Tag Archives: performance

Jack Johnson @ Sidney Myer Bowl, Melbourne – 8 December 2010 with Tegan and Sara, Ash Grunwald – Photo Gallery

Photographer: Amy Skinder
Click here to view the FULL photo gallery


Photographer:
Amy Skinder
Continue reading Jack Johnson @ Sidney Myer Bowl, Melbourne – 8 December 2010 with Tegan and Sara, Ash Grunwald – Photo Gallery

2high Festival @ Brisbane Powerhouse, 12-13 November 2010 [Festival News]

  — 2010 Vision: Stir the sleeping system. Observe it rumble, roar, push, pull, tremble, hiss, sigh… breathe. You are the missing part. Rewire its senses. Awaken the Machine.

2high Festival is Australia’s one-of-a-kind multi-arts experience for young emerging artists and cultural producers.

Continue reading 2high Festival @ Brisbane Powerhouse, 12-13 November 2010 [Festival News]

Danza Contemporanea De Cuba @ The Playhouse (Brisbane Festival), 15th September 2010 – Live Review


[Image courtesy Brisbane Festival]
  Review: Lana Harris

Young and old wait in the shadows for the outsiders. Excited and unsure about what to expect from these strangers, from this contemporary dance troupe from the other side of the world, the other side of governance. Their entrance: a few members trickle onto the stage, in silence and unadorned.

Continue reading Danza Contemporanea De Cuba @ The Playhouse (Brisbane Festival), 15th September 2010 – Live Review

Polarity @ The Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane 13th September 2010 – Live Review

Review: Lana Harris

  The performance starts in enmeshed innocence, dancer wrapped around dancer, cheek to cheek, limb to limb, ebbing and flowing into one another. Behind these demonstrations of closeness sits a man alone in a chair. Far away from him is a woman in a lounge room setting – flickering lamp, thick rug, and a lonely expression. They both ignore the blatant yet playful seduction occurring in front of them. The dancers too, are oblivious to these others: wrapped up in the intensity of their unfolding romance, their focus remains themselves and their explorations. There is no question we are watching the beginnings of love.

Continue reading Polarity @ The Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane 13th September 2010 – Live Review

Cantina @ The Spiegeltent (Brisbane Festival) 5th September 2010 – Live Review

Review: Lana Harris

[Image courtesy Brisbane Festival]

Have you heard the one about the Spiegeltent? A girl and a guy walk into this travelling bar – a pointy topped sphere shaped by mirrors, wood and glass. Golden poles, blood red velvet curtains swooping overhead, low lighting and dancing shadows. Smoky. Drinks service on the curve, booths hugging the circumference. A big-top boudoir with an audience.

The girl and the guy start out cautious in this ringmaster’s playground. They clamber carefully onto the high wire – wobble and steady, wobble and steady. She wears a pair of lasciviously red heels as she teeters. The shoes return sporadically throughout the acts, as do the scene setting ukulele and tinkling pianola. Music through out invokes alternately past, present and future – offered in no particular order. Subject to whims and acrobatics, time periods depart and return often.
Continue reading Cantina @ The Spiegeltent (Brisbane Festival) 5th September 2010 – Live Review

Sylvia – at the Brisbane Arts Theatre from 11th September 2010

Sylvia By A.R. Gurney

  Greg, middle-aged and middle-class, returns to his Upper West Side apartment in the late afternoon accompanied by Sylvia, a beautiful, frisky young blonde he has just picked up in the park. Greg sits in his favourite chair, worried about how Kate, his wife, is going to respond to Sylvia.

Sylvia doesn’t make things easy. Too excited to settle down, she moves around the room checking out the furniture. She turns to Greg. She obediently collapses onto the floor, resting her chin on his knee, while staring up at him with blind adoration. What man could resist?

A street-smart mixture of Lab and Poodle, Sylvia becomes a major bone of contention between husband and wife.

Continue reading Sylvia – at the Brisbane Arts Theatre from 11th September 2010

Queenscliff Music Festival 2010 Launch

Click here to buy your tickets!
Sleepy, seaside fishing village gets its loudest wakeup call yet as Pikelet helps launch the first of the line up and some exciting new developments for the 14th annual Queenscliff Music Festival.

The first round of artists for this year’s Queenscliff Music Festival have been revealed as well as a number of exciting, new announcements at a special launch event on Tuesday 10th August, held at Melbourne’s Transit Lounge, where the incomparable girl-with-the-loop-pedal, Evelyn Morris aka.Pikelet, dangled the musical carrot with a Festival preview performance.The 2010 festival line up when completed will deliver over 80 acts presenting 150 performances in 13 venues across Queenscliff on the weekend of 26-27-28 November.

Today’s Queenscliff Music Festival media launch included a set by the charming PIKELET.

