “All Along the Watchtower” – Businessmen they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth - has long been his anthem, gloriously reframed by Jimi Hendrix, but long since reclaimed by Dylan and his band - with its rousing guitars, paused for Sexton’s duet with Dylan’s rhythmic piano, before Recile’s drums roar back into urgent warning –“outside in the distance a wildcat did growl /Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.”
As for the whole tour, “Watchtower” is twinned with “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Dylan at the piano, his weary vocals turning the earnest exhortations of his most famous protest song into perplexed questions that seem lost in time and context. Things have changed. Without the guitar, Bob Dylan is no longer the folk troubadour. Now he’s the Lonesome Hobo, the Wicked Messenger, the Jokerman – take your pick.
For his loyal audience, ageing with him, he is a Beckettian figure of rebuke. Alone and remote in his eccentricity and his undoubted genius, he has long told us he is not the one we want or need. Yet we still yearn for his approval, his benediction. People ask – did he speak to the audience ? What performer, after all, does not warmly acknowledge his or her fans, admirers, cult followers ? But of course he didn’t speak, except to announce the interval. Mr Godot is not coming today or any other. In his concert, with a masterful band, Mr Dylan has given a great deal of himself, but, as always, he is hidden in plain sight. He’s locked in tight. Things have changed. And nothing has changed at all.
Published The Barefoot Review online, September 3, 2014.
Match-fit Stones reach us in blistering form
Published: 2014-10-27
The Rolling Stones (with special guest Jimmy Barnes) 14 On Fire Tour Adelaide Oval October 25. Duration: 130 minutes. iEG Entertainment, Frontier Touring and AEG Live. Bookings Ticketek .
The Rolling Stones have arrived – like a crossfire hurricane. Their tour is called 14 on Fire and, for once, the description matches the product. With their March dates cancelled because of the tragic death of Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, L’Wren Scott, the band only returned to performing in Europe in late May, continuing into July. Now, taking the stage at the Adelaide Oval, for the first show of their re-scheduled Australian tour, the Stones are thoroughly match-fit.
From the first familiar chords of Jumping Jack Flash, struck with magisterial authority by Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones command the giant stadium stage. Writ large on a massive tryptich of video screens, decorated like art nouveau picture frames, the live video feed of the band combines with a succession of animations, file photos, and copious other images for more than two hours of sight and sound immersion.
Always in the frame are the Four; the three originals - Jagger, Richards and Charlie Watts - joined by the forty year new boy Ronnie Wood. Let’s just say this once. Three of the band are over seventy, and Wood is not far off. The cameras reveal every crag and wrinkle - but also the energy, ease and sheer style of the world’s greatest rock band. It’s a grandiose title, but after more than fifty years, most of them at the top of the game, it is theirs to claim.
They dip into their catalogue and it’s a very deep bag. Let’s Spend the Night Together, with photo-collage of the band from the sixties, Tumbling Dice, and a plaintive version of Wild Horses. There is a new song, Doom and Gloom, and, the only cover, Dylan’s legendary Like a Rolling Stone, features Richards’ guitar, Jagger on harmonica and keyboard player Chuck Leavell. Richards adds his ragged vocals for Happy and Just Can’t Be Seen With You - Keith, Charlie and bassist Darryl Jones in splendid accord.
An extended version of Midnight Rambler is a highlight, with guest guitarist Mick Taylor reminding us of the golden period of Sticky Fingers and Let it Bleed. Slim as a whip, brimming with theatrics, Jagger is brilliant, traversing the stage, playing with the lyrics like a cat with a mouse. Gimme Shelter, with a soaring vocal solo from Lisa Fischer is also a knockout .
Sympathy for the Devil is a cauldron of red light and stage smoke, and Brown Sugar another band tour de force. This show excels at every level, the detail, precision, pace and spectacle exhilarating. The Stones close with You Can’t Always Get What You Want and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – 54,000 delighted punters totally disagree.
Murray Bramwell
“Match-fit Stones reach us in blistering form” The Australian, October 27, 2014, p.13
Adelaide Festival 2015
Published: 2015-03-09
Daily Review Murray Bramwell
Roses and Bryars
Gavin Bryars Ensemble March 3. Elder Hall
Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet and selected orchestral works March 5. Adelaide Town Hall
One of the highlights of this year’s Adelaide Festival has been composer-in- residence Gavin Bryars. Yorkshire-born, Bryars has been prominent in minimalist music since the late 1960s, with works such as The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet in 1972. Both were first released on Brian Eno’s Obscure Records and Bryars and Eno were also founder members of the celebrated experimental orchestra, Portsmouth Sinfonia.
For his recital, at Elder Hall, Bryars performed with his Ensemble – long standing friends and associates, such as cellist Nick Cooper and electric guitarist James Woodrow, who join Bryars on double bass for the opening work, the haunting first section of Tre Laude Dolce, setting the mood for a sublime program of contemplative music.
The trio is joined by soprano Peyee Chen and tenor John Potter for a set of laudas, based on short vernacular religious songs first heard in Italy in the 13th century. Opening with Lauda 4, Oi me lasso, the singers are outstanding, Bryars guiding the progress of his compositions with unfussy precision.
Bryars introduces his works with an easy informality. Flowers of Friendship, a commission from a Harvard law professor dedicated to his wife, he describes as being an odd assignment. Firstly, the wife hated vocal music and further, while dedicated to each other, she and her husband lived in separate residences. The work, an instrumental duet for tremolo electric guitar and bowed bass, is a beautifully sustained tribute - even if Bryars refers somewhat ironically to the Gertrude Stein poem, Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded. There is pleasing variation in the two hour program. Closing the first half with a series of items from the recent (2012) The Morrison Songbook, after interval, Bryars moves to the piano to perform Lauda con sordino, an instrumental performed with Morgan Goff on viola and the ubiquitous Woodrow on gently cranked electric guitar. The series Irish Madrigals is the centrepiece of the second half – nine works based on Petrarch’s sonnets to Laura using craggy, idiosyncratic prose translations by the Irish playwright J.M. Synge which Bryars came across accidentally when researching the project. Concluding with the dulcet Lauda 28 Amor Dolce Senza Pare, the Gavin Bryars Ensemble leaves the audience in something close to a swoon.
Two nights later at the Town Hall, Bryars collaborated with the Adelaide Symphony for a program which opened with the shimmering Lento composed by Howard Kempton and If Bach had been a beekeeper, a playfully intricate work by Arvo Part, like Kempton, a personal friend of Bryars.
The Porazzi Fragment, a work for strings by Bryars, incorporates a 13 bar composition by Richard Wagner which he began at the time of Tristan and Isolde and finished just after the completion of Parsifal when he was staying at a palace in the Piazza dei Porazzi in Palermo. Cosima, Wagner’s widow, describes hearing him play this musical morsel on his piano the night before he died. Bryars’s composition envelopes the fragment with a Wagnerian richness which pays homage to the composer but is never imitative.
The centrepiece of the night is Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet, an early work, revived, extended and re-recorded with Tom Waits in 1993. The unaccompanied refrain which provides the title comes from an audio tape a friend of Bryars had made for a documentary film about vagrants living rough in central London in the late 1960s. In his introduction to the performance, Bryars describes the tramp who sings the hymn as “a sober, frail old man”. He continues : “I hear dignity, humanity, optimism and simple faith. There is a smile in the voice.”
It is an exceptional skerrick of song which can sustain nearly sixty minutes of music, constantly repeated until it becomes an almost maddening refrain. Bryars himself says in the process of recording the work he must have heard the voice loop more than 14,000 times.
In the Town Hall, under Bryars’ baton the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra sustain the repetitions and variations, the wax and wanings, with admirable delicacy and discipline. Opening with the unaccompanied voice gradually gaining volume, various sections of the orchestra add layers of melody without ever diminishing the centrality of the vocal theme – “Jesus’ blood never failed me yet / never failed me yet/ Jesus’ blood never failed me yet/ it’s one thing I know/ for he loves me so.”
It is a well-known work, but hearing it performed live has a different kind of intensity. It is to move from the pleasure of its serenade, to excruciation with what seem like never-ending repetitions. Then, as the music recedes into the infinity it seems to come from, we feel the sort of resolution that might come from extended meditation. Perhaps this is the musical equivalent of Samuel Beckett.
Bryars’ Adelaide Festival residency - which also included his chamber opera, Marilyn Forever and another Ensemble recital featuring The Song Company and guest Gavin Friday - has been a memorable experience. In 2014, festival director David Sefton invited the mercurial, hyper-manic, ear-popping John Zorn. This time, we have enjoyed the genial presence of Gavin Bryars. And, one thing I know - his accessible, warmly affirmative and splendidly crafted compositions never failed us all week.
Published online, Daily Review, March 9, 2015.
The Odes of March
Published: 2015-03-31
Augie March Her Majesty’s March 26
Murray Bramwell
It is several weeks on from the Ides of March, now it’s time for the Odes of March. Augie March, that is - back from a seven year hibernation for a national tour featuring their 2014 album Havens Dumb. Led by the prodigiously talented, singer songwriter Glenn Richards, Augie March appeared on the Australian music scene in 1998 and released their first album Sunset Studies in 2000. Now fifteen years and five albums later, they are here to remind us what an embarrassment of musical riches/Richards they have to offer.
They are a quirky bunch. After an excellent set from the very promising Adelaide trio, Cosmo Thundercat, Richards and the band wander onstage at Her Majesty’s in search of bass player Edmondo Ammendola. There is an awkward delay until his shambling arrival and Richards, never entirely comfortable as the frontman, finally gathers the band, and the three member Arnold Horns, to open with Hobart Obit.
“I tried to care for you the best I could /We mapped it out and reconfigured the old neighbourhood/But time is a bastard , time is a vial of petty sands,/the body’s a basket emptying to the niggardly hands/of Aeon for his array of strung out decay…”
With three-part harmonies crooning around him Glenn Richards unfurls the first of his many densely laden lyrics sung in his melodic, pitch perfect vocal, with gently chiming guitar from Adam Donovan, Ammendola’s deep thrumming bass and David Williams, anchoring the band with his steadying drumbeat. It is a sweet pop rock sound – echoes of Crowded House and perhaps, in their keening vocals and esoteric lyrics, the hugely under-rated UK band Turin Brakes.
With very few exceptions Augie March songs don’t just jump into the brain pan and stay there. They are intricate, trickling threads of voice and word, chord and beat, there are hooks but they don’t have simple choruses, or the kind of repetitions that become immediately memorable.
Interestingly, in the Havens Dumb songs there are repetitions of line between songs- “Time is a bastard, time is a vial of petty sands ..” from Hobart Obit, reappears in Bastard Time and in the album’s splendid opening song AWOL, regrettably excluded from the Her Majesty’s setlist. A Dog Starved gets a go instead – Donovan’s guitar taking on that sweet rheumatic Gretsch sound George Harrison gave to world. In fact there is a fetching White Album feeling to the whole song, or perhaps, given Richards’ tempus fugit preoccupations- All Things Must Pass.
Peering down at his setlist, printed in a pygmy font that is too hard to read, Richards, somewhat haltingly, leads into a selection from Moo You Bloody Choir, The Cold Acre, Kiernan Box’s gentle piano intro followed by the swing waltz rhythm of yet another melancholy Augie March treasure – “My heart is a cold acre, my chest is a cold acre…” Then two early compositions, The Good Gardener (On how he fell) and Here Comes The Night, both from Sunset Studies follow, the band in stride with two fine songs, reminders that this band started well and stayed that way.
Glenn Richards is justly proud of Havens Dumb, the album that brought the band back together. Gathered over several years they recorded 30 songs, the musicians living in different parts of the country emailing each other their overdubs as the project progressed. We get three more of the new songs –Bastard Time, Villa Adriana – inspired by Richards’ long-awaited first trip to Italy- and the pungent Definitive History.
I am not sure what the title, Havens Dumb quite refers to, but, in part, it is a harsh appraisal of the present state of Australian civic and public life. Definitive History is scathing- “’The same smug expression, same false cheer,/same air of predation-“Stranger welcome” .. just not here, just not here, just not here/ All men are like mice, all men are mice, it just doesn’t pay to be nice,/Take all before you/Definitive History.”
Unfortunately the lucid rage of the lyrics is buried under a surfeit of sound. Kieran Box unleashes a loud grating sample of a violin chord which starts to sound like an unattended car alarm, with the Arnold Horns blasting away and the rest of the band competing for attention. More’s the pity that the refrain is lost in transmission – ”O one for the mother, one for the dad/One for the treasurer, one for the plasma screen and don’t forget/ the developer’s dream,/ a plot to bury them all at the edge of the sprawl-/ Definitive history.”
The early classic There is No Such a Place reminds us that there few Australian songwriters who can write such plangent melody. This is an amalgam of Paul Simon, Don McLean’s American Pie and Vincent, or more recently the Finn brothers , Elliott Smith and Elbow. But, as always, Augie March sound like a lot of musicians and none of them. They are unique in the best way, because they evoke so much other music that stands in the wings watching them appear – and, as their song reminds us - disappear.
The set concludes with the full-tilt galloping tempo of This Train Will be Taking No Passengers and, of course, an encore featuring One Crowded Hour. It is their signature hit, and yet another wistful meditation on the theme of time, and past love, featuring yet another gnomic Glenn Richards question and response -“What is this six stringed instrument but an adolescent loom ? And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.”
