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Tour: Asia - where our hotels ranged from brand-new five star palaces to a hotel we were reliably informed had once been a brothel

9/5/2012

Not without some of the usual dramas of international group travel (plus some other very clever individual ones of mine), and after 3 successful-but-tiring back-to-back shows in Adelaide, I arrived with the Co-Opera troupe in Singapore where we performed our first Black Water/Acis & Galatea at the Esplanade Theatres.

Jeremy Tatchell and I, backstage glamour, Penang

Alas, the whole of the Asian tour was quite grueling in terms of schedule, and so for me it was very much about trying to look after myself as well as possible, and conserve energy. The very next day we travelled by air and road to Penang, in Northern Malaysia. Some of the scenery on the journey was completely stunning, though a timely reminder that large portions of Malaysia’s beautiful landscape is threatened by mining, logging and plantations for the palm oil industry. That evening we went straight into late rehearsals before returning to the free a-la-carte dinner at the super-swish 5-star hotel provided for us by the organizers of the Penang performance. It was a welcome haven at the end of a very long day!

Two days later we returned to Kuala Lumpur for the final Black Water/Acis & Galatea in the lovely, historic Chinese Assembly Hall. I think what I loved most about that show was the incredible acoustic. It felt like I could have spun a single note out into the air forever. After 6 performances as Kelly (12 altogether this year), both Julie Sargeant and I agreed that we were more than ready to set that particular story down, given that the telling of it has not yet become any easier. (Perhaps, in fact, it shouldn’t get easier.)

But if there was anyone more grateful for the end of the BW run than I it could only be my hairdresser, as straightening, teasing and hairspraying the heck out of my poor hair for a few months had left me wondering if I wasn’t in line for a bald patch sometime soon.

Warming up, Chinese Assembly Hall, KL

The entire company celebrated that night at an amazing late-night feast in the heart of Kuala-Lumpur’s Chinatown – it would have to have been one of the most surprising and delightful meals I’ve had this year – really remarkable. The boys ordered chili frog! Can’t wait to return to Kuala Lumpur sometime with more time and energy to explore it!

The next day we travelled south to Melaka and piled straight off the bus into 3 hours of rehearsals for a variety gala concert that night which was enormous fun (and dare I say, even more fun backstage, given we were all deliriously tired and therefore slightly hysterical by this point). More company feasting followed, outdoors in the sultry heat of 1am, before a quick walking tour of the river in the centre of town. Sleep? Sleep is for the weak. And the sensible. And the lucky. But not for us.

Feasting on local delicacies, 1am, Melaka

The following day, our last in Malaysia, I could FINALLY justify wandering around in the brain-frying heat for four hours doing some sightseeing, and (swollen ankles notwithstanding) I am SO glad that I did, as Melaka is the most incredible collision of centuries of colonial forces, all vying for the spice trade routes. Wave upon wave of foreigners arrived and shaped the history of this place with their new technologies, materials, customs and gods. The air was so thick with spice I’m pretty sure I could have licked it off my skin.

I was exhausted enough that that might have seemed like normal behaviour.

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The Amazing Mega-Tour of Work and Fun and Chaos

4/4/2012

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Well, there seems to be quite a lot happening in the next few months, all exciting and slightly overwhelming from this vantage point.

Later this week I fly to Adelaide to begin rehearsals on the next project, a short Handel opera called Acis and Galatea, which will have performances in Adelaide, Singapore and Malaysia together on the programme with the second run of Black Water – quite a heavy night on stage for me, all up!

In early May the company departs for Asia, where as well as shows in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, we are also presenting a one-night-only Opera Gala evening in the exciting historical city of Melacca.

From there we fly to Austria, where we have only a few days to re-rehearse The Marriage of Figaro for performances in Austria, Switzerland and Germany.

After a few days of R&R, my lied partner Ella Luhtasaari will join me in Vienna for a few days of rehearsals, and then we begin study at the month-long summer school into which we have been accepted. I am quite excited about that for a number of reasons, but not least because it includes full-board in a castle in Graz, Austria!

All up, it will be mid-July before I make it home to Sydney again. I expect there will be many tales to tell in the meantime…..

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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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Black Water by Jeremy Beck

20/2/2012

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So this is where I get all earnest on you. Please forgive me. But sometimes it is only through Art that victims have their stories heard. Sometimes the telling and retelling of their story is the only justice they will receive. This is one of those stories, and the themes are as old as time. I feel a sense of responsibility towards this piece which is not something I have experienced before.....

In 1969, the dead body of a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, was discovered inside an overturned car in a channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. The car belonged to Senator Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, who did not report the late-night incident to police authorities until the following morning.

After the discovery, Kopechne’s body was recovered from the submerged car and Kennedy gave a statement to police saying that during the previous night, she was his passenger when he took a wrong turn and accidentally drove his car off a bridge and into the water. After pleading guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, Kennedy received a sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended. The incident became a national scandal, and may have influenced Kennedy’s decision not to campaign for President of the United States in 1972 and 1976.

John Farrar, the diver who recovered Kopechne's body and captain of the Edgartown Fire Rescue unit, asserted that Kopechne did not die from the vehicle overturn or from drowning, but rather from suffocation, based upon the posture in which he found the body and its position relative to the area of an ultimate air pocket in the overturned vehicle. Farrar also asserted that Kopechne would likely have survived had a more timely attempt at rescue been conducted. Farrar located Kopechne's body in the well of the backseat of the overturned submerged car. Rigor mortis was apparent and her hands were clasping the backseat and her face was turned upward. Farrar testified at the Inquest:

It looked as if she were holding herself up to get a last breath of air. It was a consciously assumed position. ... She didn't drown. She died of suffocation in her own air void. It took her at least three or four hours to die. I could have had her out of that car twenty-five minutes after I got the call. But he [Ted Kennedy] didn't call.

- diver John Farrar, Inquest into the Death of Mary Jo Kopechne, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Edgartown District Court. New York: EVR Productions, 1970.

"Black Water" by Joyce Carol Oates is a slightly-veiled fictional account of these events. Respected American composer Jeremy Beck completed this work in 1994, writing and shaping the libretto himself from her text. This extended composition for soprano and piano is not a song-cycle per se, but is closer in its form to that of a monodrama, with the soprano and the pianist assuming multiple roles and states of mind (following the variety of levels created by Oates).

I begin rehearsals this Thursday for shows with Co-Opera in the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Melbourne, Ballarat, Canberra and Sydney. More details on the "Events" page.

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Tour: Asia - where our hotels ranged from brand-new five star palaces to a hotel we were reliably informed had once been a brothel

The Amazing Mega-Tour of Work and Fun and Chaos

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

Black Water by Jeremy Beck

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