Photographer: CARBIE WARBIE

Direct from 3 years of staging large scale concerts in Macau and 10 years at the USA’s Telluride Blues and Brews Festival, New Festival Director, Michael Carrucan, has added a new stage called The Crossing Stage, and ensured everything kicks off on an ultra high note with The Lighthouse Stage opening a day earlier to encompass the Friday night. Continue reading Queenscliff Music Festival 2010 Launch

John Waters – Brel @ Playhouse Theatre, 25th June 2010 [Live Review]

Review: Lana Harris

  The piano player starts up, an accordion bursts in, and by osmosis of memory into reality, the room is filled with a cloud of collective audience thoughts of France. Personal artistic journeys for one, a package holiday with Eiffel tower earrings for another, access to the iconic baguettes and berets for those who haven’t been. This is the invocative power of Jacques Brel, a Belgian musician and artist who created his songs in the language of love. Never heard of him? He is mostly known in the English speaking world through his songs which have been translated and interpreted, but performers of these works include Frank Sinatra and The Dresden Dolls among many others. John Waters’ memories of Brel and his works start from a hitchhiking experience in France where Waters overheard a street musician playing a song whose passion captivated him. The song was Brel’s.

Since that time Waters has embellished the original experience by seeing Brel perform live, and Waters now tours his own shows of Brel’s works. He performs them “as often as I can” and they are brought to Brisbane tonight as part of QPAC’s week long cabaret festival.

A broad selection of musicians have been gathered to help Waters convey the magic of Brel. The singer performs with an accordionist, pianist, percussionist, saxophonist and two guitarists, some of whom jump to other instruments as the songs necessitate. Waters moves like a marionette to their sounds, arms extended, hands waving, rake thin grey suit legs twisting and flicking at the mercy of his tapping, rolling, springing feet, French phrases spilling indiscriminately from his lips. He performs the first song with no introduction, using humorous gestures to convey that the song, in part at least, is about wine and women. Fortunately for those of us who do not speak French, the rest of the songs are introduced by Waters’ summary and interpretation of their lyrics. Waters, who has a background in acting as well as song (most recently, he was part of the TV movie UnderBelly: The Golden Mile) delivers these synopses alternatively in humorous, dramatic and irreverent ways, and the stories become as much a part of the show as the music is.

The first tale we hear is about a man, losing his virginity. In the army. In the Mobile Military Brothel. Waiting in line for the occasion, he listens as his commander yells out ‘Next!’ at irregular intervals until, shuffling forward naked except for a towel, his first foray into the carnal world is anointed with a case of venereal disease. “Looking back, the man sees his place in the world ‘Next!’, as one of the endless line of the following and the followed ‘Next!’, never to be number one.” It’s not easy to tell how much of the poetry is in the song, and how much comes from Waters’ skilled translation. The song and sounds that follow are more light and jaunty than seem fitting given the tale told beforehand. The next tale speaks of love, not new love but old love, the love between people who know all of each other’s tricks, how the games are played and how they end, and yet still retain play and passion “knowing its okay to grow old, but not to grow up”.
This tale is told with musical worship, all minor scales and melancholic yearning chords, complemented by the French verbs and accents falling from Waters’ lips.


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Even death was covered in the wide ranging themes: one tale started with a dead man reflecting on his life as he lay awaiting his funeral, another focused on the concept of the last meal, a last life experience, a last drink and love and irreverent yell at God and the bourgeois – Waters finished this performance by giving the finger to the crowd. While the songs themes were not always clearly linked to the sounds which accompanied them, it was interesting to note the format of the songs did not swing from verse to chorus and back again, but ebbed and flowed without a strong pattern
except for a swelling of sounds and emotions at the appropriate places in the often emotional tales. This was most evident in a song which Waters described as “Renoir on acid” – imagine a painter on drugs transforming the colours into words and rhymes. The music was a maelstrom, starting with a funny waltz introduction before invoking rich brass sounds, becoming forceful and frantic and building to a raucous, drunken finish as Waters hurtled his voice into the crowd.

Waters performing Brel was mind expanding. Experiencing songs without the burden of lyrics but with a poetic description of the intent was a unique experience which allowed both the beauty of the tales and panache and verve of the music to be appreciated separately. This was enhanced within the jazz styled form of following the story with the music rather than constraining it with choruses. Waters combined the best of his acting and voice talents to present an intriguing, amusing and enjoyable evening of cabaret.


Photo Gallery: Emilie Autumn @ The Metro, Sydney – 18 March 2010

Photographer: Arfy Papadam
View the Photo Gallery
Emilie Autumn

Read our review: Emilie Autumn live at The Metro, Sydney – March 2010
Continue reading Photo Gallery: Emilie Autumn @ The Metro, Sydney – 18 March 2010

Connect 4: PLAY @ The Valley Studios – 28 March 2009

The Valley Studios will be transformed into a kaleidoscopic extravaganza of music and interactive art Connect 4: PLAY. 4C Arts Collective has joined forces with a collection of Brisbane’s best emerging musicians, visual and performance artists to bring fun and mayhem.