Concluding with the downbeat, mildly querulous Never Been Sad, Richards and his staunch, enduring band wind down the show. It has been one of fits and starts, distractedly re-tuning instruments, gazing into the audience, bemused by the lighting blackouts, mulling over Charlie Brown meaning of life questions. As an inner sigh from Glenn Richards becomes accidentally audible, he disarmingly asks- “Am I really tired, or really old ?”
No slick patter from Augie March, no smoothly engineered show, none of the easy complacency befitting a veteran band who after seven years of self-imposed exile have returned with an album as good as any produced in this desolate period in Australian music. Instead they played fifteen or so songs of beauty and tangled feeling. It was one crowded hour and a half - ramshackle, often musically exquisite, and a reminder that Augie March are a great Australian band. “Thanks very much folks”, Richards diffidently concludes, “that’s us.” And a fine thing they are too. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that there will be a next time.
Murray Bramwell
Online at The Barefoot Review, March 31, 2015.
Sublime the Revelator
Published: 2016-02-08
An Evening with Gillian Welch Her Majesty’s February 3.
Some things really are worth the wait. And Adelaide has waited a very long time for a first visit from the incomparable Gillian Welch and her brilliant musical partner David Rawlings. It has been eleven years since they last toured Australia and then it was Eastern States only. This time they drove to South Australia from Perth - 28 hours by car, they proudly report, but- with some regret - not a single kangaroo sighted.
The crowd in Her Majesty’s is buzzing with anticipation and is not disappointed. Greetings y’all, beams Ms Welch, wearing a silk and lace ankle length shift dress and cowboy boots. Her soft-spoken beau, David Rawlings is dressed in a suit and a cream Stetson – the full ten gallons, or is that 37.8 litres ? The staging is simple but carefully considered. The lighting is soft and buttery, a small table stands behind the twin microphones, on it a little cabinet with drawers for capos, harmonica holders, plectrums and other miniature mysteries.
They open with Scarlet Town, one of the highlights of the now-not-so-recent 2011 release, The Harrow and the Harvest. It is all there, straight off the bat. The enticing guitar duetting – Welch’s steady rhythm counterpointed by Rawlings’s amazingly nimble, wonderfully expressive syncopated melody lines. It is a curious mix of madrigal lute, bluegrass mandolin and acoustic punk.
Then, in comes Gillian Welch’s ringing vocal – “When I went down to Scarlet Town/ ain’t never been there before/ you slept on a feather bed / I slept on the floor….The things I seen in Scarlet Town did mortify my soul/ Look at that deep well/Look at that dark grave/ringing that iron bell/ in Scarlet Town today. “
It is a traditional song revived to perfection by a New York born, LA-raised , Berkelee School of Music graduate who doesn’t have to be born in Appalachia to capture that amalgam of 17th century English ballad, Pentecostal gospel and Depression era good-time music that fuels American country music. Leading participants in the O Brother Where Art Thou? music soundtrack which became the Ryman Theatre stage show, Down From the Mountain, it is no exaggeration to say that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have been key to a new wave of 21st century Americana. Alt.Country is now the new mainstream, drawing in talents such as Bonnie Prince Billy, The Handsome Family, Punch Brothers and Iron and Wine, as well as reviving and refocusing the careers of Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams.
The opening cluster of songs in the first set includes both original compositions and re-arrangements of such familiar fare as Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor – Welch crooning plaintively with Rawlings’ wistful fingerpicking sweetly reminiscent of the legendary Mississippi John Hurt. Then it’s time for some Vitamin B, as Welch jokingly refers to her banjo, and begins that irresistibly ramshackle riff that opens into Rock of Ages. Disarmingly deprecating about their music, Gillian Welch introduces The Way it Will Be by saying – “The next one is a real downer, it starts out slowly and then fizzles out.” For the following song, The Way it Goes Rawlings adds – “this one is faster, but … sadder.” Needless to say both were performed to perfection, followed by the mournful sweet strains of Wayside/Back in Time and Annabelle.
They close the first half with the majestically slow Elvis Presley Blues, Welch in fine vocal and Rawlings as always reeling out note perfect solos, his small-bodied guitar held in near vertical position as he closes his eyes and slowly undulates with the unfurling melodies, riffs and rhythms- all in complete and effortless accord with Welch’s chiming voice and rock steady guitar. A rousing bluegrass version of Red Clay Halo ends the set on such a high that the interval seems essential just to gather our wits.
The duo come back even stronger after the break. Welch sings the semi-confessional ballad from Soul Journey, No One Knows My Name. And - a highpoint of an already vertiginous program – Hard Times, a Depression era sharecropper song about a farmer and his mule. It is a Welch-Rawlings composition, with strong traditional origins. And like the Woody Guthrie compositions and the Hollis Brown-era Bob Dylan works that precede it , the song powerfully evokes those elements of poverty, social injustice, and fortitude which made folk music also politically activist music – in the 1930s, the 1960s, and surely, again, in these times of the 1% wealthy and Occupy Wall Street.
The program reminds us how strong their repertoire is. With just five albums in twenty years (plus two more with the David Rawlings Machine) Gillian Welch, reminiscent of Americana pioneers, The Band, has distilled an exceptional set of songs. She sings Down Along the Dixie Line and then Six White Horses , complete with thigh and flank slapping rhythms –“it’s called hamboning” – and some wildly-admired bootstepping from Welch. Revelator, the crowning song from the crowning album, has the hackles shivering and Rawlings’ novocaine anthem Sweet Tooth is an open-tuned rumpus of ragtime and cakewalk. After the gothic murder ballad Caleb Meyer, Gillian Welch steps forward to ask a favour of the audience. It is her father’s 90th birthday and, on the road in Australia, she can’t be there. The audience sings Happy Birthday Kenny and is also invited to capture the moment for YouTube. Up it went, minutes after the show. Look at Miss Ohio and Everything is Free close the proceedings on what can only be called a perfect note.
Except there is more. A taste of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, in tribute to the late Paul Kantner. And a masterful version of Lefty Frizzell’s weepy, Long Black Veil. The sound quality has been flawless all evening (let no one say Her Majesty’s has dud acoustics) and David Rawlings has played his pin-sharp unplugged guitar direct to a microphone.
For the final song the duo come to the edge of the stage and perform entirely without amplification. It is a spell-binding finale; the audience quieter than the quietest mice, Gillian Welch’s tuneful melancholy vocal in telepathic harmony with Rawlings and his minimal guitar. At one point all we hear is her vocal and the merest tapping harmonics from the fretboard. Less has never been quite this more. No-one who was there will forget this concert. As I said, it was worth the wait.
Murray Bramwell
The Barefoot Review, uploaded February 9, 2016.
Navigating the New World
Published: 2016-03-01
Murray Bramwell previews WOMADelaide 2016
It is less than ten days until WOMADelaide opens again for three days and four nights of intriguing and often exhilarating music, performed by 400 musicians from more than 30 countries. From small, but nonetheless impressive, beginnings in 1992 under the wing of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, WOMADelaide, now in its 20th incarnation and an annual fixture since 2002, has become a major national festival. Noted for its consistent quality, and the depth and variety of its programming, it includes not just music, but dance, strolling theatre, visual arts, and an extensive range of speakers and discussion panels.
Last year this Festival-within-the-Festival drew a record 95,000 attendances over the four days and nights and, in 2016, in David Sefton’s somewhat downsized Adelaide Festival program, it is very much the major event for the final weekend.
WOMADelaide Operations and Program Manager, Annette Tripodi has been putting the performance schedule together since 1999 and it is a new challenge every time. With six program blocks from Friday through to Monday night Tripodi looks to identify headliners and build the jigsaw around them. As she explains:
“That’s the ideal – the artists who take the longest time to secure, and who cost the most, are the most prominent names and sometimes they come in at the last minute and it all works. But you are always looking, at the beginning of the programming cycle, at who’s going to be the anchor of the night. That changes and changes and it has a snowball effect on everything else .
“We start with a list of key headliner internationals and then another list of excellent internationals who are the typical WOMAD discoveries who have never played in Australia before. Where they play, and when, is affected by the headliners. So Friday night turns out to have three huge names and they are all once-onlies – Violent Femmes, The Cat Empire and Angelique Kidjo.
“Angelique Kidjo is a really interesting one for this coming festival because people have assumed she has done WOMAD before, but this is her first time. I have seen her in many phases- playing her first album, Logozo, in the early 90s in her very African guise, in a very slick French combination in WOMAD in England, in Adelaide venues like HQ and Thebarton. All of them were fantastic. This time is the orchestral show, which I have not seen before – it is its first time in Australia. It has taken months and months to wrangle- the conductor, the guest musicians, the 68 piece Adelaide Symphony Orchestra – and her.”
Kidjo will perform a repertoire including new songs from her long-time collaborator, Jean Hebrail and works specifically composed for her by Phillip Glass.
WOMAD is not only an opportunity for new events but also triumphant returns. Popular live act The Cat Empire first played the after hours Wozone back in 2003 and by the time they returned in 2004 they were huge national favourites. Tripodi is enthusiastic about their return in 2016:
“They are an exceptional live band, they can hold a Stage One audience of 20,000, they are much-loved and superb musicians. They love the festival, and even though they are on a big tour to promote their new album, they have all made time to stay over at the festival. They were 19 when they first played and now they are in their 30s, married with children.” Just like the ever-ageing and expanding WOMAD audience, one might add.
“We are trying with each festival to have a completely different program from the year before. “ Tripodi explains. “But coming back after a break in 2015, I realised Big Day Out is no more, Soundwave is no more, and Future Music is no more . Not that we have had the same audiences, but there is some crossover and it’s alarming how these mega festivals have crashed and burned.
“I think part of the reason for our ongoing success, and the real love and devotion people have, is that it isn’t the same line-up every time and there’s a huge amount that goes into ‘the experience’. It’s not just - put a headline on the stage. People have really started to get that in the past five years.”
Another headline band, newly drawn to the WOMAD fold, is the Milwaukee, Wisconsin indie band, Violent Femmes. Tripodi is keen – “they are an iconic band, they’ve re-formed, and released an album. The timing was perfect for Adelaide. Here, they are going to get a really good audience – and the right audience.”
Casting her eye across the other nights’ once-only lead acts, Tripodi points out, on Saturday night, the late 80s hip-hop favourites De La Soul, touring with new material – upcoming 2016 albums include And the Anonymous Nobody and Premium Soul on the Rocks. Also, returning after previously performing at the festival with Kronos Quartet in 2008, is Indian singing legend Asha Bhosle. At 84 she still tours and regularly records new albums. With a career which began in 1943, to call her prolific and enduring is an understatement. She will perform with her Bollywood mini-orchestra featuring vocals from her grand-daughter and an entourage which includes her son and daughter –in law.
Sunday night will showcase another of Annette Tripodi’s favourites – St Germain , a shapeshifting musical entity which revolves around French house and nu jazz musician, Ludovic Navarre. “I’m very excited about them. They were last seen when they toured here in 2001. We can expect a dynamic, high quality show with all the beats and grooves but also very fine musicians.”
Several names are contenders for top of the bill on Monday night. As is the WOMADelaide tradition, a major afrobeat band holds the stage. This year it is Seun Kuti, 33 year old son of Nigerian legend and political activist, the late Fela Kuti. With his band, Egypt 80, which includes members and compatriots of Fela Kuti’s group, Seun Kuti will perform from his 2014 CD, A Long Way From the Beginning.
Also on the final night bill is English electronica outfit, Asian Dub Foundation. Founded in Hackney, London in 1993 they are long time big beat, drum and bass favourites. Led by Steve Chandra Savale (aka Chandrasonic) and including Sun-J, Pandit G, and Rocky Singh among others, they will perform across their repertoire (including Fortress Europe, I hope) and their most recent studio album – More Signal More Noise.
But as Annette Tripodi has remarked, the challenge of programming is finding the best settings and opportunities to highlight new talents and sounds, those WOMAD favourites no one has heard of yet.
Among those which have caught my attention are Tulegur from China, a duo featuring guitarist Zongcan and throat-singing vocalist Gangzi. Their evocatively lyrical album, Wind Grass Sound is Mongolian pastoral but as Annette Tripodi observes, in concert, they almost sound like Nirvana.
Also young, fresh and strong on the beats are 47 Soul, Middle Eastern dance cross-over from Palestine, Jordan and Syria. Alsarah and The Nubatones from Sudan/USA also promise lively fusions . And, a likely surprise is singer/songwriter John Grant, formerly of the The Czars, now based in Iceland. His album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure (an Icelandic nickname for depression) explores his clashes with addiction and sardonically reflects on surviving the experience.
Women have always held up more than their half of the WOMAD sky. This year there are sister acts, Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat from Iran (their album Twinklings of Hope, is aptly named) along with Ibeji - identical twins, Naomi and Lisa-Kainde Diaz, daughters of Buena Vista Social Club musician Anga Diaz, linking Cuba, Paris and West African Yoruba percussion. Another rising star is Ester Rada whose debut CD promises a vibrant, jazzy performance on Stage One on Saturday night. Sarah Blasko heads the Australian talent, along with All My Exes Live in Texas, and the much-praised young singer, Samba the Great, from Zambia but now resident here.
Other Australian performers featured in the Festival include legendary singer songwriter Kev Carmody, reggae band The Strides and Adelaide unit Wasted Wanderers. Marlon Williams and the Yarra Benders, riding high on recent gigs including Day on the Green, will also have an eager following.
Folk and post folk music is a constant component at WOMADelaide, although given the rich talents from the UK and Ireland, as well as the profusion of interesting Americana bands, many more could be included. Nevertheless, this year, we will be well served by trance folk minimalists Spiro, Australian duo Husky, The Once, and fellow Canadians, The Jerry Cans.
