Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Kronos Five Decades
(Adelaide Festival Theatre, 13 March 2023) Kronos Quartet is not a string quartet: it is an anti-string quartet. “The Kronos Quartet has broken the boundaries of what string quartets do” quoth the holy New York Times. “…the most far-ranging ensemble geographically, nationally, and stylistically the world has known” was the verdict of the somewhat less paper-of-record Los Angeles Times. The group is from Seattle, by way of San Francisco, which is surely a ‘tell.’ Violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Paul Wiancko can play their instruments beautifully, as they demonstrated in the 2nd part of…
Continue Reading →Write, Don’t Talk
(Random thoughts regarding Adelaide Writers’ Week, 2023 – a verse dialogue) (With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Stearns Eliot) READER A lovely form there sate beside my bed, And such a feeding calm its presence shed, A tone so pure, far from earthly leaven, A message reassuring, newly down from heaven. ‘Twas some comfort – A fact drawn from bone; “We read to know that we are not alone.” AUTHOR And yet here it shrinks back, as if mistook! That weary, wandering, disavowing look! ‘Twas all another feature, look and frame, And still, methought, I knew, it was…
Continue Reading →Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(By Robert Louis Stevenson; Sydney Theatre Company adaption and direction by Kip Williams: Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 5 March 2023) Stevenson‘s 1885 fable of the dangers of suppressing the id “is for ever being recalled, throughout the English-speaking world, to signify man’s divided nature.”* Filmed, staged and broadcast hundreds of times, the story is superior to the telling, and in this adaptation (by the team that presented The Picture of Dorian Gray) we are treated to a Gothic glory, vivified for the stage by dark demonic videographers, swarming hornet-like about the players. So it is not quite a two-hander. Stevenson’s…
Continue Reading →Escolania De Montserrat
(AF, Adelaide Town Hall, 4 March 2023) Founded in the 13th century, this ensemble is the oldest extant boys’ choir in the world and its rigorous training and selection criteria ensure its standards never slip. The choirboys of Escolania are taught the Benedictine sacred repertoire at the Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey in Catalonia (established in 1,025AD). Their core duty is to enliven pilgrims who come to Montserrat, so to see them on tour – 36 of the full complement of 50 – is quite special. Llorenç Castelló (see below) conducted the choir, who entered the Hall from the back,…
Continue Reading →Grey Masts
Beach House, 36-38 Smillie Street, Robe, South Australia (February 2023) South to Robe, a 337 kilometre drive from Adelaide, for a weekend conference, TVC stayed at Grey Masts, a 3 bedroom beach house in the heart of town. Described as a “Charming Drinking Village with a Fishing Problem,” Robe was founded in the 1840s and now survives less as a port than a tourist attraction. Grey Masts is 3 minutes walk from Robe’s beautiful beach, where the Robe Motel sits; 1 minute from the Caledonian Inn, an 1850s English-style pub, which is over the road (you get to hear the…
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