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 Apologies for the lack of updates from the fair climes of Salt Mountain! This will change in the new year, I am sure. It’s been wonderful having time to get down to some serious technique in the studio with Barbara, whilst trying to adjust to the Austrian lifestyle and the feet of snow!
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I had the great good fortune the other day to be invited to sing at the opening ceremony of the Australian Music Therapy Association national conference here in Sydney, just a few days before I depart for my year of study in Austria.
Music therapy is a discipline which involves the performance and appreciation of music - improvisation, songwriting, movement to music - as tools for healing across a broad spectrum of illness: psychological, physical and developmental. From recovering cancer survivors to people suffering from psychosis, to troubled adolescents, those participating in physical rehabilitation after an accident, children with autism or patients coping with post traumatic stress, music therapy combines science with the ancient art of music-making to access parts of ourselves which mainstream medicine and psychology can struggle to reach. I remember being told at Uni that 'music' (in one form or another) is such an innate part of the human experience that musicologists have long held that there is not a single documented culture on earth that does not have some kind of musical practice, often tied in with a social and ritualistic meaning. Music helps us express ourselves, and also helps us process things that words alone cannot. Indeed, one theory of the evolution of language in humans which fascinates me posits that Neanderthals had the vocal tract capacity for vocalisation before they had the neural capacity for the use of symbolism (and therefore the capacity for the development of language), pointing to the possibility that 'music' developed as a form of communication even before language. (Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind, 1996) I love that there are people out there - healers and carers, and in many cases in Australia pioneers - who are tapping into this primal and instinctive level of our psyches to effect positive change in the lives of people who need it. My own slightly colourful story is all the evidence that I need to believe in the healing power of music. What about you? For more information on the wonderful work done by music therapists in Australia, check out the website of AMTA here: http://www.austmta.org.au/  I have spent many years trying to work that one out, along with honing my cloud-pinning and wave-whispering skills, and am unfortunately no closer to coming up with an answer.
However, never one to let such disturbing gaps in my self-knowledge hold me back from an adventure, from mid-September I am off to spend a year studying as a postgraduate at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria! [Cue all manner of Sound-of-Music-related, groan-inducing humour]. I’ll be studying under Barbara Bonney, who has been an idol of mine since I was a teenager, and whom I cannot yet be in the same room with without being intensely uncool in my attempts to be cool about the fact that she is, in fact, Barbara Bonney. (After my first meeting with her, slightly overwhelmed, I managed to lose my way out of her building. Which probably would have been fine had I not then unfortunately met her heading for her front door, five minutes after I’d left her studio. I was emerging from her basement and in response to her quizzical look could only muster “Um. Yeah. I lost the front door.” Nice work, Fitz-Gibbon. Smooth.) I’m really very excited, and of course rather nervous. (This is called “understatement”.) This will be a fantastic opportunity for me to eat as much strudel as humanly possible (which I think deep down is a goal for most people) and perhaps create some unforgettable tableaux using the excellent Wolfgang Mozart Action Figures I saw in a shop when I visited (which I may post for you at the right moment). But it goes without saying that I consider myself a very, very lucky girl. Somewhere in my youth, or childhood……I must have done something good? After a brief and colourful hiatus in Amsterdam, London, Norwich and Salzburg (where I had a fantastic lesson with Barbara Bonney), I met with my lied-duo partner Ella in Vienna for some rehearsals and coaching before we headed to deepest, darkest country Austria for a month-long summer school with Lied Austria International. The idea behind Lied Austria International is a very deep engagement with the poetic texts of lieder before any attempt is made to get to grips with the musical settings, because many of the greatest lieder composers have been quoted as saying that rather than actively setting the texts to music, they were in fact trying only to reveal the innate musicality within the poem. LAI treats lieder with a passionate recognition that the particular choices of words by the poets are in fact an inherent part of the musical texture, and that the very SOUND of the language is an important part of the final musical product. From an initial period of working on the poem deeply and learning to declaim it not just intelligibly but (hopefully) with great nuance, you can then transfer what you have learnt into a richer dialogue with the material then presented by the composer. It was a fascinating - and incredibly, surprisingly challenging – journey which has changed my perspective on lieder forever.  My beloved swimming holes Between a demanding schedule of literature study, private coachings and voice lessons, intensive German lessons and rehearsals (as well as Ella and I trying to privately prepare for 3 different masters auditions), this is not a program to undertake if you are looking for a European summer school that is also a European summer vacation! The numbers are small which means that it is excellent value for money, but the pressure can be intense. That having been said, it took place in a picture-book beautiful part of the Southern Austrian countryside, a wine-growing region called Styria. The weather was also INCREDIBLE – for better or worse (mainly for worse, with the one saving grace being the fabulous local water hole, where I swam amongst water lilies every night at dusk to the chorusing sounds of frogs) the temperatures hovered between 30 and 35 degrees every day for four weeks whilst the local papers talked of how the region was sweltering and respite was nowhere on the horizon! (I know, I shouldn’t complain, I had a much better summer in Austria than I had in Sydney this year!)
