Augie March. Her Majesty’s. 26 Mar 2015
It is several weeks on from the Ides of March, now it’s time for the Odes of March. Augie March, that is - back from a seven year hibernation for a national tour featuring their 2014 album Havens Dumb. Led by the prodigiously talented, singer songwriter Glenn Richards, Augie March appeared on the Australian music scene in 1998 and released their first album Sunset Studies in 2000. Now fifteen years and five albums later, they are here to remind us what an embarrassment of musical riches/Richards they have to offer.
They are a quirky bunch. After an excellent set from the very promising Adelaide trio, Cosmo Thundercat, Richards and the band wander onstage at Her Majesty’s in search of bass player Edmondo Ammendola. There is an awkward delay until his shambling arrival and Richards, never entirely comfortable as the frontman, finally gathers the band, and the three member Arnold Horns, to open with Hobart Obit.
“I tried to care for you the best I could /We mapped it out and reconfigured the old neighbourhood/But time is a bastard , time is a vial of petty sands,/the body’s a basket emptying to the niggardly hands/of Aeon for his array of strung out decay…”
With three-part harmonies crooning around him Glenn Richards unfurls the first of his many densely laden lyrics sung in his melodic pitch perfect vocal, with gently chiming guitar from Adam Donovan, Ammendola’s deep thrumming bass and David Williams anchoring the band with his steadying drumbeat. It is a sweet pop rock sound – echoes of Crowded House and perhaps, in their keening vocals and esoteric lyrics, the hugely under-rated UK band Turin Brakes.
With very few exceptions Augie March songs don’t just jump into the brain pan and stay there. They are intricate, trickling threads of voice and word, chord and beat, there are hooks but they don’t have simple choruses, or the kind of repetitions that become immediately memorable.
Interestingly, in the Havens Dumb songs there are repetitions of line between songs- “Time is a bastard, time is a vial of petty sands ..” from Hobart Obit, reappears in Bastard Time and in the album’s splendid opening songAWOL, regrettably excluded from the Her Majesty’s setlist. A Dog Starved gets a go instead – Donovan’s guitar taking on that sweet rheumatic Gretsch sound George Harrison gave to the world. In fact there is a fetching White Album feeling to the whole song, or perhaps, given Richards’ tempus fugit preoccupations -All Things Must Pass.
Peering down at his setlist, printed in a pygmy font that is too hard to read, Richards, somewhat haltingly, leads into a selection from Moo You Bloody Choir, The Cold Acre, Kiernan Box’s gentle piano intro followed by the swing waltz rhythm of yet another melancholy Augie March treasure – “My heart is a cold acre, my chest is a cold acre…” Then two early compositions, The Good Gardener (On how he fell) and Here Comes The Night, both from Sunset Studies follow, the band in stride with two fine songs, reminders that this band started well and stayed that way.
Glenn Richards is justly proud of Havens Dumb, the album that brought the band back together. Gathered over several years they recorded 30 songs, the musicians living in different parts of the country emailing each other their overdubs as the project progressed. We get three more of the new songs –Bastard Time, Villa Adriana – inspired by Richards’ long-awaited first trip to Italy- and the pungent Definitive History.
I am not sure what the title, Havens Dumb, quite refers to but, in part, it is a harsh appraisal of the present state of Australian civic and public life. Definitive History is scathing- “’The same smug expression, same false cheer,/same air of predation-“Stranger welcome” .. just not here, just not here, just not here/ All men are like mice, all men are mice, it just doesn’t pay to be nice,/Take all before you/Definitive History.”
Unfortunately the lucid rage of the lyrics is buried under a surfeit of sound. Kieran Box unleashes a loud grating sample of a violin chord which starts to sound like an unattended car alarm, with the Arnold Horns blasting away and the rest of the band competing for attention. More’s the pity that the refrain is lost in transmission – ”O one for the mother, one for the dad/One for the treasurer, one for the plasma screen and don’t forget/ the developers dream,/ a plot to bury them all at the edge of the sprawl-/ Definitive history.”
The early classic There is No Such a Place reminds us that there are few Australian songwriters who can write such plangent melody. This is an amalgam of Paul Simon, Don McLean’s American Pie and Vincent, or more recently the Finn brothers , Elliott Smith and Elbow. But, as always, Augie March sound like a lot of musicians and none of them. They are unique in the best way, because they evoke so much other music that stands in the wings watching them appear – and, as their song reminds us - disappear.
The set concludes with the full-tilt galloping tempo of This Train Will be Taking No Passengers and, of course, an encore featuring One Crowded Hour. It is their signature hit, and yet another wistful meditation on the theme of time, and past love, featuring yet another gnomic Glenn Richards question and response -“what is this six stringed instrument but an adolescent loom ? And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.”
