Aug 03

Joe Bonamassa – Adelaide Gig Details

He’s as busy as he’s ever been, and his new album Driving Towards The Daylight has been breaking all of his previous chart positions and records around the world.  Since June this year, Joe Bonamassa has been in the studio with Black Country Communion (recording their 3rd collection of songs), filmed his own all-acoustic set at the Vienna Opera House for a new DVD (to be tentatively released in March of 2013), made his debut appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, and been honoured by the Vienna Walk of Stars, imprinting his hands, feet and signature to be forever immortalised alongside the likes of Deep Purple, Alice Cooper and Peter Frampton.

But the hardest-working man in music is ready and raring to go again; a recent 6 week break has him fighting-fit and looking forward to hitting the road yet again.  Before returning to Australia, Joe Bonamassa performs in Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, and China.  That’s after shows in Argentina, Austria, Poland, France, Germany and the UK, and before a massive run of shows throughout the United States.  That’s one hell of a work ethic, and a massive level of demand for one of the finest blues rock performers on the planet.

Enjoy him while we have him; Bonamassa is here in October, bringing his fantastic band with him.

Adelaide Gig Details Are:

Tuesday Oct 9 Her Majesty’s Theatre Adelaide SA www.bass.net.au

New album DRIVING TOWARDS THE DAYLIGHT out now –

“outstanding” 4 stars – STACK MAGAZINE

“Bonamassa’s considerable talent for releasing consistently high-quality albums with great riffs and stunning guitar playing remains undiminished” 4 stars – THE AUSTRALIAN

“demands your attention from the get-go” 4 stars –  REVERB MAGAZINE

“When ‘the Blues had a baby and they named it Rock’n’Roll’, I reckon Joe Bonamassa was right there in the delivery room.” – FORTE MAGAZINE

www.jbonamassa.com

Jul 31

RIOT RUNNERS DEBUT E.P. LAUNCH! – AUGUST 18th (moved to THE PROMETHEAN!!)

UPDATE: DUE TO UNFORSEEN CIRCUMSTANCES INVOLVING THE ORIGINAL VENUE, THE LAUNCH IS NOW GOING TO BE HELD AT ‘THE PROMETHEAN’ 116 GROTE STREET, ADELAIDE !!!

After more than 2 and half years of cutting their teeth on the local scene, Riot Runners are set to release their long awaited debut EP, ‘Le Seul’, at The Academy on Saturday 18 August with a great line-up of local and interstate talent.

Take a look at the first single ‘Overthrown Again’ from the EP performed live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4cP4pad2Ow&feature=plcp

$10 limited pre-sale tickets available from the bands*

*All attendees receive a complimentary EP upon entry

Doors open 8pm

The line-up:

Riot Runners
http://www.facebook.com/riotrunnersband

Kingston Downes (VIC)
The Sunbirds
Nikai

The facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/events/262029497245724/

Jul 31

Billy Bragg – Ain’t Nobody Can Sing Like Me Tour – Details of Adel Show

ADELAIDE • Wednesday 31 October • Town Hall • TIX: bass.net.au

Modern day troubadour Billy Bragg comes to Australia this October with a special new two part show: the first half celebrating the legacy of Woody Guthrie, the original alternative musician, and the second exploring Billy’s own extensive repertoire, highlighting the songs that have made him famous over his almost three decade, 14-album career.

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, folk singer and ‘dust-bowl troubadour’, a prolific writer whose songs, ballads, prose and poetry championed the plight of the underdog. Billy Bragg has a special musical affinity with Woody – when Woody’s daughter Nora unearthed a treasure trove of her father’s unrecorded lyrics after his death, Billy Bragg and Wilco worked together setting these to music, creating the critically acclaimed Mermaid Avenue albums. The Complete Sessions has just been released, including Mermaid Avenue Vol. III. Billy will play songs from Woody’s extensive repertoire as well as the Mermaid Avenue albums, giving audiences new insights into one of the most influential figures in popular music, a man who inspired artists from Bob Dylan to Joe Strummer, as well as Billy himself.

In the show’s second half, Billy Bragg will take a trip through his back catalogue in his own inimitable style. In nearly three decades of performing and activism, Billy Bragg, described recently by the London Times as a “national treasure”, has crafted an incredible collection of songs traversing both the personal and the political. A guardian of the radical dissenting tradition that stretches back over centuries of political, cultural, and social history, Billy is a consummate performer and gifted raconteur. His live shows, like his songs, are funny, warm, sad and true.

