Soweto Gospel Choir
(Adelaide Fringe, Sunday 19 March 2023) The Varnished Culture has seen a few choirs this season, but apart from being ordered to ‘Move’ at a cathedral show, nothing has been as kinetic as the Soweto Gospel Choir, appearing at ‘Gluttony’ in Rymill Park last night. With verve, colour, and in particular, motion, the group sang lustily and well, with minimal instrument backing (percussion, keyboard). You didn’t need to know the language to get the message of Hope, with some songs from their Grammy-winning album, Freedom, but it was refreshing to have some standards as well – Hallelujah and A Change is Gonna…
Continue Reading →NoScars
These great film performances didn’t win an Oscar – so who cares? The Oscars have been a joke for decades, and the presentation doesn’t even live up to Johnny Carson’s famous description: “2 hours of sparkling entertainment packed into a 5-hour show.” Most of us know that when it comes to the Oscars, those people ain’t right. Disclaimer: When we say, for example, that De Niro gave a great performance in Taxi Driver, we are not having a shot at Peter Finch, who won the Oscar in that year. On the other hand, when Judy Garland didn’t win in 1954…..TVC…
Continue Reading →Celestial
(Adelaide Chamber Singers, Adelaide Festival, St Peter’s Cathedral, Adelaide, 15 March 2023) 10 pm. St Peter’s Cathedral. After a quick drink at the Cathedral Hotel, we took our pews to see and hear the 20-strong* Adelaide Chamber Singers perform liturgical and general choral works, medieval and contemporary, all paeans to the heavens, under expert conductor Christie Anderson. They were sublime; strong but subtle, and in both harmony and melody, they provided great clarity. The beautiful vaulted interior of St Peters provided the stage from which the ensemble sallied forth, disported about various points of the cathedral (high altar, pulpit, along the…
Continue Reading →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…
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