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Handel's "Saul" with the Canberra Choral Society, 24 & 25 March 2012

16/3/2012

This is what is next! Two performances next week of Handel's oratorio "Saul" with my lovely friends at the Canberra Choral Society, in which I will be singing Michal.

I'm looking forward to this for a few reasons. First of all, I think it will be wonderful tonic for my somewhat tired voice. Piping away up where I belong, getting my coloratura back in order, and this amongst the soothing balm of comparatively-predictable harmonic progressions (whilst staying in the one time signature for a whole line, let alone the whole section!).... Ah yes. I am a lucky girl to have such wonderful variety in my work at the moment!

Also I'm quite excited as this is my first participation in a full oratorio so it will be interesting to get the complete dramatic curve of the story, rather than just performing excerpts in concert.

And finally there is the fact that it is with a singularly sweet bunch of people, the CCS, for whom I have a special place in my heart as they were the first choir I ever sang with as a soloist, way back in 2009. I remember being backstage freaking out completely and one of them giving me a hug! Their Musical Director, Tobias Cole, is also a real inspiration, and his passion for Handel (as for music and life in general!) is formidable.

Hope that you will be able to make it along to join us if you are down Canberra way next weekend!

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Ballarat - Canberra - Sydney

15/3/2012

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One of the upstairs galleries in the Ballarat Art Gallery

The Ballarat show was gorgeous, with the very generous acoustic of the historic art gallery giving us some challenges regarding the wash of sound, but also making it a joy to sing the lyrical passages. Ballarat is the only stop on this small tour where I have not been before, and it made me homesick for the road – oxymoronic as that is. The countryside - unusually green for this time of year - always makes me happy, and as difficult a lifestyle as it is, living out of a suitcase for weeks at a time, it really does seem worthwhile when you get to see places in Australia you would otherwise not have cause to visit. My year touring with Co-Opera last year, through Queensland, NSW, the ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, made me very appreciative in that direction! Perhaps I was born to be a traveling minstrel after all. :)

By the time we three arrived in Canberra we were definitely feeling the tour burn. Sadly, I have yet to discover a better antidote to summoning the cold creep of poisonous water through my veins than to flush them with a nice full-bodied red wine after each show. This is not an entirely constructive habit, but does allow one to participate satisfactorily in the obligatory post-show conversation. As a result of this habit, however, my tour colleagues were treated to rather more of my anecdotes than I would have liked and now have all manner of dodgy ammunition with which to bring me down. Gah! Anyway, to give you an idea of how far things had deteriorated in the Sensible Stakes, we had discovered that all three of our dads are called Peter, and had taken to calling ourselves “The Daughters of Peter”, and positing ideas for a creepy cult. As you do.

Nor could I wait, by the end of this dinner, to get all the pins out of my head and take the beehive down, leading to me sitting at the dinner table in this packed pub looking like I’d stuck my finger in a power socket. Still, once you’ve swung from a signpost in a sleepy historic gold rush town or chased a giant goat through a field dressed in corset and 18th century maid’s costume as I did last year, your attitude towards “appropriate behaviour” (always tenuous) shifts irrevocably.

Julie and I both admitted later that by Ballarat we were kind of ready to put the burden down, and the final two shows were difficult. For my part, when I arrived in Canberra I thought I was fine (although very tired), went out for a jog, and then found myself crying in the shower. Fortunately one of my angel friends was smart enough to sit me in front of excellent telly and feed me curry. Despite the unravelling, the Canberra show went well.

The Sydney show, on the other hand, became a story that I suppose I will reference the next time I am on tour drinking too much.

We were gathering our strength for the final performance, but, well, I’ll admit to being bloody miserable. I hadn’t admitted it straight away because I have a tendency towards oversensitivity and I didn’t want to be precious. Or clichéd for that matter. I mean, god, if you’re going to be “but I’m an ARTISTE dahling!” then at least be original in the ways that you’re annoying, right? But I guess you just can’t tell that story – in fact, you shouldn’t – without it leaving you empty. To go over her terror, her pain, her confusion, her heartbreaking hope; to relive her saying goodbye to her parents in every performance… It really did take its toll. I think the voice of my Narrator got more and more bitter throughout the run, and I found myself gritting my teeth at the end of my final “…and she died”.

Fortunately for me Julie broke first, and then I at least allowed myself to accept it. “I don’t really think I can do any more of this, I can’t IMAGINE how YOU must feel, having to do all the words!”

So it was with the last bits of our energy, and a certain amount of relief, that we embarked upon the final performance…….only to get 10-15 minutes from the end and have it interrupted by a full scale fire evacuation!! I realised quickly enough that I WOULDN’T be allowed to call it a night and go for dinner, so I took myself off into the darkness by the Botanic Gardens, away from the large body of audience, students and staff that poured out of the Sydney Con. The jazz musicians commenced jamming on the street, and everybody cheered the firemen when they came, and I sat watching in the shadows, suspended between life and death, between Kelly and Karen, with my high heels in my hand and the stone warm under my feet. Couldn’t believe it. Talk about prolonging the torture.

But eventually we got back in, and I was surprised by how well we managed to get back into the flow of it, I think partly because the music is so fiendishly tricky that there is no choice but to be 100% concentrated on the piece. There doesn’t seem to be any way to make it work other than to give yourself over to it completely.