The Cedric Burnside Project, a duo featuring drummer Cedric (grandson of the blues great, R.L.Burnside) and guitarist Trenton Ayres will mix blues with hip-hop and funk, while Malian quartet Songhoy Blues blend US guitar styles with West African rhythms in a once-only set on Monday Night at Stage Three.
There are always some performers who, even on first cursory hearing, demand further attention. Greek vocalist Savina Yannatou and her great band Primavera en Salonico is one such example. She returns after a seven year break and is not to be missed. Neither are Calexico, mixing mariachi with country music, Tucson Arizona-style, featuring their ninth album, Edge of the Sun. Jazz influenced Colombian harpist Edmar Casteneda features with his trio on Monday night at the Zoo Stage. Also essential listening is charismatic classical flamenco singer Diego El Cigala, performing late on Saturday at the Moreton Bay Stage and, on Friday night, Indian virtuoso slide guitarist Debashish Battacharya will present a meditative late night set at the Zoo Stage.
Annette Tripodi’s 2016 WOMADelaide program is full to the brim. The world has come to visit - and it’s sounding good all over again.
WOMADelaide runs from March 11-14 at Botanic Park, Adelaide.
Daily Review, March 2, 2016.
All Delighted Audience
Published: 2016-03-03
Sufjan Stevens Thebarton Theatre Adelaide Festival February 29, 2016
Murray Bramwell
Last time we saw Sufjan Stevens it was his 2011 Age of Adz tour. Inspired by the paintings of the schizophrenic visionary Royal Robertson, the concert featured massive back projections of Robertson’s ecstatic, vibrantly coloured imaginings while Stevens and a ten piece band produced a symphonic event, festooned with samples, loops and intrepid orchestrations.
For his 2016 tour Sufjan Stevens is in lyric mode. With just four band members this time, he is showcasing last year’s album, Carrie and Lowell, his most personal album to date and, in the minds of many, his best. Stevens is a mercurial talent and like say, Prince or Beck, he can, chameleon-like, effortlessly inhabit a variety of contemporary forms from pop to prog to acoustic ballad, psychedelia and post-folk. The constants in Stevens’ music are his sweet keening vocal, his open-tuned guitar and banjo, and his incorporation of synths, piano, horns and angelic harmonies.
On stage at the Thebarton Theatre, Stevens and his associates open with Redford, an instrumental composition from Michigan. The band creates a weave of sounds – guitar, piano, trombone, percussion. It is a soothing, but inviting overture, setting the mood for what is to follow.
And what follows are the first trickling guitar notes of Death With Dignity, opening track to Carrie and Lowell. “Spirit of my silence I can hear you / But I’m afraid to be near you” Stevens sings in his soft, burred, mesmerising way- “And I don’t know where to begin.”
But begin he does, embarking on a set of songs, written after the death of his mother, Carrie in 2012. They are self-explorations, sometimes excoriating, sometimes plain bereft. These expressions of loss, anger, and bewilderment reflect the fact that he is trying to retrieve a mother he hardly knew, who left him when he was one year old.
Raised by his father and stepmother in an interfaith counterculture community in Michigan, Stevens rarely saw his mother who, living in Oregon with Lowell Brams, her second husband, suffered bipolar illness and bouts of drug dependence. When she was diagnosed with stomach cancer he visited her in hospital until her death. The songs describe his attempts to recover memories and unravel feelings, both repressed and lost to time.
I can think of few songwriters who cut as close to the emotional bone as Sufjan Stevens does in the Carrie and Lowell suite. Many singers draw on personal material – Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor in the 60s and 70s delved their own experiences, but the results were, more often than not, encrypted and at arm’s length. Blood on the Tracks is the closest Dylan example, Joni Mitchell’s Blue is her most directly revelatory work and Taylor said it all in one song – Fire and Rain. John Lennon’s Plastic Ono solo album is a primal cry from the heart, Loudon Wainwright is sardonically, almost compulsively, frank - and now, younger singers like Will Oldham and William Fitzsimmons are also Stevens’ fellow travellers.
The real comparisons with Sufjan’s Carrie and Lowell, though, are American confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, writing about family, anguish and self-harm. Lowell called his ground-breaking volume, Life Studies – vignettes of his parents, his marriage, his dreads and anxieties described in plain candour ; stark, courageous, sometimes wry - and, like all genuine confrontations with the troubled self : healing and celebratory in their rediscovery of purpose.
Death with Dignity is a remarkable song in that it describes grief as a child might experience it – paradoxically, as a mystery, an impossible finality. It is not self pitying, sentimental or mawkish: “I forgive you mother, I can hear you/And I long to be near you/ But every road leads to an end…Your apparition passes through me in the willows: Five red hens - you’ll never see us again.”
As the musicians conjure a modal web of guitar, piano and pedal steel, digital projections – a flickering slideshow of old family photos, glimpses of the baby Sufjan and his parents - appear in what seem like a series of cathedral windows or a huge illuminated picket fence. Light floods in to the hall, identifying us to the performers as well. This could have been portentous and self-regarding but Stevens judges it perfectly. He is a quiet mystic, modest in manner and able to heft emotional weight. These experiences are about him, but they are also about us, and he astutely reminds us so.
A cluster of songs follow- the regretful Should Have Known Better –“My black shroud… I should’ve wrote a letter/Explaining what I feel” – the vocals are on echo, processed, otherworldly, while Casey Foubert’s electric guitar churns in rhyme with Stephen Moore’s harmonium keyboard chords.
And there is Sufjan, in his signature wacky green trucker hat and a black t-shirt emblazoned with almost luminous silver cross-hatchings. The hall lights are up again. It is like a revival show but it’s not selling any afterlife except the rest of the one we already have.
All of Me Wants All of You – with its memories of Oregon landscapes: “Saw myself on Spencer’s Butte /landscape changed my point of view” - has the band really opening up with a more enveloping sound than the album version. Foubert unleashes a wash of pedal effects , James Mcalister’s percussion grows louder, along with piano and synths, and an extended, trippy, psychedelic jam unfolds, complete with purple haze lighting and the forlorn repetition of “All of me wants all of you”.
The exact sequence from the album is broken with a switch to The Only Thing, the most openly fraught song, it reveals Stevens’ crisis of faith and dread at what he has to contemplate. It is histrionic to say “Should I tear my eyes out now ?” but maybe it is the understatement of the vocal delivery which offsets a sense of excess.
In an age of bombastic self-regard and religious simple-mindedness, for any artist, describing the dark night of the soul is perilous, both personally and aesthetically. Sufjan Stevens, perhaps because he determinedly shies away from talking directly about questions of faith, is better able than most to explore the elusive subject of transcendence.
In this carefully managed set list the inclusion of The Owl and Tanager from All Delighted People is a switch but not a departure from the emotional narrative. The playful refrain between the two birds (a tanager is a generic for a songbird) and the shreds of childhood recollection in the song are beautifully managed with multiple harmonies from Stevens, Dawn Landes and Foubert with the band opening out in a swoon of synthesisers.
Four more key songs follow- Eugene, another mix of Oregon memory and deathbed reality –“What’s the point of singing songs/If they’ll never even hear you” And, the highpoint of the set, Fourth of July, with its plaintive opening piano notes (echoes of Elbow’s Puncture Repair and Fitzsimmons’ The Sparrow and the Crow) its irresistible melody and lambent lyrics – “It was night when you died, my firefly/What could I have said to raise you from the dead ?”
It is a tender song of comfort and harsh truth from mother to son – My little hawk, why do you cry? We’re all gonna die. “ The final refrain repeated in ever widening circles as the sweet harmonies turn into a full crescendo with sprays of light and a gathering drumbeat. Again, a moment that could have toppled into bathos, becomes one of affirmation instead.
No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross again questions the central tenets of resurrection and, at last, the title song - Carrie and Lowell, is again accompanied by flickering Super 8 footage of his two families, including his stepfather Lowell. Accompanied on guitar and ukulele , the harmonies between Stevens and Dawn Landes, like much of the album, echo the very best of early Simon and Garfunkel. It is hovering on the edge of icky pop , but always carefully judged, the melody and lyric are triumphantly sublime .
Stevens and his splendid band complete the set with Vesuvius, a free form drumming blast from The Age of Adz, Futile Devices and one last word from Carrie and Lowell, Blue Bucket of Gold - referring to an Oregon story of miners who found gold but didn’t recognise it at the time - and then couldn’t find the site again.
The tune builds from simple piano chords to a full scale repeating finale – “Raise your right hand /tell me you want me in your life “ - with a long ( perhaps over long) double spray of white laser light into the auditorium, drawing us towards two portals like a near death experience. It verges on interminable but, of course, like much else in the show its theatrics are intriguing and strangely comforting.
For the encore section, covering another six songs, the mood changes almost completely. The five musicians gather around a single microphone like an old-timey country music show. All play acoustic instruments – and Sufjan gets out his familiar banjo.
The selections are from Michigan and Seven Swans - and they sing Heirloom from All Delighted People. They have Emily Dickinson length titles – All The Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands , For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti. Stevens adds The Dress looks Nice on You and perhaps as a kind of in-joke, Casimir Pulaski Day, referring to the local public holiday in Chicago commemorating a hero of the American Revolution. It falls on the first Monday in March which would have been the night of our concert – if it hadn’t been a Leap Year.
During the encores Stevens speaks to the audience for the first time, disarmingly telling self-deprecating anecdotes about his father’s belief in Edgar Cayce’s Past Lives and the reincarnation of family pets . He also says he’s been listening to Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life and muses ironically whether his show might be called songs in the key of death.
He needn’t have worried. This singular talent has, in a pop concert, tangled with large and elusive questions with intelligence, wit and an open heart. It is a risky venture and he succeeds. I call that a wonder. And these beautifully performed songs are Sufjan Stevens’ life studies .
The Barefoot Review, March 3, 2016.
Breath of Heaven
Published: 2016-06-20
Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton Dunstan Playhouse Adelaide Festival Centre June 18.
Murray Bramwell
Lisa Fischer has performed on the biggest stages in the world. She played to more than 500,000 people in Rio, and to sold-out stadiums from London to Berlin, the US to Australia. Since 1989 – along with keyboard player Chuck Leavell and bassist Darryl Jones – Fischer has been an indispensible part of The Rolling Stones touring band. Stones fans will never forget her show-stopping solo at the Adelaide Oval, reprising Merry Clayton’s legendary vocal riff in Gimme Shelter – and making it indelibly her own. Fischer was also a long time singer for Luther Vandross and accompanied Tina Turner and Sting.
We now know much more about Lisa Fischer – along with Merry Clayton, Darlene Love , Claudia Lennear and other rock vocalists – from Morgan Neville’s 2014 Oscar–winning documentary, 20 Feet from Stardom, a memorable, and provocative exploration of the role (and plight) of back-up singers who stand near the spotlight but never quite in it.
Lisa Fischer has always had a solo career – her first album, So Intense, was released back in 1991 - but it has had its interruptions. Scheduled to play last year’s Cabaret Festival, she then cancelled because of Stones concert commitments. At last, in 2016, Adelaide audiences have the chance to see her - centre stage in all her brilliance.
And surely there is no better time. Touring with soul-psychedelic trio, Grand Baton, Fischer is undoubtedly at a career high point, with a cabaret scale show which is breathtaking in its intimacy and technical flair.
The Saturday night set in the Dunstan Playhouse begins with greetings and introductions. As the stage fills with a purple haze of downspots, Fischer makes immediate connection with the audience and identifies the band – Aidan Carroll on bass, drummer Thierry Arpino and musical director and multi-instrumentalist J.C. Maillard. Then she begins vocalising – humming, trilling, entwining her voice with Maillard’s acoustic guitar as they begin a ten minute exploration of Amy Grant’s Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song). “I have travelled many moonless nights / I am waiting in that silent prayer. “ It has both a gospel gravity and a spiralling ethereal questioning as Fischer reveals both her strength and fragility.
Using dual microphones – one for reverb and echo effects, the other for her soaring multi-octave vocal excursions, - Fischer is a marvel of expression and control. From bell-like soprano to sultry contralto, it is claimed she spans a range from A2 to G6.
From drummer Arpino’s intro, using timpani mallets, and Carroll’s driving upright bass, Fischer leads into Eric Bibb’s blues classic, Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down. J-C Maillard takes up his SazBass (an eight stringed electroacoustic instrument based on the Turkish baglama) to add some tasty syncopation as Fischer’s mercurial vocals redefine the blues for the 21st century.
Several mash-ups follow – Freedom, and Railroad Earth’s Bird in a House - featuring great drumming and Maillard, fleet-fingered on guitar and Rhodes keyboard. Then, the band goes full throttle into Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll. Fischer is in full belter mode and Maillard reaches for his fuzz pedal for some jazzy Hendrixisms - before segue-ing into Fischer’s own Grammy-winning soul ballad, How Can I Ease the Pain.
With her long association with Jagger and Richards, it is hardly surprising that Lisa Fischer has become an inventive interpreter of their songs. Miss You, Jagger’s pouty lament from Some Girls, is expertly extruded by Fischer into a performance that begins with a catchy groove from the band, bass and drum rippling, guitar riffing, and Maillard adding some Daft Punk beatboxing. Fischer’s majestic voice then soars once again, as the four musicians carry us through eleven minutes of jazz-rock virtuosity.