The month of study culminated in two performances in the tiny hamlet of Gamlitz, of a diverse program of lieder including that of Brahms, Marx, Schoeck, Pfitzner, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Wolf. Then, on my penultimate night in town, the lady who ran the farmstay where I’d been living took me along to a traditional Steierische singalong at a local cellar door where I drank too much wine, attempted yodeling, and ended up giggling like an idiot in the corner because the dialect had me completely bamboozled. Totally. Awesome. I do however feel that I have eaten enough meat, cheese and bread to last me a lifetime. My jeans agree. For more information about Lied Austria International, visit this address: http://www.liedaustria.com/index.html A lot has already been written in the Australian press in the last few weeks about what is happening at my Alma Mater, the ANU School of Music, and I feel the need to add my voice to those of alumni all over the world who are speaking out about the evisceration of a valuable and well-loved institution. At its purest, this is simply a decision by the University to deal a deathblow to a school which produces musicians and composers who are working all over the world because it is impossible to run a conservatorium-model facility at a profit. That is, you cannot give up-and-coming musicians the one-on-one training which they need to become expert in their art, and make the profit margin that Vice Chancellor Ian Young is interested in. The underhanded and brutal way in which the restructuring has been handled is only salt in the wound. The issue at the base of this struggle to keep the School of Music intact is a far more fundamental one. Obviously I have a vested interest in the Canberra School of Music: I have many friends who have not yet graduated, only having graduated myself in 2011. The most important mentors of my life, who carried me through the transition from buttoned-down legal secretary to gypsy soprano (which was painful, trust me) have had their world-class expertise and personal sacrifices disrespected in an unforgiveable way. Presumably the gut-busting work I put into completing my degree will also not be recognised in the future as the currency of a degree from the dumbed-down shell the CSM seems likely to become will drop significantly. So yes, I have taken it all very personally, as have every one of my friends in the national and international alumni diaspora.  Irreplaceable mentors, C Wilson, L Page, A Hicks But far more importantly, I am frightened about what this says about the value placed on the Arts in Australia, that our national, flagship university is not willing to nurture performers and composers under its banner. In 2010, in my final year at CSM, I was invited by the National Film and Sound Archive to participate in the inaugural intake of the Heath Ledger Young Artist Oral History Project, a project set up to document the experience of up-and-coming artists across a variety of disciplines so that in the future the country has a record of what it was like for creatives in Australia as they (hopefully) blossomed into their professional careers. We are all interviewed for the archives at 5 year intervals. (This knowledge, and the knowledge that little but a nuclear holocaust can remove the footage, scares the bejesus out of me and I’m not entirely sure why I agreed to do it, but anyway…) Simon Crean, the current Minister for the Arts, was one member on a panel at the launch which also included myself and two other young artists, whereon we discussed the nature of the pressures upon young Australian artists in front of the national press. Six months later, the company which gave me my first professional job, Co-Opera, was refused funding from the Federal Government with no repeal for the first time in 17 unbroken years, thereby impacting my planned work schedule for the following year (not to mention many many others’ work schedules also!) Simon Crean, who had the power to reverse the decision, and who had sat opposite me 6 months earlier and talked about how his government supports young artists, did not even reply to my letter, let alone to the pleas and petitions of the company and all its supporters. And now, in 2012, the School of Music, for me a crucible of dreams and a place I will be forever proud of, faces the removal of all one-on-one teaching, there will be no aural or theory taught, no composition degree, and all of the staff have been summarily sacked and asked to reapply for a smaller number of (different, diversified) positions….