Concluding with the downbeat, mildly querulous Never Been Sad, Richards and his staunch, enduring band wind down the show. It has been one of fits and starts, distractedly re-tuning instruments, gazing into the audience, bemused by the lighting blackouts, mulling over Charlie Brown meaning of life questions. As an inner sigh from Glenn Richards becomes accidentally audible, he disarmingly asks- “Am I really tired, or really old?”
No slick patter from Augie March, no smoothly engineered show, none of the easy complacency befitting a veteran band who after seven years of self-imposed exile have returned with an album as good as any produced in this desolate period in Australian music. Instead they played fifteen or so songs of beauty and tangled feeling. It was one memorable hour and a half, ramshackle, often musically exquisite and a reminder that Augie March are a great Australian band. “Thanks very much folks”, Richards diffidently concludes, “that’s us.” And a fine thing they are too. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that there will be a next time.
Murray Bramwell
When: Closed
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Festival Theatre. 27 Mar 2015
The proms are a jolly affair and a real money spinner for the ASO. Every Anglophile and closet Anglophile posing as a music lover is there. It’s always a bumper crowd and everyone has a ball, right from the curtain-raising lusty rendition of God Save Her Maj through to that favorite old belter Pomp & Circumstance No. 1 that sends us all home glad that we were spawned from the loins of Mother England!
Throw in a few perennial favorites like Zadok the Priest, Crown Imperial, Jerusalem and Rule Brittania! and it almost doesn’t matter about whatever is left on the program, because we are nearly all three-parts inebriated with nostalgic patriotic fervor and we have all sung our fill in the choral mosh pit that was once the theatre.
However, it does matter what else is on the program, and it seems to me that pieces such as Ronald Binge’s Sailing By and Karl Jenkins’ Exultate Jubilate shouldn’t really get a guernsey at such an event, but hey, I’m not the programmer, and technically demanding anthems like Zadok really need to be sung (and conducted) with more discipline than they were. But, these are minor grizzles.
The evening began in high expectation with the brightly decorated stage full to overflowing with a hybrid choir of around 100 (comprising the Adelaide Philharmonia Chorus and the Marryatville High School Concert Choir), the mighty ASO, and… joy of joys… the colossal Silver Jubilee Organ! Flags (apparently hung incorrectly, according to a purist who has nothing else in the world to worry about) and Britannia bunting adorned the stage and guest conductor Guy Noble owned it all; his humorous and irreverent badinage had the audience howling with laughter. He then nonchalantly flicked his right wrist and set the snare drum into action welcoming the fanfare team of the South Australian Police Band onto stage and kicking off the performance. Whether one is a monarchist or a republican, it was electric stuff.
Despite the low brow nature of the evening, there was still much fine musicianship in evidence as one would expect from the ASO. The woodwinds were especially fine, with Geoffrey Collins on flute and Celia Craig on oboe giving object lessons in tonality. Martin Phillipson’s ‘horse’ trumpet in the Ascot Gavotte was highly entertaining.
The highlight of the evening was Greta Bradman’s performance of the chilling aria Casta Diva from Bellini’s opera Norma. This particular aria is demanding and sits in a not entirely comfortable register for a soprano, but she sang it with style, accomplishment and great conviction. It is an aria that needs to be ‘sold’, and sell it she did. Bradman’s voice seems to get better and better. Her performances of You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel and I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady were froth and bubble but they demonstrated the power and artistry of her voice.
And to bring us all back to earth at the end, an encore of Waltzing Matilda brought the best and worst out of our collective voices, but who cares – after all, it is the last night of the proms, and we can get back to normal next week!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 20 Mar 2015
In CEO Vincent Ciccarello’s own words, the Masters Series is the ASO’s “core business” and the first concert of the 2015 series was an absolute blinder! The audience attended with high expectation, and were not disappointed. They left fulfilled and elated. The evening was a glorious celebration of musicianship, virtuosity, and lush orchestration.
Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from the opera Peter Grimes are eery and foreboding. The awkward rising intervals of the first movement evoke melancholia and in time give way to the tempestuousness of the fourth. Guest conductor Garry Walker walked the fine line between unrepressed emotion and tight control. (This was even more evident in the Mussorgsky at the end of the evening.) However, occasionally the winds lagged just slightly behind the strings by a mere fraction of a beat –slightly annoying– but strangely it added to the sense of anticipation.
