The inaugural RISING festival – a multi-disciplinary art and cultural extravaganza - is set to descend on Naarm (Melbourne) Wednesday, and is being billed as the biggest artistic event hosted in Naarm since the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Internationally acclaimed and award-winning Naarm-based Gamilaroi artist Reko Rennie will premiere commissioned work Initiation OA , a large-scale three channel video work that speaks to the practice of initiation from an urban Aboriginal context.’
This deeply reflective and visually stunning multi-disciplinary work sees Rennie present modern-day men s initiation, returning to his place of birth in the west of Naarm, ‘making his mark, then leaving again.’
Yasmin Coe… “I had dreams of doing something with chocolate or pastry.” Photo: Belinda Strahorn
Former Lib leader Alistair Coe is over it and out of it, the curtain comes down on Canberra’s queen of culture and a bouquet for the town’s best music critics. It’s “Seven Days” with
IAN MEIKLE. and now we know. Think Willy Wonka.
Ian Meikle.
After 12 years of banging his head against Labor, the former opposition leader is escaping the territory’s rapacious rates regime for a sweet life in the country.
Al stuck his head (and his hand) up at a recent auction and snagged retiring
Canberra International Music Festival / Concert 8, “Do I Matter?”
At the Fitters’ Workshop, May 2. Reviewed by IAN McLEAN.
“DO I Matter?” is one of a two part chamber music work in the “Hidden Thoughts” series by Australian composer Katy Abbot, the senior lecturer in composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.
“Hidden Thoughts” came about following an online survey where more than 200 women submitted answers to questions, such as: “Do you have hidden thoughts and feelings and what have you learned to be brave about?” Those answers became the text for “Do I Matter?” which received its world premiere performance as part of the Canberra International Music Festival.
Matt Keegan. Photo: Peter Hislop
Music / Matt Keegan “Vienna Dreaming”, The Street Theatre, April 17, programmed by the Canberra International Music Festival. Reviewed by CLINTON WHITE.
IT’S not often jazz would be associated with so-called programmatic music. That nomenclature usually would tag works such as Beethoven’s 6
th symphony, or Albert Ketèlbey’s “In a Persian Market”.
But jazz saxophonist, Matt Keegan’s composition, “Vienna Dreaming”, takes all that a giant leap further. The 50-minute, multi-movement suite is a musical biography of his Austrian great-grandfather, Heini Portnoj (1895-1984).
Heini was a pianist, composer, and band leader. “Vienna Dreaming” tells the extraordinary story of his work in Austria between the two World Wars, falling in love with and marrying Keegan’s great-grandmother, Annie, fleeing Austria for Singapore with his family when the Nazis came to power, fleeing Singapore when the Japanese invaded and, finally, arrivi