“I was born in a crossfire hurricane” drawls Fischer as the band sashay into Jumping Jack Flash, Thierry Arpino’s crisp drumming etching the beat with Carroll’s rich bass and Maillard playing his SazBass like an electric oud and adding multilayered dervish Qawwali vocals, as Jack becomes a very different kind of gas, gas, gas. Fischer glides and twirls as a song, thumped out on concert stages for forty years, transforms into a modal earth dance, an ecstatic celebration with a high priestess of song officiating.
The set closes with : “The lights are on/you’re not home”. You might as well face it – it’s Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love. From a sweet, insinuating intro Fischer’s powerful vocal climbs again – stronger than Tina, more majestic than Adele. The trio -Maillard in full Fender whine, the rhythm section rock solid and increasingly urgent - carries her through surge after surge, wave after wave of rock and roll electricity.
And for an encore – beginning with Fischer’s sweet crooning over a trickling acoustic guitar : “Childhood living is easy to do / The things you wanted I bought them for you / Graceless lady you know who I am / You know I can’t let you slip through my hands “ Wild Horses. This time without Mick’s faux twang and nasal whine, but deconstructed and reassembled as a soul aria that envelopes us in sound and feeling; too lucid to be called bewitching, too open-hearted to be mesmerising.
Lisa Fischer is a superb artist and Grand Baton are perfect collaborators. The audience was on its feet for the final curtain . We all knew we had seen and heard something exceptional - and splendid. Wild horses couldn’t drag us away.
The Barefoot Review, June 20, 2016.
Daily Review - WOMADelaide Celebrates
Published: 2017-03-06
Daily Review
WOMADelaide Celebrates
Murray Bramwell talks with WOMADelaide director Ian Scobie about the music festival with a difference.
It is now 25 years since WOMADelaide, that strange acronym grafted on to the name of an Australian city, was first heard about. In 1992, as part of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, negotiations took place between Brookman, his colleague Ian Scobie, and Thomas Brooman, the director of the UK WOMAD (aka World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival. The idea was to present a range of international music acts in a micro-festival inside the main Adelaide Festival.
It was all very new, and Scobie recalls they spent much time trying to describe what this venture would be like. Many of the artists – unheard of then, but legends of World Music now – were associated with WOMAD founder, Peter Gabriel’s RealWorld record label . Youssou N’Dour from Senegal, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Remmy Ongala all performed in the first event, along with Crowded House, Not Drowning, Waving and The Pogues.
“I don’t think Rob or I had any sense it would continue after the first event. Or maybe for a one-off afterwards,” says Scobie. But continue it did. Featuring more Real World artists - Sheila Chandra and Geoffrey Oryema, as well as Peter Gabriel himself, priming the pump for ticket sales for the fledgling venture.
I asked Scobie what he thinks has contributed to the continuing success of this music festival when others, including Big Day Out, which also began in 1992, have fallen by the wayside.
“It had the sensibility of the Adelaide Festival. By that I mean its standard of presentation and the quality of the artists. In outdoor stage music at that time – let’s say, presentation was a lower order of priority. Also the engagement with the artists. They were being ‘hosted’ within a festival context.”
Maintaining those high production values, from the quality of the sound stages to the organisation of on-site amenities, has been a WOMADelaide hallmark and is one reason why the event has won Helpmann Awards for Best Contemporary Music Festival in 2002 and as recently as last year.
WOMAD is a highly ritualised experience. Many aspects of the organisation have evolved over 25 years but much has remained pleasingly familiar and as crowds walk through the gates they know the drill and head for their favourite venues and meeting places.
“Audiences have grown up with WOMAD and been touched by it.” Scobie remarks, “they all carry that sense of ownership that has become what the festival now represents – as much as what the organisers can influence”
Scobie and his team, including Programming Manager, Annette Tripodi, maintain close links with the UK and other WOMAD operations: “We do take advice and feedback from each other but what we all recognise is that for the festivals to succeed they have to have the spirit of the place about them. WOMADelaide has a lot that is particular to it : because it is in Botanic Park, and because it is during the Adelaide Festival.”
The importance of the location, Botanic Park, right in the Adelaide CBD, with its gum trees, enormous Moreton Bay Fig trees and its swathe of green grass, has made it an oasis in the heat of March days and nights in Adelaide. Until recently WOMAD has had exclusive use of the park for performances and its proximity and natural beauty greatly enhances the appeal of the festival.
But while some things stay the same, much has also evolved since WOMAD became an annual event in 2002 and then extended to a four day fixture (on the newly established Adelaide Cup Monday holiday) in 2010.
Scobie notes that the annual cycle marked “a fundamental shift to a broader audience. Up until then we had absolutely loyal, rusted-on music fans who researched the program and so on. But for the broader community there was that perplexity about what it was. When it went annual more people engaged with it. People told friends and that gave it momentum.
“At the same we pushed the envelope with our audience – whether it was with programming Dirty Three on the one hand, or presenting a sound sculpture , edgy performance art activities, things you wouldn’t normally expect a broader audience to be engaged in. That is because the audience come with such an openness; an intent to enjoy what is offered. They are very receptive and keen to move on to the road less travelled.”
“Our audience is incredibly diverse – from teens to senior adults, there’s a huge breadth. A key to the festival is its format. If you are watching an artist on stage that doesn’t particular take your fancy, you have the freedom to move off and find something else.
“Strolling in the park is pleasurable. It is like a village environment. Colin Koch, one of the original organising group, who came up with the name WOMADelaide, described it as an event where you go and meet your neighbours. The social aspect is a key part. Whether you are among the 40% from interstate, or local, it is a very civilised and sociable environment and we have built on that aspect . So we have Planet Talks and the cuisine sessions, Taste to the World- ways people can engage, not just with the program, but each other.”
“It is different from other festivals where headlining is almost an obsession. In the early days we were obliged to have names – Men at Work, Crowded House, more recently, Sinead O’Connor. But in the last ten years we have stopped having to deal with that question - ‘Who are these people ? Never heard of them.’ They take that on trust .
“We still have names - DD Dumbo is a hot favourite at the moment- but that’s not the way the program is appreciated . We had the conscious thought that for the 25th anniversary we should be able to produce a program which is quintessentially a WOMAD program. The Philip Glass Ensemble’s performance of Koyaanisqatsi marks the composer’s 80th birthday (the Adelaide Festival was one of the first commissioners of his work). The Manganiyar Classroom (an Indian children’s project designed to preserve the music traditions in Rajasthan ) highlights the way we relate to the lives ahead of us.
“You can do very different things. The commission with Dance North, Lucy Guerin Inc and Senyawa is another, challenging our audience in new directions.”
WOMADelaide has a long tradition in featuring Indigenous Australian, Torres Strait Islander, Polynesian and Melanesian cultures. In 2017 Archie Roach, who first played back in 1992, returns, while, for a first appearance Yolngu man, Gawurra celebrates Arnhem Land culture.
Other featured performers destined to find enthusiastic admirers are Argentina’s tango sensation Orquesta Tipic Fernadez Fierro, Welsh folk fusion group 9Bach, South African a capella trio The Soil, and Xylouris White (Cretan lute player George Xylouris, in league with Dirty Three drummer Jim White).
As always at WOMAD, women performers hold up half the sky. From Aziza Brahim from Western Sahara/Spain to Bebel Gilberto (daughter of the legendary bossa nova singer Joao). Inna Modja, protégé of Salif Keita will perform, as will fellow Malian, Oumou Sangare. Spanish traditional singer Mercedes Peon will feature along with US favourite Toni Childs and Australians Kelly Menhennett, Caiti Baker and Nattali Rize. The program is full of promise.
Ska, blue beat, and reggae aficionados are well-served at WOMAD – this year with Monday night headliners, The Specials who will be… special. The single handed Jamaican, Brushy One String, is also not to be missed. Other bands mixing it up for the punters will be the Serbian actor, director and musician Emir Kusturica and his No Smoking Orchestra, Austrian live-wires Parov Stelar , The Warsaw Village Band, the exotic Oki Dub Ainu band from Japan and Baba ZuLa from Turkey.
I asked Ian Scobie how it feels on first night as the festival begins : “Friday is always very fraught . I worry that everything will go well, will go smoothly. I find Friday difficult. You’ve got 25,000 people, all those souls - anything can happen, artists getting sick and so on. But by Monday it’s a mixture of exhaustion and happiness.”
At WOMAD, if you see this modest character in a broad hat cycling between the various stages , it is very likely Ian Scobie – “The most pleasurable thing I find generally about the festival” he observes, “ is going through the park seeing the looks on people’s faces, at how much they are enjoying themselves, with friends, with their children.”
And then he climbs back on his bike for next time. There is always the next time. “We have large scale things planned for 2018 already. Things on the boil, we’ll have artists in town for discussions, and there are things that couldn’t happen for 2017 that are waiting to be added.”
WOMADelaide begins on Friday March 10 until March 13.
Posted online Daily Review, March 7, 2017.
The Sound of Falling Stars
Published: 2017-06-24
Adelaide Cabaret Festival Murray Bramwell Forever Young
The Sound of Falling Stars Cameron Goodall with George Butrumlis and Enio Pozzebon Written and directed by Robyn Archer. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. June 21. Four Stars
“Things they do look awful c-c-old” sang The Who, talking about their generation, “I hope I die before I get old.” But the bittersweet legend of an early death long preceded 1965. Take your pick – you might start with Goethe’s 1774 sturm und drang best-seller The Sorrows of Young Werther; or that Marvellous Boy, Thomas Chatterton, dead at seventeen; John Keats expiring from tuberculosis at 26; or Percy Shelley drowned at 29. The list is long and the mythologising is relentless.
It is no wonder that the 20th century perpetuation of this gemlike memorial flame - in Hollywood films and pop music - is even more intense. Death cults and the mass media were made for each other. Nowadays, the smartphone has taken recreational grieving to an altogether new level.
In The Sound of Falling Stars, a journey up the stairway to Rock and Roll Heaven, writer and director Robyn Archer delves the music, medical records and motivations of those celebrated singers who died before their time. This is not a new idea and the project is sometimes unwieldy, but it has a set-list to die for and a true star performer in Cameron Goodall to bring it all to life.
Beginning with those immortals from the 1950s, Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, crooning Are You Lonesome Tonight ? Your Cheating Heart and the blood-chilling Angel of Death, Goodall is in full command of his daunting task – to morph, channel, impersonate and interpret his way through a list of some of the finest vocalists ever recorded. And he gives it a very good shake.
The chronology has some surprises including vocal ones. He delivers a rich operatic tenor for O Sole Mio, introducing the short life in the fast lane for pop Caruso, Mario Lanza . Archer rewrites Drink, Drink, Drink to include “Drink, Diet, more Drink” to indicate his overeating, crash dieting, alcohol problems and eventual heart attack at 38. Also showcasing his vocal range is Beyond the Sea, the Bobby Darin (infarction at 37) hit, along with Splish Splash which also topped the charts
Death by aviation features, of course. Mercifully we don’t get American Pie, but Goodall takes his hat off to Buddy Holly (Rave On/Be Bop a Lula) The Big Bopper, and the seventeen year old Hispanic heart-throb, Richie Valens with a vibrant version of La Bomba, splendidly supported, including with back-up vocals, from the band – George Butrumlis on accordion and Enio Pozzebon on keyboards.
From pop to soul – and gospel- the melancholy list turns to Otis Redding and the ill-fated Sam Cooke. Again, Goodall’s renderings of (Sittin’ on)The Dock of the Bay and Try a Little Tenderness are terrific and we want more than just snippets of Cooke’s Cupid and the immortal classic You Send Me.
The end of the 60s decade is well-represented, of course, since the casualty list was unusually high – and especially shocking when Hendrix, Janis Joplin (who is unmentioned here) and Jim Morrison died within months of each other. The Jim Morrison cameo is vocally compelling – including Light My Fire and People are Strange- but the impersonation, as with some others, verges on caricature and undermines - not the solemnity, that is not the issue – but the credibility of the musical tributes.
There are a number of highlights in this very high calibre production. Goodall’s version of John Lennon’s Mother, brilliantly captures its primal anguish, and the uncanny replication of both Buckleys, pere and fils, Tim and Jeff, with Hong Kong Bar, Song to the Siren and The Smiths cover, I Know it’s Over, is outstanding.
The singer-songwriter acoustic material works well every time. The band creates a surprisingly big sound when required (despite the absence of bass and percussion) and creates atenderness with, for example, the Nick Drake material. Goodall is an excellent guitarist – 12 string for the Buckleys and intricate finger-picking for Drake’s introspective minstrelsy on Fly and Way to Blue. Elliot Smith also gets a deserved inclusion with Waltz #2 but didn’t need the chest stabbing gestures – that seemed, shall we say, heartless.
It is a great buzz to see a brand new show that exceeds even the high expectations that Robyn Archer and these superb musicians merit but there are elements that are still not yet resolved. It refers to more than thirty singers in its catalogue of the deceased and the asides on Sal Mineo, Michael Hutchence, Marc Hunter and others become hasty and flippant. Better to dwell longer on fewer and sing these classic ballads and blues in their full thrall.
Also, it may add ‘edge’ to have a frame narrative from Sid Vicious but his thoughts on either music or the fragility of existence are not memorable. Sid was named Vicious after his ferret and he was a pathetic lost soul not a Romantic halcyon - so Archer’s commentary on the rock and roll death wish is not well located.
Far better is the actual conclusion to this night in the tower of song, Kurt Cobain’s enigmatically brilliant Smells Like Teen Spirit. “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous/Here we are now/entertain us/ I feel stupid and contagious/Here we are now/entertain us.”