What message does this send to the next generation of musicians in this country about the value that we place upon building our cultural diversity and heritage? What message does it send, for that matter, to THIS generation of musicians? To myself and my peers? I guess in many ways I am luckier than most that I have a voice which will – through a quirk of fortune – be preserved for posterity when so many others more erudite will fade. I am confident that history will speak for us all, anyway, when it comes to the negative impact on the ACT and ultimately the country as a whole to have this precedent being set in Canberra. But from my perspective at least, the archives will show generations to come just how easy it was to feel undervalued in the Arts in Australia at the beginning of this century. As someone at the beginning of their career, I can only hope that things may change. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. - C S Lewis I have never had the good fortune to be able to sleep on planes, but this time, on the journey from Kuala Lumpur to Frankfurt, I slept for 12 hours. I’m still slightly freaked out by that and what it says about the toll taken by the first leg of tour, but grateful all the same. Europe was firmly in the grip of Spring when we arrived, and that is a glorious thing. I felt refreshed and was looking forward to reprising Figaro.  Andrea Chenier stage, Bregenz Ok, I’m lying about feeling refreshed. I felt fortunate to have stepped back from the brink of exhaustion-induced psychosis. But I was looking forward to Figaro. We travelled to Bregenz, Austria, perched sweetly on the edge of a beautiful lake (Konstanz) and seemingly with every tree and bush in bloom. Bregenz hosts the Bregenzerfestspiele, a festival where opera is performed on mammoth sets which float out on the lake. This year the stage is set up for performances of Andrea Chénier (although we were in the smaller, internal performance space and not out on the lake!). We had only two days to re-rehearse Figaro, so of course I had been looking at my score and trying to remember my blocking in the days beforehand (in fact the only other thing I’d done on the plane was study Susanna). I was feeling confident but was interested to see how much still lived in my body, as that was an astonishing and very pleasing discovery I’d made for the first time the previous November: that somehow not just the music but the movements and characterisation live somehow hidden in your muscles and then reappear at their musical cue! I’m sure old theatre hands are nodding their heads at this, but it was a relief for me to learn that, even if I don’t understand how it works!  Cows. No, seriously. The second day of rehearsals happened to be my birthday, and my orchestra friends decorated the rehearsal room for me and bought cake, and I was treated to a typically deafening and harmonically embellished rendition of “Happy Birthday”…. I felt incredibly privileged to be in a pretty foreign city rehearsing a role I love with people I love to make music with, even though I had to be away from my partner and family. It was a birthday to remember. Einsiedeln, Switzerland was the next stop on our European tour, and here we stayed in a hotel just across the road from a historic cloister, long a pilgrimage destination and graced with a baroque cathedral the inside of which looked like something Barbie would design on acid. Pink, gold, white; filigreed in every direction with a host of cherubim (every single one of them in a different pose) - who in my mind would give Chuckie a run for his money in the creepy stakes. That said, we were fortunate enough to catch the monks at Vespers, singing plainchant which has remained unchanged since 1547, and I’ll be honest: it was so beautiful I had a little cry. Perhaps the purity and simplicity of it, in that setting, was more than my brain could take. Perhaps I was just really freaked out by the cherubs by then. Our final stop on the Figaro Europe tour took us back to Germany and the attractive town of Wiesbaden. Wiesbaden is built on thermal springs (the “bad” in the name gives it away) and the fountains in the park across the road from our hotel actually steamed, the water coming out of them was so hot! No complaints at this anomaly though - at 6 in the morning it was still a touch chilly and certain of us discovered on our final night in town that it is nice to take your shoes off and stick your feet in while you polish off that last beer. The final show took place in a beautiful outdoor concert shell in the Kurpark, looking out onto a lake and blossom trees. I don’t think I could have asked for a more perfect ending to my Susanna adventure – I’ve always loved outdoor shows and I’ve always done better performances when faced with last-minute changes of set shape or blocking, and/or dangerous hazards whilst on stage (which have often been part of the Co-Opera experience). All of these things were present in the final show, due to a massive thunder storm which arrived just as the Third Act began. It only ever buckets with rain when there are extra electricals (in this case sound equipment) rigged up! I had a horrible moment when I thought the performance itself would be stopped due to the weather, and for whatever superstitious reason couldn’t bear the idea of my final Susanna for the production being left uncompleted. But we and most of the audience soldiered on, and I finally hung up my costume with a nice sense of closure, and a real feeling of gratefulness.  My beloved Figgy Orchestra, so much thanks! Out the back of the wisteria-covered concert shell, Wiesbaden It completely blows my mind how much ground I’ve covered – both literally and metaphorically – in the last year and a half, how much I’ve learned both about my craft and about myself, some of the friends I’ve made, life-changing and lifelong. I can’t articulate even half of what the experience has meant to me. Which is just as well, because nobody wants to hear about how happy you are about how amazingly your life has turned out after all, even when you never thought it could, because that’s just IRRITATING, Karen.