Sarah Chang played the Bruch G minor violin concerto with astonishing sensitivity. It is a lyrical composition and Chang treated the melody line as if it was her own voice and as if she was in an animated conversation with every other instrument in the orchestra. Chang was pure theatre to watch: her gesture and long sweep of the bow were almost theatrical, but the sound production was altogether sublime. She has tremendous technical skill and brought all of it to bear in what was a highly moving reading. Walker graciously allowed Chang to take center stage for much of the richly deserved standing ovation. It was her triumph, as was her performance of Ravel’s Tzigane after the interval. She expertly flaunted the full spectrum of violinist tricks and techniques and almost danced on the stage as she communed with Ravel’s testing dance rhythms. When it was over she spontaneously applauded the mighty ASO, and she was right to do so – the orchestra and Walker were at the top of their game.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was originally composed as a piano solo but it is better known in its orchestrated form, especially the version by Ravel. It is so popular – the ASO last performed it in 2011 – that it is easy to forget that the composition is extremely difficult to play well; either the piano or fully orchestrated version. Walker was able to extract the full gamut of emotions that the piece offers: jollity, carefree abandon, deep introspection, pathos, and rampant zeal. Success in achieving this lies in uncompromising precision, and that is exactly what the ASO demonstrated but with adamant and deeply felt musicality. It was a treat to hear the saxophone (Damien Hurn) on the concert platform again – an all too infrequent event – but the highlight of the performance was the Con mortuis movement in which the oboes and strings almost invoked a dimension beyond this world and echoed the Britten with which the evening began.
A wonderful start to the season.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Arts Projects Australia. Botanic Park. 9 Mar 2015
After a night of foot-resting and fond reminiscing of the weekend just past, it was with a calm smile that I return to Botanic Park for the final day of WOMADelaide 2015. I can’t think of a better way to kick off proceedings than with a bit of Korean food at Taste The World with Jambinai. I’m quite a fan of Korean cuisine, and Jambinai quickly showed that they apply the same dedication in the kitchen as they do on the stage. The smells were fantastic, and it was great to see the band bossing the veteran WOMAD chef Doug around while they were cooking! Tradition meets hardcore indeed!
I’ve got a fairly big soft spot for Latin America, and so it’s little wonder that I find myself heading for the shade of the Moreton Bay stage for a workshop with Bolivia’s Luzmila Carpio. Her workshop, entitled El presagio de los pajaros: the omen of birds, allowed her to discuss how mamapacha, or mother earth in Quechua, inspires her music, focussing on the sounds of birds. Of course, the Australian wildlife decided to chirp in during the show, although Luzmila remarks that these birds don’t speak Spanish! Luzmila also plays a few tunes on a tiny ukulele, adding to the experience. It’s a very intimate show, where it seems Luzmila is speaking directly to me… so it’s lucky that I also speak Spanish to understand!
Keeping within the realms of Latin America and Spain, I head over to stage one for another round with Che Sudaka. Last night’s show clearly wasn’t enough! Continuing to evoke and re-envision Radio Bemba, the quartet are again on fire! So much endless energy and charisma! For the second time, I’ve got a broad smile on my face listening to these guys, and this time have the added bonus of not having the growing contingent of rich kids running amok all around, and no-one is covered in filthy chalk dust! Bonus!
Well, it seems that Korean food may be tasty, but I hear the cry for more, and half way through Che Sudaka’s set, I find myself heading back to Taste The World for some of Flavia Coelho’s cooking. Or rather, her drummer’s cooking, as she is proud to note that she puts her energies into her music, and leaves the cooking to others! Thankfully, the drummer can cook up a storm as well as he drums, and we get yet another tasty treat from the Taste The World Tent.
As the afternoon sun continues to shine down, I make my way back to stage two for one of the bands I’d been really hanging to see on this final day of WOMADelaide. From the Democratic Republic of Congo, we have Jupiter & Okwess International, and they deliver on every promise and expectation. The sun may be beating down, but the energy levels are high, and I find myself dancing, entranced in the rhythms from start to end.
It seems my hunger won’t relent today, so it’s back to Taste The World, where the gypsies have taken over. And they’ve brought their brass instruments! Romania’s Fanfare Ciocarlia have taken command of the kitchen, and while the band leader and ‘head chef’ is proud to admit that the music is firmly the domain of men, and the kitchen is largely the domain of the women, he’s also confident of his cooking skills from plenty of practice and instruction from his wife! And to make it that much more exciting, we’re treated to a few tunes while he cooks! Very nice!
Giving the Colour Of Time parade a wide berth, I grab a bit of dinner and head out to stage two for American band Lake Street Drive. While I don’t know anything about these guys, as I listen I find myself quickly won over by their bluesy and jazzy sound, chock-loaded with soul. The singer has a fantastic voice, and I’m quickly drawn into their music. They even throw in a bit of Van Halen during the set, keeping all of us on our toes!