Billy Bragg, ‘the Bard from Barking’, famously started out as a tank driver in the British Army. Things didn’t work out – “When you’ve driven one tank, you’ve driven them all”– and in early 1982 he found himself back on the streets of Barking, writing songs. Drawing inspiration from the DIY ethos of punk rock, he decided to take on the world single-handedly, armed with only an electric guitar. His first album, ‘Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy’ came out in 1983.

Billy was politicised by Rock Against Racism in the late 1970s. He marshalled his songs in opposition to Margaret Thatcher, supporting the miners when they went on strike in 1984 and subsequently founding Red Wedge, a collective of left wing musicians who campaigned for the defeat of Thatcher at the 1987 election. Throughout his career, Billy Bragg has remained contemporary, providing his insightful, clear-eyed yet hopeful commentary on our times through social, political and technological change.

Although often defined by his political songs, Billy is also a writer of great love songs. He said “I write about the things make me angry: sometimes it’s the government, sometimes it’s the girl.” His songs describe the emotional peaks and troughs of love, navigating the difficult terrain of modern relationships.

Don’t miss Billy Bragg: “storyteller, historian, activist, father, enthusiast, pilgrim, entertainer, minstrel, humorist, rambler, sermoniser and scholar,” (The Guardian) in Australia this October and November.billybragg.co.uk.

For bookings go to vivleespresents.com

Jul 30

ASO – Mahler – The Song of the Earth

The ASO’s eight year Mahler Cycle project is in its penultimate phase with two works this year before the epic journey concludes in 2013.

It is clearly a bold and visionary undertaking but under Music Director and Chief Conductor, Arvo Volmer’s direction, Saturday evening’s Das Lied Von Der Erde (The Song of the Earth) certainly suggests the project will end as another landmark for the ASO.

When conceived in 1908, Mahler had just experienced a series of devastating events in his life, including the loss of his role as director of the Vienna Court Opera (due, in part, to anti-semitism) and the death of his eldest daughter.  As well, he personally had been diagnosed with a congenital heart disorder. The sum of it all caused him to express to a close friend at the time, “I have lost everything I have gained in terms of who I thought I was.”

With the haunting prospect of the ‘cursed’ ninth symphony looming for him as well, it is probably no surprise that the content of Mahler’s The Song of the Earth is often so dark, moody and restless and in increasing contemplation of his own mortality. Adapting Hans Bethge’s own translations of Chinese poetry, the work is littered with phrases such as ‘Dark is life, dark is death’, ‘My heart is weary. My little lamp has gone out with a splutter;’ and ‘My friend, on this earth, life has not been kind to me.’

Mahler’s friend, Bruno Walter called it “the most personal utterance among Mahler’s creations, and perhaps in all music” with the last song in the cycle, The Farewell, a haunting affair requiring all the mastery conductor, soloist and players can muster.

In this regard, the ASO’s performance on Saturday night was greatly enhanced by the work of Swedish Katarina Karneus (mezzo soprano) and Stuart Skelton (tenor), the latter certainly known to Adelaide audiences for his performances in the 2005 Ring Cycle, for which he received a Sir Robert Helpmann Award. Volmer and the ASO are to be congratulated on bringing two such world class performers to the Festival Theatre for this performance.

This was just the fourth time the ASO has performed Das Lied Von Der Erde and the first since 1986. Armed with this fact, those in attendance on Saturday may well have contemplated their own potential for longevity (as Mahler was doing his) should it come to the question of whether they would get to hear it again in Adelaide in their lifetime. However the vicissitudes of life may pan out, just being there have them one up on the composer himself who found not only this dark period not an interregnum between happier times but that he would both die within three years without having heard this great work performed and still fall victim to the ‘cursed’ 9th.

The next stage of Mahler cycle project is the Symphony No. 7 which is being played at the Festival Theatre on Saturday 11th August.

Jul 30

MUSIC – Speak Up 2012 – The Gov – 15 Sept

Musicians join forces to raise awareness about mental health

One in five people are affected by mental health issues

Speak Up is an event put together by local musicians to raise awareness about mental health on behalf of sufferers and their carers.

Event organiser and singer Kylena Vigus said:

‘Mental illness is still little understood by our community, although so many people suffer from these issues, and this affects many others, including families and friends. There is still a workplace stigma attached to these problems. Last year I lost three friends to suicide, and felt I really had to do something to put this issue on the agenda – something practical to help. Being a musician – an afternoon of music to raise funds and awareness seemed like one thing I could do.’