Not without some of the usual dramas of international group travel (plus some other very clever individual ones of mine), and after 3 successful-but-tiring back-to-back shows in Adelaide, I arrived with the Co-Opera troupe in Singapore where we performed our first Black Water/Acis & Galatea at the Esplanade Theatres.  Jeremy Tatchell and I, backstage glamour, Penang Alas, the whole of the Asian tour was quite grueling in terms of schedule, and so for me it was very much about trying to look after myself as well as possible, and conserve energy. The very next day we travelled by air and road to Penang, in Northern Malaysia. Some of the scenery on the journey was completely stunning, though a timely reminder that large portions of Malaysia’s beautiful landscape is threatened by mining, logging and plantations for the palm oil industry. That evening we went straight into late rehearsals before returning to the free a-la-carte dinner at the super-swish 5-star hotel provided for us by the organizers of the Penang performance. It was a welcome haven at the end of a very long day! Two days later we returned to Kuala Lumpur for the final Black Water/Acis & Galatea in the lovely, historic Chinese Assembly Hall. I think what I loved most about that show was the incredible acoustic. It felt like I could have spun a single note out into the air forever. After 6 performances as Kelly (12 altogether this year), both Julie Sargeant and I agreed that we were more than ready to set that particular story down, given that the telling of it has not yet become any easier. (Perhaps, in fact, it shouldn’t get easier.) But if there was anyone more grateful for the end of the BW run than I it could only be my hairdresser, as straightening, teasing and hairspraying the heck out of my poor hair for a few months had left me wondering if I wasn’t in line for a bald patch sometime soon.  Warming up, Chinese Assembly Hall, KL The entire company celebrated that night at an amazing late-night feast in the heart of Kuala-Lumpur’s Chinatown – it would have to have been one of the most surprising and delightful meals I’ve had this year – really remarkable. The boys ordered chili frog! Can’t wait to return to Kuala Lumpur sometime with more time and energy to explore it! The next day we travelled south to Melaka and piled straight off the bus into 3 hours of rehearsals for a variety gala concert that night which was enormous fun (and dare I say, even more fun backstage, given we were all deliriously tired and therefore slightly hysterical by this point). More company feasting followed, outdoors in the sultry heat of 1am, before a quick walking tour of the river in the centre of town. Sleep? Sleep is for the weak. And the sensible. And the lucky. But not for us.  Feasting on local delicacies, 1am, Melaka The following day, our last in Malaysia, I could FINALLY justify wandering around in the brain-frying heat for four hours doing some sightseeing, and (swollen ankles notwithstanding) I am SO glad that I did, as Melaka is the most incredible collision of centuries of colonial forces, all vying for the spice trade routes. Wave upon wave of foreigners arrived and shaped the history of this place with their new technologies, materials, customs and gods. The air was so thick with spice I’m pretty sure I could have licked it off my skin.
I was exhausted enough that that might have seemed like normal behaviour. Thus sing sadly the chorus of shepherds and shepherdesses in Handel’s Acis and Galatea.