We gave ourselves over to it completely. It was an amazing tour, and it was a total honour to travel around and make beautiful music with the other Daughters of Peter, fabulous musicians and hilarious girls that they are. I DO love my job, even though it was a bit painful this month.

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Melbourne, and the sad realisation that the things I have done that would actually IMPRESS teenagers, are exactly the things I am not allowed to mention in a high school lecture

8/3/2012

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I had the great good fortune to be staying right off Brunswick Street in Fitzroy for the two days/nights we were in Melbourne. Brunswick Street is a wonderful place to hide, as it is far too busy and important and excited about itself to notice the weird starey kid sipping the decaf latte and taking photos of the street art on her phone like a dork. Geez, Karen, have you never seen Spongebob wearing a balaclava before?

On the first morning in Melbourne, really FAR FAR too early to be doing anything useful let alone singing depressing music which sits in the bass clef, Julie, Zoe and I gave a lecture to composition students at the VCA High School on Jeremy Beck’s music, obviously highlighting Black Water and the 3rd Cello Sonata. That was actually fun. Julie did a really marvelous job of introducing and breaking down the music, and we all performed some excerpts. I got overexcited about having a chance to warp impressionable minds and started ranting about the duty of the composer to use music to communicate that which words alone cannot.

Both Julie and I struggled not to swear, in a painfully transparent fashion, whilst describing our oft-hilarious rehearsal experiences with the piece. “…at which point I just about lost my….stuff.”

At the end of it, I pointed out to Julie that there was at least one kid in the back row who seemed so hopelessly stoned it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d sworn, or danced the Fandango. “But then again, if there isn’t at least ONE adolescent male in a composition class who is stoned out of his mind then something’s not right, right?” Having said that, that night there was a small group of students from the class who turned up for the performance, and that warmed my heart.
“I believe that children are our future….” Sorry. Too soon?

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Black Water in the Adelaide Fringe

5/3/2012

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The first two shows, as part of the Adelaide Fringe, were some of the hardest performances I’ve ever done. Australian premiere, the composer sitting in the audience (directly in my sight line), both performances being videoed. Not to mention it really being the most challenging work I’ve taken on up to this point: technically, vocally and dramatically. And topping it all off, my sense of personal responsibility towards the piece: I really wanted it to touch people. It’s fair to say I was feeling some pressure….

Zoe Wallace (cellist), and Julie Sargeant (piano, and the originator of this plan to bring Jeremy Beck’s music to Australia) began the programme with Beck’s beautiful Cello Sonata No 3 “Moon”. I fell in love with this piece the first time I heard it and it has been such a pleasure listening to it develop and unfold each time I prepare myself to go onstage.

On opening night, emotions ran so high that both Julie and I burst into tears as soon as we got off stage! The second performance saw us a little more in control, however, which apparently made for a more powerful impact on the audience. After both performances, I had people come up and tell me we had made them cry, or that the piece had made them “feel sick to their stomach” – can’t say I’ve ever had THAT response when singing Purcell or Debussy!

The most special reaction, however, was from the composer Jeremy Beck, who got me in a big bear hug and said, “THAT was IT.” That was the point at which I started crying after the SECOND show. But enough of the tense, exhilarating and emotionally-charged atmosphere onstage and more about the man behind the music.

Jeremy Beck, who flew out to be with us from Kentucky, USA, has earned awards, grants and honors from the American Composers Orchestra, California Arts Council, the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Composers Forum, Kentucky Foundation for Women, Millay Colony for the Arts, Meet the Composer, Wellesley Composers Conference, Oregon Bach Festival, Iowa Arts Council and the American Music Center.

He holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, Duke University and the Mannes College of Music, and has released four CDs of his music. The critic Mark Sebastian Jordan has said that "Beck was committed to tonality and a recognizable musical vernacular long before that became the hip bandwagon it is today. Indeed, [he is] ... an original voice celebrating music."

The wonderfully talented and very inspiring Julie Sargeant.

He is also a thoughtful man; incredibly kind and generous towards his interpreters, without a need to talk unless he really feels he wants to add something, and with a wonderful openhearted quality. Perhaps this openness of spirit is what allows him to create in the way that he does.

He told us that he had sent the score of "Black Water" out to many singers, some of whom had requested a copy from him having heard the piece, and that many of them had taken one look at it and sent it back, saying it was too difficult. It has only been performed four times in the States to date. That made me inordinately proud of what I’ve managed (none of which I could have done without Julie Sargeant).

He also laughed his guts out at “Total Recall”, which he’d not seen before, and did a hilarious impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Legend.

Please, if you’re someone who is interested in being exposed to new music, Beck’s works are both beautiful and complex – check some out! His website is: www.beckmusic.org, and there’s even a movement of the Third Cello Sonata on there for you to listen to.

Zoe Wallace (cello), Jeremy Beck (composer), myself and Julie Sargeant (piano) - Thomas Edmonds Opera Studio, Adelaide, 4 March 2012

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Handel's "Saul" with the Canberra Choral Society, 24 & 25 March 2012

Ballarat - Canberra - Sydney

Melbourne, and the sad realisation that the things I have done that would actually IMPRESS teenagers, are exactly the things I am not allowed to mention in a high school lecture

Black Water in the Adelaide Fringe

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