Speak Up is holding its second event at the Governor Hindmarsh hotel, with three bands performing.

Kylena Vigus said:

‘This won’t be an afternoon of gloom, it will be a celebration of achievement and empowerment, as well as some very good music.’

The bands, Acoustic Highway, The Black Iris and Chris Finnen’s New Electric Band, will play old and new favourites, and the MC will be well known presenter Xavier Minniecon.

The event will be held  on the 15th September, 2012 from 12:30pm – 4pm at the Venue, Governor Hindmarsh Hotel.

Part proceeds will go to Grow SA.

Kylena Vigus said :

‘The main aim is to encourage those who suffer or are affected by mental illness, to not hide or suffer in silence. Too many lives are lost due to the stigma and public perception. Speak Up is not about education, but realisation that someone close to any one of us could be suffering in silence. ‘

Tickets are available through Venuetix or the Governor Hindmarsh Hotel

More information and interviews: Kylena Vigus  (kylenavigus@hotmail.com) 08 8276 9277)

Jul 27

Love Child – Higher Ground – 4.5K

When Joanna Murray-Smith’s Love Child played at this year’s Fringe it quickly became one of the hits of the Festival, winning a Critics Circle Best award.

Director and Early Worx supremo, Charles Sanders, has brought the show back in the run up to him taking it to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe – that being a delight to help counter the wave of that festival’s material that inundates our stages in February and March.

And, it must be said, the chances of it doing well are high.

The story revolves around just two characters, Billie (Anna Cheney), the blond TV soap star who has tracked down her biological mother, Anna (Chrissie Page), the 1960s radical who gave her child away after an ill-conceived affair and the shock of parents.

Both actors give excellent performances. Page’s Anna is probably the easier to grasp and her control of the twin emotions of her highly self-regulated world confronted by the roaring torrent of uncertain emotions arising from her daughter’s appearance is excellent. Billie is a somewhat more problematic character but the beautiful, blond Cheney nicely mixes the mentally banal with a scheming streak and, of course, those deep desires in any child given up for adoption to know about their real parents.

Engrossing and engaging, the players and the playwright keep your sympathies swinging and suspense building.

Well done to all and best wishes for the trip ahead – Early Worx’s Love Child should have no problems putting our local theatre on the international map.

Kryztoff Rating  4.5K

Jul 24

An Exhibition by Katherine Botten – Format Gallery – 5K

It may well be that the stand out exhibition of this year’s SALA season is not even in SALA. Emerging photographer, Katherine Botten, has produced an extraordinary work that resides on the floor of the upstairs level of Peel St’s Format Gallery until 10 August.

We reviewed Kat’s first exhibition, twenty one, just before Christmas last year (Click here for that review). Then we commented favourably on the small scale of the photographic works and her clever use of montages to create effects both as to form as well as the objects depicted. This exhibition chucks away the first tenet of that and so expands on the second that the outcome is simply enormous, conceptually and physically.

Based on her recent experiences of a debut trip to India, the first portion of which was in the company of her father, fellow artist, Bill, Kat has used images taken then and enlarged, distorted, sliced and diced and otherwise manipulated them before reconstituting them, unrecognisable from the originals, on the floor.

Alternately lit darkly or under a strong red globe and accompanied by the most painful, piercing transcendental music, the result leaves it open to so many responses from the viewer, exactly as India itself does. Are these the scales on the skin of a crocodile or other reptile, a predator that knows not how to relent? Are we seeing a drone’s view of seething, waves of sub-continental humanity, rather like our indigenous painters look down on their landscapes when painting their dream time stories? No, it can’t be for the Format’s windows are partly plastered over, presenting only the potential of the outside world to escape to. So are we trapped amongst the ashes of a failed society where poverty, disease and malnutrition still dominate the land?

There is something other worldly about it all; a cosmic 70’s stuff up perhaps or a concept for Warhol in this Adelaide’s The Factory. Seeing Kat’s other works and reading her words (Click here for her tumblr profile) there is no shortage of the usual undergraduate angst and extracurricular undertakings to drive the emotions and the visions deeply embedded here. But beyond those things, we see not only her India but India itself, lying shredded but ordered on a cold concrete floor.

This is a most unsettling, yet compelling work from an artist who obviously possesses that rare ability to combine, through distortion and manipulation of photographs, the physical world and raw emotion.

Anyone who has been to India and been moved by the place must see this work.