But don’t worry, dear reader; despite the potential today’s date affords for a calamitous personal tale (Friday 13th), things are damn good in Karenland. Adelaide has turned on a series of truly superb early Autumn days, there’s a huge number of post-Easter discounts at Haighs Chocolates (I actually feel slightly sick at the moment from pushing through a bag of broken bilbies and dismembered chocolate chicks) and I am having a peaceful (if sugar-twitchy) moment before I head to the airport after the first two days of music calls. Nor do I agree with Handel in the above sentiment today anyway. Last night I watched The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson’s 1982 film) and thought to myself, “Seriously, I have been watching this for nearly thirty years and I STILL think it’s awesome!” So smoke that, George… One could certainly question whether my viewing pleasure of The Dark Crystal wouldn’t be permanently tarnished, however, if there were a jealous one-eyed giant who came in in the middle of it, trashed my DVD player, ate my TV remote and pooped on my snuggie. Such is the sad tale of Acis and Galatea, the masque (or short opera) written by G F Handel which Co-Opera is presenting in Adelaide, Singapore and Malaysia later this month and early in May. (OK I might have lied about the DVD player. And the snuggie. The pooping will probably depend on the director, who fortunately is not German – otherwise I’d hazard that the pooping would most certainly be included.) It was first published in 1722, though it has apparently undergone so many changes, re-writes and revisions that it is difficult to deliver a consistent synopsis. Fittingly, it is written on a text based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In a nutshell, as is the norm in such baroque idylls, all the ‘nymphs’ and ‘swains’ are pretty much having a non-stop party, cavorting and singing about how fabulous their meadows are and how much they like wine and stuff like that. (I have to assume the taking-care-of-the-sheep bit happens off-stage.) Galatea, a semi-divine nymph, has fallen in love with a sexy young shepherd named Acis. So far, so picnic. Then poor old Polyphemus, who occurs to me rather like some kind of pastoral Kevin Rudd, storms in demanding he be loved instead and - having been rejected - quite literally ruins the party. Well, ruins it more. At this point, everything gets terribly awkward in that wonderful operatic way, which is to say that people die. Fortunately Handel and our librettist, John Gay, decline to comment on Polyphemus’ career on the backbenches after his brutal murder of Acis, choosing instead to focus on the far more uplifting plot point of Galatea, via her semi-divine powers, transforming her dead lover into a fountain. Yes. What? Yes OK. Baroque opera can sometimes be a little challenged in terms of character development. And logic. The music, however, is completely, rapturously gorgeous: complex and rich, and achingly beautiful, and I know it is going to be a joy to rehearse and perform this work over the ensuing weeks. There are to be seven performances of Acis and Galatea: four in Adelaide, one in Singapore, one in Kuala Lumpur and one in Penang. For all but the Penang show, it will be teamed with a second run of Black Water, and I believe it will make my job even more challenging to jump from the tribulations of Black Water into my role as an advice-giving nymph (Coridon). I’ve always thought of nymphs in this context as the equivalent of those bikini-clad, glassy-eyed women gyrating in rap music videos. Baroque eye candy. Well, perhaps it will be soothing to be able to retreat each night from psychological realism to beautiful allegory. And not a bikini in sight, thank god. Well, there seems to be quite a lot happening in the next few months, all exciting and slightly overwhelming from this vantage point.
Later this week I fly to Adelaide to begin rehearsals on the next project, a short Handel opera called Acis and Galatea, which will have performances in Adelaide, Singapore and Malaysia together on the programme with the second run of Black Water – quite a heavy night on stage for me, all up! In early May the company departs for Asia, where as well as shows in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, we are also presenting a one-night-only Opera Gala evening in the exciting historical city of Melacca. From there we fly to Austria, where we have only a few days to re-rehearse The Marriage of Figaro for performances in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. After a few days of R&R, my lied partner Ella Luhtasaari will join me in Vienna for a few days of rehearsals, and then we begin study at the month-long summer school into which we have been accepted. I am quite excited about that for a number of reasons, but not least because it includes full-board in a castle in Graz, Austria! All up, it will be mid-July before I make it home to Sydney again. I expect there will be many tales to tell in the meantime…..  This is what is next! Two performances next week of Handel's oratorio "Saul" with my lovely friends at the Canberra Choral Society, in which I will be singing Michal.
I'm looking forward to this for a few reasons. First of all, I think it will be wonderful tonic for my somewhat tired voice. Piping away up where I belong, getting my coloratura back in order, and this amongst the soothing balm of comparatively-predictable harmonic progressions (whilst staying in the one time signature for a whole line, let alone the whole section!).... Ah yes. I am a lucky girl to have such wonderful variety in my work at the moment! Also I'm quite excited as this is my first participation in a full oratorio so it will be interesting to get the complete dramatic curve of the story, rather than just performing excerpts in concert. And finally there is the fact that it is with a singularly sweet bunch of people, the CCS, for whom I have a special place in my heart as they were the first choir I ever sang with as a soloist, way back in 2009. I remember being backstage freaking out completely and one of them giving me a hug! Their Musical Director, Tobias Cole, is also a real inspiration, and his passion for Handel (as for music and life in general!) is formidable. Hope that you will be able to make it along to join us if you are down Canberra way next weekend! |