Helen Rivero, Peter Kennard and I have just done a concert in Bendigo, Vic., showcasing new songs from Helen's forthcoming CD Yes Capitan, plus material from Luminous and Helen's trademark Sephardic song. Thanks to Musica Viva and Judy McDonald for a great gig at the Capital: a fine venue. I've joined a choir. A very small one: The Pocket Score Company. We have a concert coming up in Canberra on May 20th at 3pm. All Saints' Church, Cowper Street, Ainslie, ACT. The well-balanced programme features a Byrd Mass, various motets and an inspiring piece from Jannequin about trying to engage in sex with a pig tied to one leg... I think. Must check the translation.
And if you're in Canberra this weekend check out Cassidy's Ceili: darlings of the West Belconnen smart set, and a band so gratuitously Celtic it'll turn yer ears green. Playing at King O'Malleys on Friday 16th at 5pm: that's the pub with the 'E-Z Kiss'™ version of the Blarney Stone amongst other essential bits of theme pub paraphernalia. You know the sort of thing: stuffed and mounted musical instruments, toilets gendered in Irish, genuine fully imported barstaff. Thus Cassidy's Ceili bids farewell to the working week, for those who still have one...
Round about 7pm, another local combo, Franklin B. Paverty, will be hopping onto the weekend's merry-go-raum of Celtic excess just round the corner in Garema Place. So if you stand in the right spot, you'll experience an intriguing collage effect. We'll see if we can do a synchronised 'Whack fol the daddy-o' . Combined with the slapback off the buildings, this should make for a grand bit of psychogoidelic sound art: I recall this sort of thing at the Leeds Folk Festival of 1983, when folk-rockers Eavesdropper were unkachunking vigorously on stage, and the inevitable shanty singers were at the bar in a related key giving it 'Way-hey, roll and go' and you could shuffle up and down the venue enjoying the polyrhythms and doing your own head-related mix. Daddy-o.
Moving right along now to Saturday 17th: Cassidy's Ceili and scores of pilgrims will be converging on the Irish Club (now a snake-free venue) at 8pm to celebrate that famous Welsh saint. There's no charge; in fact, several sins may well be remitted.
'Yea, the Band we seek is at Weston Creek'...
That's Parkinson Street, Weston.
First rehearsal this weekend for the dancers of Quantum Leap, directed by Vivienne Rogis, working on a piece for the Folk Fellowship concert at the National Folk Festival on April 8th. I'm basing the music on kids' rhymes and games taken from recordings in the National Library, and I'm presently working on two other new pieces for the concert. One of these, Lucciola, will be in the programme of Postgraduate Composers' Stuff to be performed at the ANU School of Music on Wednesday March 21st in Rehearsal Room 3 at 7.30pm.
And on May 15th at the ANU School of Art Gallery, the exhibition Water, Water opens: my sound work A Drop and an Ocean for two dinky wee ghettoblasters will be in the show.
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