Amazingly, Cameron Goodall still has enough in the tank to make this an extraordinary finale – triumphant, vehement and deeply wounded. It speaks for all the evening’s stars now fallen – sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.
We will be hearing more of The Sound of Falling Stars. It will not be dying young, that’s for sure.
Daily Review, June 24, 2017.
Daily Review - Welcoming the World
Published: 2018-03-01
Daily Review
Welcoming the World
As WOMADelaide prepares to open the gates of Botanic Park from March 9 -12, Murray Bramwell talks with Program Manager Annette Tripodi about the 2018 program.
March is a brilliantly mad month in Adelaide. It is when the city is captured by the Festival and Writers’ Week, the ever-expanding Fringe, the Clipsal 500 Supercar race, and WOMADelaide. Each event has its signatures, rituals and durable traditions – but that seems almost especially true of WOMAD.
Now in its 26th year, it has come a long way from its beginnings as part of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival in 1992. Borrowed from the WOMAD UK event which began in 1982, under the patronage of high profile musician, Peter Gabriel and his RealWorld record label, the Adelaide version set high standards and created enduring expectations.
It became a stand-alone event in 1993 and featured every second year until 2002 when it became an annual fixture, extending from three to four days in 2010 to take advantage of the rescheduled Adelaide Cup public holiday.
There are many reasons for WOMADelaide’s popularity but perhaps the most significant is its location. Botanic Park near the Adelaide Zoo and Botanical Gardens is a prime location in the CBD, part of the heritage North Terrace precinct. Until last year, when concerts by James Taylor, Santana and Stevie Nicks were staged there, WOMAD has had exclusive use of the park since its inception.
And that was a lucky accident. Initially, in its first year, Belair National Park was to have been its location. But high temperatures and total fire bans meant WOMAD needed to be re-located. Botanic Park was made available as a venue and, with its majestic Moreton Bay figs and giant eucalypts, it has remained so.
Annette Tripodi has been connected with WOMAD for twenty years. “I was really junior when I started,” she is quick to say, “I was an artist minder.” But since 2009 she has been Operations and Program Manager which means, that along with WOMADelaide Director Ian Scobie, she decides on the artist lineup and on which of the eight stages they will perform. Organising this year’s festival has been especially rewarding for Tripodi – “I’m always excited by the program, but this year particularly so.”
The annual cycle for the festival means that securing artists is a continuous process and often, after extended discussions, arrangements fall through, or have to be postponed.
“The most stressful time is July to November . That’s when the real booking happens. There’s always a deluge of activity then. And we try to wrap the program by about October. So once the program’s been finalised, the invitations, the contracts and the schedules are all done – it’s not so there is nothing to do - but the hardest part is over with.”
2018 will see some ambitious projects at WOMAD. As Tripodi observes – “A few of them have been bubbling away for a while. Anoushka Shankar is someone we have been talking with over the last three festivals. “ Last seen at WOMAD in 2010 with her father, sitar virtuoso, the late Ravi Shankar, Anoushka’s career, says Tripodi, “has progressed in leaps and bounds . This particular show Land of Gold is spellbinding. It’s not your classically traditional sitar concert.“ Land of Gold, an exploration of the experience of people displaced by poverty and war, promises to be a Friday night highlight. Another high profile Indian production is The Manganiyar Seduction, featuring 40 musicians and its own performance stage in Frome Park, adjacent to the main WOMAD site. It features three generations of Manganiyars, a caste of musicians from the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. “We have wanted this show since it performed at the Sydney Festival in 2012,“ says Tripodi, “It’s one of the most spectacular shows I’ve seen.” It will play each night of the festival at 9.30pm.
Other headliners that Tripodi is especially pleased to lock in are Rodrigo y Gabriela, a Mexican acoustic guitar duo who will capture the Foundation Stage Friday audiences with their brilliantly dexterous Latin rhythms and Flamenco folk rock stylings.
On Saturday the amiably raucous Gogol Bordello will hold court. Hailing from New York City, they feature members from the Ukraine, Ecuador, Russia and Ethiopa, and will showcase their newest CD, Seekers and Finders. Their gypsy punk sound is reminiscent of Frank Zappa and the Mothers in their heyday – or more recently, last year’s WOMAD raves, from Turkey, Baba Zula. Also to watch out for on Saturday : Violons Barbare – a trio from France, Mongolia and Bulgaria- a tuva-voiced mix of strings and percussion; and Ghanaian legends, Pat Thomas and the Kwashibu Area Band.
The Sunday headliners include Havana Meets Kingston, a supergroup of Latin and reggae stars (convened by Australian producer Mista Savona) which includes bass and drum luminaries, Sly and Robbie, and members of the Buena Vista Social Club. Admirers of the prodigiously talented saxophonist and bandleader, Kamasi Washington are eagerly anticipating his once-only WOMAD appearance. His triple disc composition, suitably named The Epic, is a masterpiece of contemporary jazz. And the original desert blues exponents, Tinariwen, Tuareg nomad musicians from Mali, will return to WOMAD after conquering the world stages with their rock-steady sound.
Among many auspicious acts, Thievery Corporation promise to be a Rasta electronica fusion highlight on Monday night with their hypnotic Temple I and I album – featuring Thief Rockers, the rap apocalypse of Ghetto Matrix, and with the ever-timely Drop the Guns they will have the WOMAD crowds grooving with purpose. On Stage 2 the Tao Dance Theatre from China will put the D back in the World of Music and Dance with their works 4 and 6 choreographed by Tao Ye.
WOMADelaide has always featured an impressive array of women performers and this year is no exception. Annette Tripodi enthusiastically lists some of them – Dayme Arocena from Cuba, recently feted after concerts in the UK, popster Bedouine who has just toured with Fleet Foxes in the US, Lebanese singer Ghada Shbeir, “a legend in her part of the world” interpreting classical Arabic music, Middle-Eastern folk and ancient Maronite chants, and Bulgarian singers Eva Quartet, part of the Grammy award winning choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. Also from Ghana is Jojo Abot, Cape Verde singer Lura returns and Noura Mint Seymali will represent the strong matriarchal music of Mauritania.
The more introspective performance spaces – the Zoo Stage, Moreton Bay and Novatech – will again feature memorable artists. Tripodi particularly notes the Rahim Al Haj Trio, featuring the master oud player’s poignant composition Letters from Iraq, a meditation on war - perhaps comparable to another oud composer, Anouar Brahem’s extraordinary work, Souvenance.
Rajab Suleiman and Kithara from Zanzibar will perform, as will the splendid female folk duo, My Bubba – featuring Guobjorg, from Iceland, on guitar and My, from Sweden, playing lap harp. Their CD Big Bad Good is one you will want to own. Also, in the folk category and not be missed - Elephant Sessions, a Scottish quintet, featuring infectious trad-funk-jig amalgams, and the vibrant balladry of Canadian Quebec band, Le Vent du Nord.
The Australian contingent is large and impressive. Deborah Conway and Willie Zygier are listed, Dan Sultan will feature his excellent Killer album, Kings and Associates will sings the blues from their Tales of a Rich Girl release, Tex, Don and Charlie (Perkins, Walker and Owens) will sing How Good is Life, and the Mission Songs Project, convened by Jessie Lloyd will perform revived, almost lost, much-loved secular songs from Aboriginal communities and missions across Australia in the mid 20th century.
Spectacular site installations have always been a feature of the WOMAD experience. Last year’s Exodus of Forgotten Peoples, a fire sculpture from French lumineers, Carabosse is a vivid example. This year, each night, Gratte Ciel (Skyscraper), also from France, will take to the canopy above the park for their aerial circus Place des Anges.
“Gratte Ciel are the largest and most complex site act we’ve ever done, “ Tripodi observes , “32 performers are coming from France, there are five cranes and they will be an amazing finale to the festival. They have never done the show outside an urban environment before. ‘Enchanting’ is an over-used word - but it will be.”
Also featuring will be Ackroyd and Harvey and their giant people portraits projected on the grass and large screens. Like Gratte Ciel, they visited WOMAD in 2017 scoping the terrain and taking photos of people in the crowd. They will now be featured each night of this year’s festival.
Annette Tripodi has an especially good feeling about this year’s WOMAD. It is ambitious program, it includes large companies like Manganiyar and big choirs, like Dustyevsky and Mama Kin Spender. There are some challenging logistics with more than 650 artists, but all the ducks are in a row. She has been able to include particular favourites such as Chileans - singer Nano Stern and the popular band Chico Trujillo – and the rambunctious New Orleans slam rap outfit, Tank and the Bangas. All that is left now is for the show to begin.
“It still fills me with so much joy each year” Tripodi says, “There are lots of people I have not seen perform live. There are things I really love and want to see again. Once the festival begins I am constantly on the move. I like to see how the audiences are receiving what we have brought them. When you work so hard on something you love - to just sit in your office backstage would be criminal. I get amongst it as much as possible.”
Daily Review, February 26, 2018. “ WOMADelaide’s Annette Tripodi has 365 days to hand pick 690 artists for the four day music fest”
Grace Notes
Published: 2018-03-01
Grace Jones Elder Park Adelaide Festival February 28
Murray Bramwell
When Grace Jones takes to the stage in Elder Park - an unfashionably fashionable 45 minutes late - it is like the arrival of the Queen of Sheba at the Dia de los Muertes, day of the dead. She is wearing a shiny skull mask haloed with long black spikes and a body suit with thick, white skeletal markings that Keith Haring might have personally designed. But if this is some kind of memento mori then Ms Jones has very different plans. She’s going Nightclubbing.
The nine piece band, including two women singers, is already primed. With whip-crack drums and indolent piano chords, Jones turns Iggy Pop’s song into a statement of Stylish Intent. “We’re Nightclubbing, nightclubbing /We’re walking through town.” With its stalking, vogueing insolent gait, the song establishes all that is to follow.
We are in a State of Grace. This is the performer who defined club chic in late 70s New York, the triple-triple threat performer, airbrushed and sculpted for album covers by controversial designer Jean-Paul Goude – those Dick Tracy shoulder pads, the topiaried crewcut hair, the sheen of her complexion. She became Paris Noir redux, an Art Deco figurine for the Temple of Disco.
But whatever Goude thought he was up to - and racial stereotyping is even more problematic nearly forty years on – Grace Jones leaves us without a shadow of doubt that she is in total charge of the Jones TM. She is an empowered woman, and is now an empowered woman of three score and ten.
She has shared that power, revelled in it, and spread it around, encouraging, enticing, inciting especially her niche audiences – people of colour in racist New York City, the gay community beset with the nightmare of AIDS. It is no wonder she is so celebrated; she is not just some lazily-labelled diva, or an icon (whatever that worn-out tag is now supposed to mean). Grace Jones is a pioneer and a cultural liberator. And she invented Lady Gaga.
After she has woven her Nightclubbing way around the stage and catwalk, Jones pushes back her skull mask and it sits like a tiara above her famous face. But this is a gradual reveal. Now it’s the outsized dark glasses - and lip gloss you can see from King William Street.
The set gets underway with This is from her 2008 Hurricane album. “This is my voice/My weapon of choice/This is life.” The lyrics are personal and characteristically defiant – “most of my crimes are of optimism/ 40 thousand volts of recognition”.
Jones has always had a flair for interpreting others. Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders classic, Private Life is an outstanding example. Moving into a reggae rhythm the band lay a sinuous riff for Jones’s sardonic narrative – “Your marriage is a tragedy/But it’s not my concern. I’m very superficial I hate everything official/ Your private life drama, baby, leave me out.” The song is still a classic, and this extruded, beat-heavy version is a highlight of the night.
A cluster of Jones favourites are next I’ve Seen that Face Before (Libertango), Warm Leatherette (with community singing ! before setting out tonight, who in the crowd expected to be crooning Warm, Warm Leatherette ?) and from the 1982 album, Living My Life, another nod to her country of origin - My Jamaican Guy.
Several of the newest songs in the set refer back to her early days in Spanish Town, Jamaica and the free-spirited childhood before, aged thirteen, she moved to US with her family. It was there that her father converted to Pentecostal Christianity. After his premature death, her mother re-married - to an even stricter, clergyman, Master P (whose treatment Jones later described as “serious abuse”).
Physical mistreatment and excessive religious zeal shaped her attitudes and outlook on life. She later said, in 2015, “I am very militant and disciplined. Even if sometimes that means being militantly naughty and disciplined in the arts of subversion.”
Her newest song Shenanigans celebrates that freedom : “smoke the weed/get a little higher” as does Williams’ Blood, a meditation on family genetics and attributes. Her reply to those who ask “Why don’t you be a Jones like your Sister and your brother Noel ?” – is to repeat her free-spirited refrain “I’ve got the Williams’ blood in me.”
Similarly when she sings Amazing Grace – prefaced by “Pray for me I am a wicked child” – her rendition is not the pious sentiment of Christian acceptance. Her experiences of the hypocrisy and cruelty of organised religion are still bruised and vivid. As a matter of plain fact, it is Beverley Grace Jones who is amazing, for getting the hell out of there.
This performance is a series of masks and revelations, facets of a complex woman who can celebrate the simple hedonism of dance pop alongside a very different kind of personal introspection. And with masks and revelations come the many costumes changes – a profusion of wigs, millinery, bowler hats and atavistic head-dresses, of scarves, capes, shawls, arm and ankle bangles, fur-tails, and, for the final cluster of greatest hits - her naked, elaborately painted, decorated skin.