Kryztoff Rating   5K

Jul 20

Nutcracker On Ice – 4K

The world’s foremost theatrical ice skating ensemble, the Imperial Ice Stars, has delivered a wondrous production in their Nutcracker On Ice. For the delight of young and old, this 25 strong line-up commands the Festival theatre stage like it was their own.

Through whirling, pivoting, jumping and landing, the story of the Nutcracker and its famous score by Tchaikovsky, is given a new look and powerful feel.

Grace, athleticism, fire stick twirling, magical tricks and even some high wire manoeuvres spice up what is pretty much faultless skating. The sets are massive and lavish but the performers never lose touch with their audience with oohs and ahhs common place, leading into a finale that had many present on their feet.

This is a school girl’s delight and no parent or grandparent will regret the experience of seeing this world class ensemble doing their stuff.

Kryztoff Rating  4K

Jul 17

Fat Pig – Bakehouse – 4K

The foibles of an office world for those in their 20s are starkly exposed in this highly enjoyable production of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig.

When plump, outsider, Helen (Julia Mayer) meets office stud Tom (Elliot Howard) casually over lunch one day their inherent selves (Helen’s known to her, Tom’s not so much) are attracted. When they start seeing each other, the gossip gods in the office start their war to rid themselves of this intruder into their world of cross cubicle romance and boys on the prowl. First, Jeannie (Renee Gentle) sees another potential catch thwarted through shallowness (his supposedly, not hers) and Carter (Daniel McKinnon) sees no harm in unmercifully humiliating his mate, Tom, in pursuit of a status quo which is as close to nirvana as he can imagine.

This is an excellent production. All four cast members do an excellent job and it splits hairs somewhat to perhaps raise Mayer’s and McKinnon’s performances above the other two. Mayer’s giggly sincerity holds true and McKinnon’s obnoxiousness seems scarily genuine.

Jesse Butler’s direction and stage design (along with Peter Green) are excellent; the stage as well as the cast (except Helen) is in black and white, playing to the nature of the personas and their views.

Excellent fun and nobody of any age who has been in an office environment will miss recognising all the characters.

Kryztoff Rating    4K

Jul 16

Let’s Make Web TV Launches – MRC

The Media Resource Centre (MRC) today launched the guidelines for its inaugural web series production initiative, Let’s Make Web TV. The production initiative will provide three teams with $2500 cash plus $2500 in-kind equipment to make three webisodes.

A partnership with You Tube will give the initiative its own You Tube channel, where the teams will be supported as You Tube partners including marketing, audience development and monetisation support.

Prior to the launch of the Let’s Make Web TV, a full day forum attended by 60 emerging screen practitioners explored what makes both a successful web series, how to best market them and how to approach their monetisation.  Speakers included Mike Jones (AFTRS), Wynston Alberts of You Tube/Google and Simon Britton (Media Wave).

At the forum, Simon Britton said “The MRC is leading the nation with Let’s Make Web TV.  It is the first screen agency to provide support to launch emerging screen practitioners’ careers through web series”.

The MRC Director, Gail Kovatseff said “Increasingly emerging SA filmmakers are successfully moving directly to the web as a pathway. So it makes sense that the MRC shifts resources so it can support their first web series productions with cash, script development advice and equipment”.

At the Let’s Make Web TV, four teams of SA filmmakers working in web series provided case studies of their experiences. Dario Russo and David Ashby spoke on their mega hit, Italian Spiderman which gave them the exposure for SBS to support them to make Danger Five. Producers, Kirsty Stark & Ella McIntyre and writer/director Victoria Cox spoke on how they successfully crowd funding $25,000 to make Wastelander Panda, whose released prologue had over 100,000 hits in one week.  Alex “Shooter” Williamson spoke on how he has capitalised on his brand building over 50,000 subscribers with more than million hits for his Loosest Aussie Bloke Ever.

Feedback for the forum, which was universally excellent, indicated that aspiring filmmakers were very keen for knowledge and support in this new arena:

  • Let’s make Web TV seminar was by far the most useful, practical, informative & motivating event I’ve been to.
  • The Let’s Make Web TV seminar was fantastic! Really invigorating and informative, we loved it.

It was great how altruistic the filmmakers were in sharing their experience and knowledge.

The Media Resource Centre is a member of Screen Network and funded by Screen Australia and the South Australian Film Corporation. The SAFC has provided cash support to the Let’s Make Web TV production initiative.

Guidelines and application forms will be available download from www.mrc.org.au from Wednesday 11 July.