Aural delights will be provided by some great emerging bands. Dot.ay’s highly experimental and creatively satisfying tunes will keep the dance floor buzzing, followed by Hunz, who combines visual art and music together in his unique live shows; Music will be seen; Art will be heard. Combine this with the raw rocking talent, high energy and tremendous tunes of Little Vegas and the Fuzz Parade and 4C has an undeniably stellar line-up.

   Connect 4 Play

All proceeds from Connect 4: PLAY will be donated to Backbone Youth Arts, one of Queensland’s leading Youth Theatre companies. Backbone Youth Arts supports, encourages and grows youth arts in Brisbane and is well known for its annual 2high Festival which provides unique and invaluable experience for festival and event management for young people with a passion for theatre, music and visual arts.


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Continue reading Connect 4: PLAY @ The Valley Studios – 28 March 2009

Laneway Festival 2009

Laneway Festival 2009: Second Announcement

– Brisbane Set Times –

In the continuing tradition of presenting music fans with the very best music that the country has to offer, the Laneway Festival is pleased to announce a huge array of amazing local acts to the line-up – see below – in each city, in addition to a few exciting developments in 2009 across the country.

In Melbourne, the gorgeous, historic Victorian State Library will play host – for the first time ever – to a music stage on its steps, transforming the grassy knoll into an ampitheatre featuring the best of Melbourne’s underground. We’re also teaming up with QV to present a stage in their quadrangle. Chill out to some of our finest low-fi acts as the Laneway Festival takes over the entire QV precinct. Melbourne punters can also admire Warwick Baker’s astonishing pictures in his Laneway Festival photography retrospective.

The people at The Thousands are using their considerable knowledge of the best local designers, street fashion and art to present independent designer markets at the Laneway Festival in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Buy some cool vintage stuff, designer gear or baked goods and use their concierge mail service so you don’t have to lug it around. ??We are excited to support the thriving W.A music scene as we head to Perth for the first time for a special twilight show. The Path to Laneway program offers emerging, original, unsigned (to a major record label) Western Australian acts the chance to open the Perth leg of the festival. You only have a week to enter, so get to www.sonicbids.comfor all the details.

Tickets to all shows are selling quickly and there will be no second release of tickets. Get yours now from www.moshtix.com.au

Plus! Subscribe to Lost and Found to win two VIP tickets to Melbourne’s Laneway Festival, airfares, accommodation and drinks with Temper Trap! Lost and Found is a free insiders’ guide to Melbourne, arriving with a ‘ping’ in your inbox just when you need it. Covering music, design, fashion and caffeine, it’s guest edited by the likes of Susien Chong (Lover), Dan Whitford (Cut Copy) and Pedro ‘Busy P’ Winter. Visit Lost and Found before January 19 to enter.

DATES AND VENUES

Over 18’s only.

Saturday, 31 January 2009
BRISBANE
Alexandria St off St Paul’s Terrace, Fortitude Valley

Sunday, 1 February 2009
MELBOURNE
*PLEASE NOTE THAT MELBOURNE IS A NON-SMOKING EVENT
Lonsdale St, Caledonian Lane and Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne

Friday, 6 February 2009 (Twilight Event)
PERTH
Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge

Saturday, 7 February 2009
ADELAIDE
Fowler’s Live, North Terrace

Sunday, 8 February 2009
SYDNEY
The Basement, Macquarie Park & Reiby Place, Circular Quay

Onsale NOW

Online Booking: www.moshtix.com.au
Phone Booking: 1300 GET TIX (438 849) and all Moshtix outlets nationwide.

Purchase Laneway tickets from these Levi’s® stores to receive your FREE Laneway T-shirt (while stocks last).

MELBOURNE ONLY:
St. Jerome’s Bar, 7 Caledonian Lane, Melbourne
Polyester Fitzroy store: 387 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy – (03) 9419 5137

www.lanewayfestival.com.au

Coldplay Australian Viva La Vida Tour 2009

coldplayvivatour

Two-Disc Set, Viva La Vida – Prospekt’s March Edition, Features Eight Previously Unreleased Tracks, Including A Collaboration With Jay-Z;
Prospekt’s March Also Available As EP 
 Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends

Chugg Entertainment today confirmed that Coldplay would return to Australia next February on their “Viva La Vida” tour, in support of their new album of the same name.

In a rare move for the Australian market, Coldplay will go on-sale with two shows in each of the East Coast cities to ensure as many tickets as possible are made available to meet the demand that was set the last time they toured.