The Roxy Music classic, Love is the Drug gets a rather hurried tempo which doesn’t suit its languid self-satisfaction, but Jones is a sight to behold, in her bowler hat, standing in a vortex of coloured down spots. Then, wearing a platinum wig which hangs to her waist, Jones and Co grind their way though the raucous carnality of Pull Up to the Bumper. With lyrics that would make Fats Waller blush, it is Grace Jones at her mischievous, transgressive best. She rolls out a giant hula hoop while several hundred kilos of gold tinsel scraps fall from above, enveloping the entire eco-system of Elder Park.
The band, led by the excellent, electric bass guitarist Malcolm Joseph, concludes the night with an extended version of Slave to the Rhythm. The sound, lighting and general production, under the excellent direction of former Adelaidean, Kamal Ackarie, has been first rate.
It is long ride as Jones moves along the catwalk, gladhanding the crowd, the huge monochrome video stage images show the star triumphant and, even as her voice begins to tire, still shining. As for the audience – what can you say? We are slaves to the rhythm. And, on a cool night in March, full of festive admiration for a remarkable artist.
The Barefoot Review, March 2, 2018.
Adelaide Cabaret Festival - Patti LuPone
Published: 2018-06-23
Patti LuPone with Joseph Thalken Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre June 21.
Murray Bramwell
One of the many things to like about the Adelaide Cabaret Festival is that, not only is its program filled with new and intriguing performers, it is also a showcase for capital ‘‘S” Stars. There have been many over its 17 year history, including such Broadway luminaries as Bernadette Peters, Michael Feinstein, Mandy Patinkin, Stephen Schwartz, and the Wicked stars Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel . This year it is Patti LuPone.
Her show, Don’t Monkey with Broadway, is a survey of a stage career that begins in the 1960s and spans to the present. She has won two Grammies, two Tony awards, and the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere. The enthusiastic reception she received from a fully-primed Adelaide Cabaret Festival audience is no exception.
And it is Don’t Monkey with Broadway which opens the proceedings, the old standard sardonically peppered with updated references to Brooklyn hipsters and other observations LuPone has to make of the 42nd Street “Walk of Shame”. But her reminiscences are upbeat and the show is a celebration of her extraordinary roles in both Broadway musicals and contemporary theatre.
From one of her earliest gig, cast as Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie, LuPone sings A Lot of Livin’ to Do ; from South Pacific she selects Happy Talk and, recalling her unworldliness about the storyline of Sweet Charity, she performs a hilariously gormless version of Big Spender. LuPone is an engaging raconteur and her commentary bristles with her love of performance - especially new and innovative material. After her deftly phrased version of Easy to be Hard, she retells her fascination with the Sixties hit musical, Hair.
She also has had a continuing association with composer Stephen Schwartz, now legendary with the success of Wicked, but whose earlier projects, like The Baker’s Wife and (Studs Terkel’s) Working, struggled to find audiences then, but now have cult followings. From the former, LuPone sang Meadowlark, a song she has made famous, and from Working she performed (brilliantly) a short monologue from a process worker describing her numbingly repetitive factory conditions, followed by Millworker, a song written for the show by James Taylor.
There is also plenty of the Great American Songbook. I Could Write a Book from Rodgers and Hart, a droll reading of I Cain’t Say No from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma and Some People from Gypsy all feature. And to finish the first set, from Evita, a role LuPone created for Broadway, of course - Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.
To open the second half Patti LuPone warmly welcomes excellent local vocalists Gospo Collective to share a bracket of goodies including Trouble from The Music Man, Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat from Guys and Dolls and Cole Porter’s Blow Gabriel Blow. Then for a bonus, LuPone leads them through a dreamy version of Sleepy Man, from The Robber Bridegroom, a musical in which she performed when part of John Houseman’s Acting Company in the early 1970s.
In this effortlessly managed program, Patti LuPone makes her favourites instantly our own. Especially when it’s a pin sharp medley from West Side Story – conjuring the urgency of Something’s Coming and wittily singing both sides of Maria and Anita’s duet, A Boy Like That. Then, in one of many stand-out moments, she turns Somewhere into a heartfelt lament, a timeless song made especially timely by the day’s news about the plight of migrant children on the Mexican border.
And it wouldn’t be a show without Sondheim. Expert interpreter of so many styles Patti LuPone excels with the psychologically insightful social milieu of Stephen Sondheim’s chamber musicals. The phrasing and feeling she extracts from his songs, splendidly accompanied by pianist Joseph Thalkin, is exceptional. The choices are also intriguing and satisfying : Another Hundred People and Being Alive from Company, the title song from Anyone Can Whistle and Not While I’m Around from Sweeney Todd.
The curtain closer is another bouquet to the Great White Way, Give My Regards to Broadway. But the justifiably enraptured audience is having none of it. For encores LuPone delivers another superb, witty interpretation – of The Ladies Who Lunch, and brings back The Class of Cabaret, and turns off the mics as they croon Bill Evans’ wryly tender Some Other Time. And then, a last word from this star soloist – A Hundred Years from Today. Patti LuPone really is one for the ages.
Five Stars. Commissioned for Daily Review.
Adelaide Cabaret Festival - Winter Soulstice
Published: 2018-06-25
Adelaide Cabaret Festival Daily Review
Winter Soulstice Closing Gala. Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre June 23.
Murray Bramwell
The Adelaide Cabaret Festival has its rituals and the Opening and Closing Galas are among the audience favourites. The last night of the festival falls as near as damn-it to the shortest day and out-going Artistic Director, Ali McGregor has not only wanted to put some soul in Solstice, but plenty of heart as well. “This is my last night,” she beams, “and I’m making myself at home. Sitting on my chaise longue beside my open fire.”
Opening the proceedings with a perky version of the Rosemary Clooney hit, Come On–A My House, McGregor plays MC and host to a procession of performers. Irish comedian Eddie Bannon adds a little mischievous help as her tipsy butler, serving the guests from his deco drinks trolley.
It is a strong line-up. Adelaide performer Johanna Allen delivers an irresistible version of Avicii’s Addicted to You, McGregor returns for a duet with vocalist and trumpeter Eric Santucci and some Old Black Magic, followed by more legerdemain from Andriano Cappeletta, singing a Stevie Wonder song from the key of life, If It’s Magic.
Louise Fitzhardinge, like Eric Santucci and others in the Gala, is part of the festival’s Space to Create week-long residency mentorship program. Supplying people in the front rows with flags from European nations, she instructed them to raise them at intervals while she sang It’s a Wonderful World, switching as required from English to French, German and sign language. It is a fun idea and a reminder Quel monde merveilleux it is.
Michaela Burger sang Tall Poppy, from A Migrant’s Son, her solo show charting her Greek father and his family’s journey to an adopted home in Australia from the 1930s to the present. It is a story of the challenges faced making new lives in an often racist community, but the song eloquently captures his indomitable spirit.
In a lighter vein, Jason Kravitz mingles in the front stalls getting someone to read a text message from their phone. This becomes the catalyst for an improvised jazz song, sketched out by the excellent house band (led by musical director Mark Ferguson) as Kravits launches into Hey Sweets I’ll See You Soon. US singer Amber Martin also has some fun in a fright wig playing Nashville singer Reba McIntyre performing her famous weepie Does He Love You, in duet with Michelle Brasier. It is a send-up but the vocals also capture country pop at its histrionic best.
With this program, Ali McGregor makes sure women hold up more than half the sky with Jessie Lloyd, Candice Lloyd, Jessica Hitchcock and Deline Briscoe from the Mission Songs Project singing Yil Lull, South Sudanese singer-songwriter, Ajak Kwai, and zany performer Sheridan Harbridge making an unexpected appearance. There is also a Suffragette medley prefaced by a wryly delivered call to action from Joanne Hartstone, as legendary South Australian emancipator Muriel Matters, an excerpt from her excellent solo show That Daring Australian Girl.
Tommy Bradson, whose Nosferatutu or Bleeding at the Ballet (directed by Sheridan Harbridge) was a final weekend favourite, capered on stage like a firecracker in an orange suit and, still kitted out in her Queen Kong (in Outer Space) costume, Yana Alana aka Sarah Ward gave a bizarrely discrepant, but nonetheless show-stopping, reading of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock.
Another fascinating American performer at the festival was John Cameron Mitchell, co-creator of the cult musical and film Hedwig and the Angry Inch. In true Tonight Show fashion he joined Ali McGregor on the chaise longue as they sang a threaded duet – Mitchell singing the 1929 cheer-up song Happy Days Are Here Again while McGregor interleaved Judy Garland’s signature Get Happy ! For the finale, Ali McGregor reprised a mash-up which had been tried at last year’s festival but this time was a triumph. The Mission Project singers, accompanied by digeridoo players Jamie Goldsmith and Harley Hall, sang Yothu Yindi’s Treaty while Glam Rock Starman conduit, Sven Ratzke sang Let’s Dance in his best Bowie croon.
Like David Mallet’s famous video clip, filmed in a pub in outback Australia in 1983, the performance telegraphed a number of cogent meanings simultaneously. It was a fine note to finish on. Putting on her red shoes, Ali McGregor’s Gala, like her 2018 festival, has been good for both heart and soul.
Four Stars.
Daily Review, June 25, 2018.
Daily Review - Planet Music
Published: 2019-02-28
Daily Review Planet Music WOMADelaide 2019
WOMADelaide : Adelaide’s leading music festival opens on March 8 for three days and four nights. Program Manager Annette Tripodi talks with Murray Bramwell about this year’s line-up.
It is a fact of life for annual festivals that no sooner has one taken its final curtain than next year’s model, not only begins, but is well under way. Scoping out and signing performers from across the world is a continuing task and subject to that mix of luck, serendipity and patient slog that any programmer knows about.
“It’s a rolling thing,” says Operations and Program Manager Annette Tripodi. She has been associated with the festival for 21 years and has held her current position since 2009. Together with WOMADelaide director Ian Scobie, it is Tripodi’s task to piece together the final list of artists and shape the event by deciding where, and on what night, they perform.
“Interestingly,” Tripodi ventures, “this has been a difficult year compared to previous ones. And talking to other festival programmers, and also promoters and tour managers - across the board, they are saying it’s been harder at times to secure the artists we wanted. For money reasons, availability, all kinds of complexities. I thought it was just us, but talking to others like the Perth Festival…it’s been tricky this year.
“You have big dreams, and some acts we approached many times but the financial reality is that if there are 15 to 20 people travelling the offer has to be really substantial to cover the cost of all those flights. Instead they might be attracted to the US for example. But, even though we have had a few frustrations this year, given we have 75 groups from 40 countries in our program, you just can’t have everyone you want !”
But as always, some things were in the process early. The Silk Road Ensemble, for instance. Founded in 1998 by the renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma, this multicultural music project has commissioned over 70 new chamber works. Incorporating instruments from the Silk Road region such as the Chinese plucked lute, the Armenian woodwind duduk, as well as Japanese and Mongolian instruments, the ensemble has a shifting personnel drawn from 59 players.
“They are really excited about coming,” Tripodi notes. “They are a classical music group who are really unfamiliar with outdoor festivals. Ian Scobie has been dealing with them for two or three years and we finally have them. It will be a novelty for them to play in a park.”
Another early signing was Angelique Kidjo.
“We had her here in 2016 – with Philip Glass and others - so we weren’t looking to have her back so soon. But then she released her unbelievable Remain in Light album and this idea got wings. She’s such a dynamo and she had such a good time at the festival last time, taking part in the Taste the World cookery program and other activities.
“The more we heard about the Remain in Light project around May last year, the more convinced we were to try. There was a quick conversation and agreement, and since then the CD and great live performances have gained acclaim and awards. Her version of those Talking Heads songs – I thought: ‘ this is perfect, the synchronicity is perfect.’ She will play on Sunday night (9pm Foundation Stage) with a great band.”
Also returning to Womad this year are Australian favourites, the John Butler Trio, who have been touring extensively in the US and Europe with their excellent recent album Home. Italian band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, or CGS for short, are also back after four years, this time showcasing their 2017 release, simply named Canzoniere.
“They were a wonderful success before,” Tripodi recalls,” They’re just so authentic and energetic and they have this fabulous capacity to take the traditional, and twisting it a bit, without it becoming the kind of fusion that is off-putting to people who like that traditional sound.”
Then there are the new bands that Annette Tripodi is especially keen to have on this year’s listing.
“French group Christine and the Queens are a coup as far as I am concerned. She’s become huge in Europe and a lot of her reputation is based on the sheer excellence of her live shows. She is as much a dancer as a singer – and she performs with dancers. They have great lighting and special FX ; there are 23 people in the show. She will be fantastic on opening night (10.20 pm Foundation Stage) A lot of people are already into Chris, but also there are many who haven’t heard her. It will be a big event.
“But my favourite selection,” Tripodi confides, “and it’s a big call because there are a lot of great bands, is BCUC from South Africa.
I’d never heard of them until July last year. They were going to play at Womad UK and some people in Paris said to me listen to the album. But it’s not even about the album – three tracks each lasting 15 minutes – it was the live show. I was transfixed from five seconds in. They bring this positive power to the stage.
“They say it is music by the people and for the people and want to show a side of South Africa and Soweto which is about positive change, tolerance, unity and community. It is never insipid, it is vibrant. This is the new generation who come from the townships bringing creativity and ingenuity in contrast to the difficulties of those communities. The seven musicians in BCUC (short for Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness) are only playing in Adelaide. And in true Womad style : you’ve never heard of them but you’ll become a convert.”
