Classical Music? I'm working on a couple of pieces with lyrics obligingly supplied by Lucretius and Ovid, from de Rerum Natura and Metamorphoses respectively. Lucretius speculates on the nature of sound in a passage which I reckon will work…

From the National Library of Australia's e-newsletter Ian Blake, a highly regarded Australian folk composer/performer and 2005 ACT Creative Arts Fellow, is this year's recipient of the National Folk Fellowship, organised by the National Library of Australia and…

...at a shopping mall near YOU... (well, Woden Plaza actually) ...the mince pies and tinned plum duff have hit the shelves as the mercury soars in the Widely Browned-Off Land. Time to cower in the coolth of the Mall…

This Canberra band is releasing its eponymous first LP shortly, recorded here in swinging Latham. It's jolly good: experience their MySpaciousness.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

(Blake, c.1790)

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would   permit us to be pirates." - Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi


Had my first taste of piracy (as a…

At the Alliance Française, Canberra From the programme notes: Starling is a new quartet for clarinets (first performance at the Adelaide Fringe in March this year) Don't pay too much attention to the title: originally the music was…

There's a lot of it about: I was doing some playing for the new Mike and Diane Jackson ukelele project (mostly reeds and bass from me) and was introduced to the M.U.K (Melbourne Ukelele Kollective): a hotbed of nylon-strung surreality…

On June 24th, The Haydn Bande, conducted by Geoffrey Lancaster, will be playing Masque, my new work for small string orchestra. It's turned out to have a distinct aroma of JPP - that's a favourite Finnish band. Plus a…

-is launched at the National Folk Festival this Easter weekend. It's available from indie-cds.com, CD Baby and iTunes

The players Ian Blake - soprano sax Nicole Canham - clarinet Mark Norton - guitar Zoey Pepper - bassoon ...at the Alliance Francaise, 66 McCaughey Street Turner. phone 6247 5027 7.30 pm Saturday 1st April $20/15
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As Mark Moss pointed out in his SingOut! review, the background information on the CD is a bit sparse, so here are some track-by-track details: Helen and Ian are joined on this recording by percussionist Peter Kennard, cellist Julian Thompson,…