The Zoo stage is next on my list, though it seems like half of WOMAD has a similar idea. Arnhem Land band Barra are up, though as the programme has them listed as featuring Gotye, quite a crowd has been attracted. I guess this is a bit pros and cons… if only Barra had been listed, I’m sure the crowd would be smaller, but at least this way more people are exposed to the great traditional sounds of this country. And the band doesn’t disappoint! With some very traditional sounds to begin, they soon break into a mix of traditional and modern, with hints of reggae and blues. With most of the crowd sitting down for most of the set, it’s a pretty nice experience!
Things are quickly getting towards the business end of the day, and I decide to see the day out with a double header in my last timeslot. Balkan Beat Box put on such a good show the other day, that I decide to get another glimpse at their show and sample their sensational klezmer sound, before heading over to Speaker’s Corner for my last outing with Niger’s (that’s knee-jeer for the uninitiated) Bombino, playing their take on the desert blues of the Tuareg nomadic people. The mix of old world and new world, traditional and modern, is seamless, and you easily fall into a trance with the thumping basslines and bluesy guitar played in an eastern scale.
What a way to end the day, and in fact to end WOMADelaide 2015! It’s been such a great festival this year, and despite my complaints about the painted people, the growing influx of rich kids masquerading as globally aware (really, what kid has the money to buy a WOMAD ticket anyway?), the fake-hippies (yes, I wear my fisherman pants all year… do you?), and the seemingly more pushy and rude nature of the crowd, I’m pleased to say these are but small taints (and in the case of the coloured-in people, colourful dusty taints) on the fabric of an otherwise brilliant-as-always WOMADelaide weekend. And it’s only 367 days until it all begins again!
Luke Balzan
When: Closed
Where: Botanic Park
Bookings: womadelaide.com.au
Photography by Aaron Vinall
Adelaide Festival. St Peter’s Cathedral. 8 Mar 2015
This performance of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Passio – Christ’s Passion according to St John – is incisive and dramatic. It doesn’t come any better.
Passio is sung by a bass-baritone soloist (singing Christ), tenor soloist (Pilate), vocal quartet (Evangelist), and choir. Typical of Pärt’s style in vocal composition, it is the text that takes centre stage and the singers are accompanied only by pipe organ (which mirrors Christ) and four instrumentalists (oboe, violin, ‘cello and bassoon). The human voice is unencumbered by an elaborate orchestration – the music is economical, but rich at the same time. Every note, every combination of notes, every moment of silence is pregnant with consequence and meaning.
Pärt often devises and exploits mathematical ‘formula’ (but not to suggest a ‘formulaic’ approach) upon which to construct his compositions and Passio is no exception. He exploits ‘modes’ and confines and confines various singers to particular sound-palettes. Significantly, and most dramatically, Pilate’s vocal part is characterised by the tritone B to F, which is awkward to sing and has a restless and dissonant quality. This is a perfect aural straagem to underline Pilate’s reluctant role in Christ’s crucifixion.
Carl Crossin again excels with the Adelaide Chamber Singers, and sets a benchmark to which other choirs aspire. Sometimes at the altar of precision is sacrificed warmth, meaning and fervor, but not so with the Singers. Crossin and the Singers attain it all. Bravo. Brava.
The stellar heights that the performance reaches are greatly assisted by the competence and artistry of the musicians. Elizabeth Layton (violin), Celia Craig (oboe), Mark Gaydon (bassoon), Simon Cobcroft (‘cello) and Josh van Konkelenberg (organ) are consummate artists and, most significantly, expert accompanists. Enough said.
But the high drama of the evening belongs to the two soloists. Dressed in a simple white soutane, Alexander Knight walks down the length of the central nave of the cathedral, takes his place, and sings Christ with disarming serenity and calmness. He not only sings the words, but also plays the role. He appears almost not of this world. Knight has a deeply satisfying bass baritone voice with just a hint of gentle vibrato that authoritatively fills St Peter’s to the very back pew. This young man has a wonderful career in front of him.
For me, the highlight of the evening, which is awash with stellar performances, is Richard Butler’s performance of Pilate. Dressed in a crimson soutane, Butler enters from the ambulatory and exudes the authority of a Roman governor. With his rich tenor voice, Butler handles the challenging dissonance of Pilate’s vocal line with great skill. I recall his performance last November in the Singers’ performance of the Messiah. He was charismatic then, as he is tonight, strangely. Always in character, he looks searchingly (but never imperiously) at Christ throughout the interrogation. His reluctance to condemn is palpable. His sadness at being forced to condemn is quite touching. Butler was illuminating in the Messiah. Tonight he is stellar, as is the entire performance.
Passio is surely a highlight of the Festival.
Kym Clayton
When: 8 and 10 Mar
Where: St Peter’s Cathedral
Bookings: bass.net.au