One enduring and very welcome feature of WOMADelaide is the preponderance of women performers. “We don’t have quotas, “ says Tripodi, “but when we did an analysis 70% of groups either had female leads or women band members.”
“It is a delight to have Christine and Angelique and Malian star Fatoumata Diawara.” Her 2018 album Fenfo brings a range of sounds from signature African styles to blues and funk. Another name which comes up is UK singer Gwenno, whose intriguing album Le Kov features other-worldly feathery vocals in both Cornish and Welsh. She plays two sets: one at the newly established Frome Park Pavilion on Friday night, the other at the Moreton Bay stage at 5 pm on Saturday.
Gamilaraay woman and Triple J favourite, Thelma Plum will play one show on Sunday, as will NSW singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin, drawing from her debut album, Don’t Let the Kids Win. US singer Liz Phair, best known for her 1993 album Exile in Guyville, will reconnect on Saturday night with her indie fans and find a new audience with her bright guitar sound and her forthright, still timely songs.
Womad has seen some outstanding West African kora players, including the great virtuoso of this 21-stringed harp, Toumani Diabate. This time, Gambian woman, Sona Jobarteh, breaks the 700 year gender barrier to become the first professional female performer to come from a West African Griot (hereditary musician) family. Winner of the coveted Africa Festival Artist of the Year award in 2018, she will perform twice in Adelaide.
Other notable women included in the line-up are Irish accordionist Sharon Shannon, returning with her excellent band; and rapper singer and flautist , La Dame Blanche, daughter of Jesus Raos, director of the Buena Vista Social Club. She left Havana for Paris and has boldly re-invented herself outside the Cuban music scene.
Another of Tripodi’s favourite choices is Dona Onete from Brazil. Her remarkable musical success began at the age of 73 when she signed her first recording contract in 2014. Her music (a version of Carimbo, a mix of Brazilian, African and Caribbean sounds) has not only made her a revered figure in her home country but has, in Tripodi’s words - “conquered Europe in the past five years. She played to 10,000 plus audiences at Rosskilde Festival in Denmark. She’s a tiny figure and with her young dynamic band she gave her performance seated on her throne !”
Included also in the headliners is the celebrated sarod player Amjad Ali Khan, performing as a trio with his sons Amaan and Ayaan, and accompanied on opening night by members of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
On Saturday night, New Zealand’s powerhouse band, Fat Freddy’s Drop, returning Womad favourites, will bring their brilliant jazz-funk-reggae-electronica-soul sound to the Foundation Stage. Their 2015 album Bays is their best yet – and so will be this year’s performance. On closing night, topping the Monday bill, are The Original Gypsies – founder members of the 1980s phenomenon, The Gypsy Kings – with a 12 piece band including eight guitars, creating a wall of rumba and flamenco.
The late night Novatech stage will be a compulsory destination for electronica and house fans again this year. DJ Harvey features on opening night – Tripodi calls him the DJs’ DJ – “He’s quite the English character, traversing all genres from house to soul. I can’t wait to meet him. He’s a cheeky soul – and daring.” Other DJs include Leftfield, also from the UK, Palestinian electronica wiz DJ Sama (she is also a music producer and sound designer), and New York City pioneer DJ, Danny Krivit whose career began in underground clubs in 1971. Known as the King of Re-edit for his scratch mixing skills, he has producer credits on more than 300 records.
Also worth catching, at the Frome Park Pavilion, is Lord Echo (also from NZ) featuring his 2017 Harmonies album with a six-piece band. And on another note, don’t miss the wittily named two-piece, DuOud, featuring Jean-Pierre Smadja (AKA Smadj) and Mehdi Haddab (from Speed Caravan – previous Womad faves with their Bo Diddley desert electric blues) mixing classical oud sounds with beats, grooves and other aural paraphernalia.
Often the most memorable Womad experiences are meditative sets on the smaller Zoo and Moreton Bay stages. This year, the two sets from Polish jazz harpist Alina Bzhezhinska and her quartet are a must. Influenced by Alice and John Coltrane and highly acclaimed on the UK circuit, this will be an all-too rare opportunity to hear jazz at Womad. Also at Moreton Bay will be the intriguing Estonian duo, Maarja Nuut and Ruum, and on Sunday night at Stage 2, the Moroccan guembri (3-stringed lute) maestro Maalem Hamid El Kasri.
Womadelaide, as always, is much more than music. The ‘dance’, that makes up the World of Music and Dance acronym, is strongly represented this year by Spanish dancer and choreographer Maria Pages, a pioneer in contemporary flamenco. Her 80 minute work Yo, Carmen (I, Carmen) re-works Bizet’s opera with the songs and poetry from which it derives. There will be two performances on Stage 2.
Australian/New Caledonian dance company, Marrugeku will perform Le Dernier Appel/The Last Cry, their exploration of the dilemmas of postcolonial Pacific communities , and, each night at the Frome Pavilion, the French Compagnie BiLBobaSSo, featuring Herve Perrin and Delphine Darus, will perform the fiery Amor, a study of a tempestuous couple who literally ignite the world around them as they quarrel. French street performance group Artonik returns with the visually explosive The Colour of Time in homage to Indian Holi festivals made vibrant by processional dance, body painting and costume.
Other park-wide events to look out for will be Le Phun (The Leafies) - sculptures made from tonnes of disintegrating leaves, and the mysterious, rising cardboard edifices of Ephemeral City, supervised by French artist and provocateur Olivier Grosstete. Tripodi praises the range of local groups and institutions – the SA Museum, Adelaide College of Art, Botanic High School and others – who have been collaborating with these events months before the WOMADelaide weekend begins.
Musing on our conversation, Annette Tripodi remarks: “It’s always good to have this chat a few weeks out. We are so pre-occupied with getting the fine details and the logistics right that we forget how great the content is and how wonderful the celebration will be when everyone is there …”
WOMADelaide opens at Botanic Park next Friday March 8 until Monday March 11.
Daily Review online March 2, 2019.
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2019
Published: 2019-06-08
Opening night sets brisk and bold tone for cabaret festival The House is Live Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide. June 6. Cabaret Festival bookings BASS 131 246 or adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au Festival runs until June 22.
The house is not just live, it is buzzing. Now in its 19th iteration, the opening night gala is always a spritzy start to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and, this year, newly-appointed artistic director, and event MC, Julia Zemiro makes sure her first event sets the pace for the next two weeks.
After the welcome to Country (and Kaurna man, Karl Telfer reminding us that “Life is a cabaret”) Zemiro and State Theatre newbie AD, Mitchell Butel team up for a witty duet of Cole Porter’s Did You Evah (Swell Party) with lyrics tweaked for local content. Zemiro is a match for Butel’s droll delivery and the audience enjoys welcoming the new face of the festival.
The running list is brisk and bold. The zany Reuben Kaye sets a high bar for extravagance in a scarlet sequined tux with lapels encrusted with what look like boiled lollies. Singing Look at Me he makes sure we do. With eyelashes like huntsman spiders and three metres of tangerine boa, he motors through a Brecht/Weill medley that sounds like this morning’s news.
Alma Zygier continues the pace with charmingly retro versions of A Tisket, A Tasket associated chiefly with Ella Fitzgerald, and the Judy Garland signature, The Trolley Song. Triple J presenter, Nkechi Anele weaves among the dancers singing I Get Lonely and then an energised version of A Change is Gonna Come. Zemiro reminds us that current pop and hip-hop idioms are welcome in her House of Cabaret with Anele and spoken word artist, Omar Musa, rapping Assimilate.
For something completely different, UK performance troupe, The Swell Mob invade the stalls like a swarm of Fagin’s pick-pockets and morph into a steampunk zombie apocalypse before disappearing backstage.
The excellent Queenie van de Zandt delivers a wistful Candyland and, for those who wonder whether the definition of cabaret has completely jumped the leash, includes Being Alive from Sondheim’s Company.
Other highlights include Paul Capsis’s peak Weimar channeling of Billie Holiday’s I Cover the Waterfront, and Maude Davey’s engagingly satiric feathered showgirl belting out Am I ever Gonna See Your Face Again ? - complete with vernacular audience call and response.
Top of the bill is the 2019 Cabaret Festival Icon winner, the brilliantly sharp Meow Meow, who puts down her statuette and sings Spoliansky’s Ich Bin Ein Vamp (assisted by six uneasy conscripts from the audience) Hotel Amour, and, joined by Capsis, the medley Get Happy/Happy Days. The eight piece house band is first rate, guided by Daniel Edmonds on piano, with overall direction by Craig Ilott.
The evening closes on a pensive note with a vigil beacon lit in memory of longtime Cabaret Festival godfather, Frank Ford. Meow Meow sings Patti Griffin’s Be Careful as the house lights dim.
“Opening night sets brisk and bold tone for cabaret festival”
The Australian, June 10, 2019, p.13.
Lisa Fischer with Grand Baton
Published: 2019-06-10
Dunstan Playhouse Adelaide Cabaret Festival June 8.
Murray Bramwell
The extraordinary Lisa Fischer and her terrific band Grand Baton have returned to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival after a three year absence and, once again, they are a triumph.
Lisa Fischer’s career is an intriguing one. For thirty years she has been an indispensible, but unheralded, vocalist in The Rolling Stones touring band. In the spotlight for her thrilling solo in Gimme Shelter but in the shadows for the rest of the show, she has played to audiences of up to half a million people, most of whom wouldn’t know her name.
Those who have seen Morgan Nevile’s 2014 Oscar winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, about the experiences and tribulations of back-up singers such as Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, and Claudia Lennear, who made significant contributions to recorded music for little more than gig economy reward, will recognise Lisa Fischer as a key contributor not only to the Stones, but Luther Vandross and Sting.
So to see Fischer perform as the major star she undoubtedly is, in the intimate confines of the Dunstan Playhouse is a rare treat. Taking the stage to a warm welcome (led by the many who have seen her before and wouldn’t miss this for quids) she immediately connects, greeting the audience and introducing her New York-based band, Grand Baton, a psychedelic-soul-jazz unit featuring Aidan Carroll on bass, drummer Thierry Arpino and musical director and multi-instrumentalist J.C.Maillard.
Fischer begins humming and vocalising while Arpino lays a catchy percussive rhythm with timpani mallets, joined by Carroll’s deep thrumming bass. The vocal improv starts to form words- “You’re lights are on, but you’re not home/ Your mind is not your own/ Your heart sweats/ your body shakes/ Another is what it takes… ” It swaggers but is gathering intensity, Fischer weaves the vocals between two microphones – one for reverb and echo effects, the other for her soaring multi-octave excursions.
Another verse and she hits the chorus “You know you’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to love. As she hits the last phrase J.C. Maillard opens the throttle on his electric guitar, peeling off rich raunchy fuzz chords John Scofield would be pleased to own.
Addicted to Love, Robert Palmer’s 1986 signature dance hit, cruises for eight or nine minutes as Fischer, draped in majestic off the shoulder silk draws up her skirts to sashay with the band as they revel in their irresistibly nimble groove.
Also a skilful raconteur, Fischer recalls her grandmother telling her that she was part Cherokee and recently deciding to have a DNA test to identify her ethnic heritage. She was astonished to find Cameroon, Sub-Saharan, Indian, a slice of British but no American. That was the lead-in to a reflection on the fluidity of population and migration. And - “We come from the land of ice and snow/From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow..” Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song- linked in enticing mash-up with Fragile from the Sting album Nothing Like the Sun.
It unfolds into a splendid sonic raga with Fischer’s keening reverb vocals, the unerring rhythm section and J.C. Maillard, his face a curtain of thin dreadlocks, weaving keyboards, mesmeric oud-like melodies from his custom built SazBass (an eight string elecro-acoustic instrument modelled on the Turkish baglama) as well as multilayered Sufi Qawwali vocals. He is a fascinating musician to watch in action.
A jazzy, spacy reading of another Sting/Police classic follows – Message in a Bottle, gradually coming into recognition as the band entwine with Fischer’s vocals. She is a marvel of expression and control. Her voice spans from bell-like soprano to sultry contralto. It is said that she has a vocal range from A2 to G6.
Reflecting on her teenage parents (sixteen and seventeen when she was born) and her mother’s tribulations in love, Fischer interprets yet another intriguing contemporary composition – Blues in the Night by Katie Melua - with a downbeat melancholy theme of abandonment. “A man is a two-face,/A worrisome thing who’ll leave to sing/The blues in the night.” Carroll is now on acoustic bass, Arpino is using brushes and J.C. a melodic acoustic blues guitar.
This unadorned lament then segues into Ane Brun’s setting of Laid in Earth from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas highlighting the pellucid operatic quality of Lisa Fischer’s virtuosic soprano. It is a spell-binding experience and it is inexplicable that recordings of these superb live performances have never been released.
Fischer’s versatility is evident yet again with a jazz medley of Heart and Soul and the Peggy Lee standard, Fever. The band is at its supple best and Fischer moves around the front tables of the audience , working her double mics and serenading some rather bashful “silver foxes” in the matinee crowd. J.C. plays a flawless flamenco solo before switching to another excursion on the SazBass.
It is a splendid close to the set, but luckily there is more. The encore announces itself with those famous lines Lisa Fischer would have heard so many times 20 feet from the spotlight. “I was born in crossfire hurricane/ And I howled at the maw in the drivin’ rain/ But it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas / But its all right I’m … Jumping Jack Flash.” The Rolling Stones, Beggar’s Banquet, 1968.