Continue reading Coldplay Australian Viva La Vida Tour 2009

Bernard Fanning to perform at the Youngcare Benefit Concert – Tivoli, Brisbane – 8 Nov 2008

It’s been a long time between news, but we’re very happy to report that Bernard will be putting his solo hat on for a one off show in support of Youngcare. The Bernard Fanning Youngcare Benefit Concert will take place on Saturday November 8th at The Tivoli, Brisbane. Tickets to this exclusive event go on sale this coming MONDAY OCTOBER 6th AT 9AM from Ticketek.

Also taking part will be Kasey Chambers, Whitley and a surprise guest performer. Bernard is also acting as Musical Director and co-host of this year’s event.
Continue reading Bernard Fanning to perform at the Youngcare Benefit Concert – Tivoli, Brisbane – 8 Nov 2008

Kate Miller-Heidke acoustc performance @ GOMA Picasso Up Late – 12 Sep 2008

The Up Late program for ‘Picasso & his collection’ concludes with a rare acoustic performance by Kate Miller-Heidke, presenting never-before seen material from her forthcoming new album in October 2008 and subsequent national tour with a full band.
Kate Miller-Heidke

Miller-Heidke is one of the most talked about performers in Australian music today. Her unique vocal ability has captured the imagination audiences nationwide and established her as one of Australia’s most exciting musical talents.

Taking a break from her touring schedule in May 2008, Miller-Heidke has been recording a new album, her second full-length album, in Los Angeles.


The yet to be titled album follows the gold-selling debut Little Eve (Sony/BMG, 2007), which featured the hit singles ‘Words’, ‘Make it last’ and the stunning ‘Space they cannot touch’ , which entered the ARIA charts at number 11 in June 2007 and earned the artist four ARIA Award nominations. Little Eve topped numerous ‘Best Release’s of 2007’ lists Australia-wide and 2008 has already seen Miller-Heidke perform at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, East Coast Blues and Roots Festival, Brisbane’s Big Gay Day and as a supporting performer for Cyndi Lauper in 2008.

The Kate Miller-Heidke live experience is compelling – her theatrical stage presence, and fresh, innovative and edgy pop captivates audiences.

‘Miller-Heidke’s punishing vocal prowess is the impetus of the gutsiest show in Australian music at the moment. There is nothing contrived here; just a cathartic release of punk opera – stunning, fine and porcelain-fragile meets pummeling, bruising rock & roll.’ (Adelaide Fringe Festival review, February 2008)

Don’t miss experiencing some of Kate’s new musical creations come to life with her long term collaborator, Keir Nuttall on guitar, alongside audience favourites from her previous albums and her much loved comedic twist, to conclude the Up Late program for ‘Picasso & his collection’.
Kate Miller-Heidke Kate Miller-Heidke band
When: 12th September 2008
Where: Queensland Gallery Of Modern Arts (GOMA)
Full Details: GOMA – Picasso Up Late
More: Kate Miller-Heidke

Giants Of Jazz – QPAC – 16-17 August 2008

Jazz
QPAC is getting all jazzed up to host some of Australia’s biggest names in jazz.

For an entire weekend in August, jazz fans will be treated to two days of non-stop music by some of the country’s finest performers and bands.  Jazz music will weave its way through QPAC with known and local artists performing across two venues from midday to 11pm on Saturday, 16 August and midday to 6pm on Sunday, 17 August.

The exceptional line up includes one of Australia’s leading international artists, Bob Barnard (pictured, left), who will perform with his all-star band; the highly regarded composer, performer and educator Bob Sedergreen and Australia’s top rated traditional/ mainstream jazz group, The Syncopators.

Featuring all styles of jazz, Giants of Jazz also features: Geoff Bull’s Olympia Jazz Band, George Washingmachine, Julie O’Hara, Peter Baylor, Laique, The Jazz Factory, Clare Hansson, Harry Lynn Quartet, Queensland Conservatorium Big Band, Jazz String.

QPAC’s Artistic Director John Kotzas said Giants of Jazz was a great opportunity for lovers of jazz to indulge in a smorgasboard of entertainment.

“It’s rare to get this number of artists of this calibre together under one roof for an entire weekend,” Mr Kotzas said.

“It’s also rare for jazz to be performed in these intimate surrounds, enabling fans an up-close and personal experience.

“Giants of Jazz builds on QPAC’s incredibly successful Jazz Fridays, which has seen local jazz artists performing in Cascade Court regularly since February,” Mr Kotzas said.

Patrons can purchase a full-day pass for either Saturday or Sunday or a full weekend pass.

Ticket Information:
Dates:            Saturday 16, August and Sunday, 17 August
Venues:           Cremorne Theatre & Studio 1, QPAC
Tickets:          Single Day Pass $105; 2 Day Weekend Pass $198
Bookings:         qtix.com.au or 136 246