BackStage Music on Friday night was exactly what my brother and I needed. The week had been fairly crazy and we needed to mentally close the door, allowing the weekend door to open. For me, choosing what to do with my time when not at my full time job, is selecting something to take me to another place mentally. It doesn’t have to be entertaining, it can be challenging, it must be transforming.
One of the great pieces of advice grandpa gave me, was to allow your brain to solve problems by giving it space to move to the back of your mind, so it can ferment. The solutions will come to you. As I write about Friday night early the next week, many of the issues that seemed insurmountable on Friday night, seem to be items to tick off the list this week. Much of that is because the performances at BackStage Music closed that door and gave them space to ferment.
The friendly and social crowd arrived. You could feel the excited energy for what they were about to experience. It was full house. It was great to see. It was also great to see people looking around the space they were in, a new venue for living music, Woodburn Creatives.
Sonant Bodies with Sarah Monk was the perfect mental shifter. They asked the audience to put on blindfolds and said they were going to be taken on a meditation. The audience were part of the performance by tapping to the beat of their heart. It was meditative, it sounded great, and my brother said at the end “Right, I’m here at this venue and nowhere else”. The program was wonderfully arranged to take you from the introspective percussiveness of Pauline Oliveros’ exercise Heartbeat, which carried over the top of Sarah Monk’s Rain to the equally immersive and corporeal Modes of Transportation by Victoria Pham and Salt and Wind Conspiracies by James Hazel.
Claire Chase is an amazing performer. In a non-stop performance for an hour, the audience breathed, sighed, stiffened, and relaxed as she moved between instruments and seemed to play effortlessly. All eyes were on her. It is no question why she is a world leading flutist.
Review for:
BackStage Music: Claire Chase + Sonant Bodies | 25 May 2018, 7pm | Woodburn Creatives
Buy your tickets to the next BackStage Music on classikON
Thursday 19 July at Woodburn Creatives, Redfern. Featuring Ensemble Offspring, Julian Day + Georgina Oakes (Hatched Academy).
Photo credit: Ollie Miller