Like the re-inventions by Robert Plant and his Shape Shifters, Fischer, J.C. and the others have given this rock classic a Moorish makeover. The Stones rhythms are large as life but Fischer’s vocal inventions and J.C.’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan chanting (expertly blended with vocal embellishment from the sound desk) turns a familiar oldie into a dervish-like spin with the music of the spheres. The majestic Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton are a joy to behold and musically out of this world. You’d have to say they’re a gas, gas, gas.
The Barefoot Review, June 10, 2019.
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2019 - Philip Quast Uncut
Published: 2019-06-13
Philip Quast with Anne-Maree McDonald at the piano Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. June 10. One show only.
There are few Australian music theatre performers as celebrated as Philip Quast, and none more modest about their accomplishments. So in this, the only performance of the world premiere of his one-person show, he seems almost startled to find he has to talk about himself. At no time in his delightful 70 minute excursion does he mention that he has won more Olivier Awards for Best Actor in a Musical than any other performer, nor that he defined the role of Javert in Les Miserables for all time.
Instead he comes on stage at the Dunstan Playhouse in Adelaide rather like he has been ambushed in This is Your Life. He is caught in a genuine moment of nostalgic return. “I began my career on this stage,” he says with a catch of emotion, “in 1980 with the State Theatre Company.” It releases a Proustian recollection – not just of temps perdu, but personnes perdues – of co-performers such as the late Monica Maughan having a fag with her vocal warm up for A Hard God, of Nick Enright, also departed, and his play On the Wallaby, and the mischievous, and very much still with us, Teddy Hodgeman pranking covertly between the actors on stage during The Three Sisters.
The memories are fond and funny. Recalling one of his first roles – as Adam in The Wakefield Mystery Plays, Quast describes being required to be naked for the scene with Eve in the Garden of Eden. A few days later he received his first fan letter, from a woman commending his performance but noting that it was highly unlikely Adam would have been circumcised. And that, Quast merrily explains, is why his show is ironically titled Uncut.
His selection of songs is disarmingly eclectic. Opening with a childhood favourite The Gypsy Rover, Quast’s effortless, warm baritone has the audience rapt from the first line. With two Danny Kaye classics he shows he can match the master for fluency and comic emphasis with The King’s New Clothes (“The King is in the altogether/ He’s altogether as naked as the day he was born”) and the more wry I Like Old People Don’t You ?
To his father, who was a turkey farmer in Tamworth, he dedicates the tender ballad, In My Father’s Hands.
Philip Quast’s international reputation rests on many accomplishments, not least his association with the works of Stephen Sondheim. Again, the singer talks about his friendship with Sondheim with matter-of-fact understatement, barely lingering on the fact that Quast was an enduring Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George, a regular in Sweeney Todd with Bryn Terfel, and reprised the role of Benjamin Stone in the recent, much-praised National Theatre revival of Follies.
Of the latter, he did confide that Peter Brook visited him after the show and called the production the best he’d seen in London in twenty years. Superbly accompanied by the excellent Anne-Maree McDonald, Quast sang Ben’s song from Follies - The Road I Didn’t Take, one of many highlights of the recital.
Talking about Sondheim led to a discussion about capturing the cadence of speech in song lyrics and Sondheim’s own declared mentors, Rodgers and Hammerstein. Quast, a master performer in South Pacific sang a velvet-rich version of Some Enchanted Evening, followed by the bittersweet Charles Aznavour composition, Happy Anniversary.
In an unexpected break in proceedings, the ebullient Quast called for the house lights up and bounded down into the stalls to demand an audience participation rendering of The Wiggerly-Woo Song to mark the 17 years Quast, in unforgetable partnership with Noni Hazelhurst, presented Play School, the ABC’s most enduringly watched program. Numbers of Gen X-ers not only sang and performed the arcane actions, but were visibly moved to be returning to their inner wigger.
In a final cluster of songs, it is to the heavens that Quast goes for inspiration. Lucky Old Sun, made famous by Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles among others, then leads to the stars. A memorable reading of Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars and then, the Schonberg/Boublil/Kretzner composition from Les Miserables – Stars to which Philip Quast commandingly brings his full Javert, the role he made legend in every city he performed. And made audiences rise to their feet, as again here in Adelaide.
For a more pensive encore to this splendid afternoon soiree, he chose the song for all actors, I Was Here, from Flaherty and Ahrens’ The Glorious Ones. And to round things off, what would this celebrated maestro of the music theatre choose ? Another chorus of Wiggerly-Woo. What else ?
Four and Half Stars.
Daily Review, June 13, 2019.
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2019
Published: 2019-06-25
Ruthie Henshall The Famous Spiegeltent June 22.
In the final weekend of the 2019 Cabaret Festival, West End music theatre star, Ruthie Henshall, brings a vibrant solo show covering the impressive range of her thirty year career.
At the microphone in The Famous Spiegeltent, Henshall is the down-to-earth Londoner, veteran of the music stage from Cats and A Chorus Line to Billy Elliot, but there is also a glimpse of something more fragile, emotions near the surface, which gives her performances a wistful, reflective edge.
Her set opens with Beautiful, title tune of the Carole King tribute musical, followed by “ I can’t really explain it/ I haven’t got the words” from Elton John’s Electricity, one of the high voltage songs from Billy Elliot. Henshall talks about her emerging career – beginning as a dancer and moving to the chorus. As she makes endearingly evident, she never wanted to do anything but sing.
There is a Stephen Sondheim anecdote : when she dried during a performance of the tribute show, Putting it Together- with Sondheim himself in the audience. And follows with a fine version of Ladies Who Lunch, but not quite a match for Patti LuPone at the Cabaret Festival last year.
She talks about her private life, her daughters and the unhappiness of her divorce. From the musical, Dear Evan Hansen, she chooses So Big/So Small to illustrate a child’s view of family separation. From her role as Nancy Sykes in Oliver she moves into even darker territory with Lionel Bart’s problematic portrait of an abused wife, As Long as He Needs Me.
It is then time for a shift of mood and the talented (and much lamented) English comedienne,Victoria Wood, is a rich source. Henshall is brilliant with latter-day Music Hall and Wood’s exuberantly witty Barry and Freda (as Freda friskily propositions her sexually reticent husband) showcases her pace and flair for musical comedy.
The talents of songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb are explored with the plaintive Liza Minnelli classic, Sorry I Asked, another highlight of the set, and then a medley from their 1975 hit musical Chicago. Ruthie Henshall owns Chicago.
As she says, Henshall has played Roxie and Velma on both sides of the Atlantic, and then Matron Mama Morton in the West End. Her powerhouse medley of My Own Best Friend/ Nowadays/ Razzle Dazzle and All that Jazz, accompanied by the excellent Paul Schofield on piano, is a reminder of what a knockout set of tunes Chicago still is.
I don’t know who composed the poem, The Siren Song, but Henshall’s recitation of this comic account of a young woman making lascivious platform announcements over the railway station public address system, is another glimpse of the singer’s penchant for vaudeville bawdy.
“This is Woking” she says with breathy microphone reverb “When I say Woking, Woking , Woking/ It is thoroughly provoking to the men that travel out from Platform 2.” The double entendre multiplies and the joke extrudes, but Henshall’s deadpan delivery is great fun. As she says, they/we are “victims of my golden voice.”
And Henshall’s golden voice finally settles on I Dreamed a Dream, Fantine’s show-stopping song from Les Miserables. The singer has performed the role many times in her career and notes drily that she also gathered viral YouTube clicks as her version slipstreamed behind Susan Boyle. Henshall pushes the song to its operatic limits as Schofield, at the piano, gathers chords like huge bunches of arum lilies. The full Spiegeltent happily rises for an ovation.
Ruthie Henshall closes with a pensive reading of In My Life, the Lennon/McCartney gem from the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. “Though I know I will never lose affection/ For people and things that went before…” It is a fitting conclusion to Henshall’s tender, funny, and very likeable musical memoir.
Beyond Skin - Revisited, OzAsia Festival 2019
Published: 2019-10-20
Beyond Skin - Revisited Nitin Sawhney Festival Theatre. October 18.
Nitin Sawhney is surely some kind of Renaissance musician. His career as producer, composer, DJ, and multi-instrumentalist has produced 20 albums, and 60 film scores, including the recent Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. He has collaborated with Paul
McCartney, Sting, Anoushka Shankar, Jeff Beck, Annie Lennox, Andy Serkis, Akram Khan and the London Symphony Orchestra. He has curated festivals and lectured in universities. He has performed regularly in Australia- at the Melbourne Festival and at WOMADelaide, as a DJ and musical director in 2011. Over twenty years he has been every kind of success.
His breakthrough moment was his third album for Outcaste Records, Beyond Skin. For the liner notes he wrote – “I believe in Hindu philosophy/I am not religious/I am a pacifist/ I am a British Asian”.
With even more emphasis he adds – “My identity and my history are defined only by myself – beyond politics, beyond nationality, beyond religion and beyond skin.”
It is striking to read now, amidst the often bitterly contested debates of current identity politics, such implacable sentiments from 1999, at the edge of a new millennium, rejecting ideas of caste and clan, and the fetters of primitive belief. All good reason to return to the album and perform it, renewed and re-energised, twenty years later, in the midst of migration persecution, Brexit end-times and pan-national Trumpery.
On stage at the Festival Theatre, in one of only three performances this time in Australia, Nitin Sawhney is relaxed, urbane and disarmingly understated. Greeting the audience the moment he steps out he immediately introduces his band. There are just five of them – Sawhney and tabla player Aref Durvesh from the original Beyond Skin project, and three young women : violinist Anna Phoebe McElligott and vocalists Nicki Wells and Eva Stone.
They settle in to Sunset from Sawhney’s 2001 album, Prophecy. Sawhney on Spanish guitar and Durvesh, layering rhythms on drums, are like bookends either side of the stage while McElligott’s starts her swooping violin and Wells and Stone begin unfurling Nitin’s signature ethereal vocals - drawn from Indian classical traditions, but reminiscent also of the abstract explorations of Dido and even Sigur Ros.
Along with a Paco Pena composition, played with dazzling, flamenco clarity by Sawhney, other items from the Prophecy album follow – Moonrise, and with Sawhney at the piano, his tribute to Nelson Mandela - Breathing Light, which includes the quote from Mandela’s book : “We are free to be freed”.
After this interlude, Sawhney is ready to introduce the centrepiece for the evening, a complete performance of Beyond Skin in all its twelve components. He describes what a personal project the album was- recording his parents’ recollections of their migration experiences from India to the UK, gathering tracks from various vocalists such as Sanchita Farruque, and musicians from the Rizwan Muazzam Qawwali group (nephews of the late legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), sampling BBC news broadcasts about India’s controversial nuclear weapons testing, and putting them all, as he says jokingly, into my “Kenwood mixer”.
The opening song, Broken Skin, begins with the words of the Indian Prime Minister announcing a successful nuclear test, anathema to Hindu philosophy and Sawhney’s own declared pacificism, and segues into the Farruque vocals – now capably managed by Vicki Wells and Eva Stone in a kind of Indian Soul with a tight backbeat from Durvesh and sinuous violin riffs from Anna Phoebe McElligott.
It is a strong, vibrant sound from the band, simpler than the richly overdubbed album, more urgent and immediate, yet incorporating the loops and disturbing political quotes which inflect and disrupt the swooning repetitions of Nitin’s compositions. Letting Go, the album’s second track is even more beguiling, with its Dido/Sister Bliss/Rollo echoes of English pastoral even as the lyrics demand breaking from traditions and habits to find a more principled future.
Homelands is a good example of Sawhney’s bold eclecticism . Opening with the Sufi chant from Rizwan and Muazzam, it moves via flamenco to Portuguese fado to emphasis the variety and range of “home”. In performance, Wells and Stone cover the considerable demands of these vocal styles with admirable panache.
For the lyrics to The Pilgrim , Sawhney looks to the rapper, Hussain Yoosuf himself to deliver the cascading words- “Life is like a puzzle not pieced yet ..” . Not in person, but fed through the sound desk with a driving beat from Aref Durvesh.
The various shifts of mood between tracks work even better in performance. From the pianistic ebb and flow of Tides to the keening vocals in Nadia the compositions reveal their richness and harmonic pleasure.
In Immigrant and Nostalgia, Sawhney moves especially close to home with the intro recording of his father’s recollection of an embassy visit in India prior to migrating to England:
“They showed us Kew Gardens pictures and pictures of the various parts of England. That it is all that beautiful and everything is just right. And that’s why we just applied for the voucher…”
Sawhney is almost tearful as he describes his late father’s optimism and sense of adventure, a voice we now hear on an Australian stage. The ironies of the present day hostility to migration, and indifference to refugee displacement, were not lost on the Adelaide audience, nor would they have been at the Royal Albert Hall in London when this live version of Beyond Skin premiered only weeks ago.
Each item adds to the musical and thematic texture of this rewarding meditation – the kathak rhythms of Serpents and the sinuous vocals (Nicki Wells and Zoe Stone again proving extraordinarily versatile) in Anthem Without Nation. Concluding the song cycle is Beyond Skin , featuring the sample of broadcaster Edward Murrow reading the ominous words of the atom bomb scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad Gita – “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
For encores Nitin Sawhney and his excellent group perform Dead Man from his Philtre album and, in duet with Aref Durvesh, with Prophecy a sitar-sounding guitar instrumental he has played in many places – Nelson Mandela’s garden, in South America, and on the beaches of Arnhem Land. It is a splendidly celebratory note on which to close.
The Barefoot Review October 20, 2019.