Scraps Of Mind

Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Posted by karooch on

February 16, 2010

Culture in the Colonies

There’s a great scheme going on with some of our independent movie theatres over the last couple of years where they do direct live broadcasts of operas from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

I’ve been going for the last 18 months and the experience is fantastic. Not only do you get a fabulous high definition up-close-and-personal viewing experience of the production (and The Met productions are seriously over the top), but you also get to see what’s going on behind the curtain when the scenery is being changed between acts. And that has to be seen to be believed. And on top of that, the whole thing is presented by a leading opera star, such as Placido Domingo or Renee Fleming, who catch the lead performers as they leave the stage at the end of an act and chat with them.

A couple of theatres in Melbourne subscribe to this broadcast but my venue of choice is The Sun Theatre in Yarraville; a beautifully restored art deco theatre with intimately sized theatres and comfy armchair style seating. The last opera production was a couple of weeks ago. Bizet’s Carmen, a well known story and a truly magnificent production. And because it’s broadcast live and has plenty of close-up camera work, you get to see all the little prop malfunctions and how the performers deal with them in such a way that the people in the ‘real’ theatre would not actually see.

Just recently The Sun have branched out in this area and are including ballet performances from the Russian ballet as well as plays from the West End of London. These aren’t broadcast live but they’re recorded live and are presented within two weeks of the actual performance so there’s a feeling of currency about them.

I went to my first play on Saturday: Nation by Mark Ravenhill based on a book by Terry Pratchett (nothing to do with the Discworld Series of which I am a huge fan). It’s a production from the National Theatre, London.

“A parallel world, 1860. Two teenagers thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau’s village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. One wears next to nothing, the other a long white dress; neither speaks the other’s language; somehow they must learn to survive. As starving refugees gather, Daphne delivers a baby, milks a pig, brews beer and does battle with a mutineer. Mau fights cannibal Raiders, discovers the world is round and questions the reality of his tribe’s fiercely patriarchal gods. Together they come of age, overseen by a foul-mouthed parrot, as they discard old doctrine to forge a new Nation.”

I wasn’t sure how I would go watching a stage play in a movie format. And it took me about 15 minutes to get my head into the right sort of place. But once I was there I truly enjoyed the experience.

The production mixed projected film and puppetry in an unlikely combination with the ‘organic’ performance in a way that worked wonderfully. Speaking as someone who likes a story to be delivered pretty straight and not given an ‘arty’ treatment I was a little nervous of how this was all going to come across. But it worked brilliantly.

I’m always fascinated by stage productions and how so many different places, moods, times etc. can be created ‘live’ in front of your eyes without all the ‘trickery’ that’s available with cameras. The Nation production was a minimal scenery production (not usually my favourite option) and performed on a revolving stage that centred on a dome that represented the Asia Pacific region of a globe of the world, and doubled as the deck of a ship and a South Sea island.

All the performers did a wonderful job and the script explored some interesting corners of the human psyche, whilst still being a fun and entertaining story.

Because they had only received the file from London that day, the Sun team hadn’t had a chance to give it a run through to test it and sure enough, we had a couple of glitches. We lost the last couple of minutes before the Interval and, more importantly, the curtain came down two and a half minutes before the end. Things were looking ugly in the theatre when the management came to apologise for what had happened and said that if we could hang on for about 10 minutes they’d get it sorted and we’d get our ending. Then they gave us all a complementary pass to sooth ruffled feathers and all was well.

So if you’re fortunate enough to live in or around London and you’re looking for something a bit different (without being off the wall) to see, I can highly recommend Nation.

And for everyone else, why not check out your local independent cinema and see if they participate in this worldwide broadcast scheme. It’s a great way to try out something different without buying expensive tickets.

Kilmore Celtic Festival 2009

Someone must have pressed the fast forward button and whizzed the year through, because I can’t believe it’s been a year since we headed off down the Hume Highway on our annual pilgrimage to the Kilmore Celtic Festival.

And of course, my annual homage to the event.

I made this layout using Marcee Duggar's Music Kit with some embellishments from Amy Cheeseman's Heartsong. I'm going through a phase of blending my photos so that they form part of the background paper at the moment.

Once again I meant to buy the early-bird tickets and get the discount. Once again it slipped my mind. Once again I almost forgot which weekend it was on.

But despite all that, once again I have had a great day out at my favourite folk festival.

Kilmore lies about 40 minutes drive north of Melbourne. So from my perspective it’s one of the handiest folk festivals I can get to. And an added bonus is that my sister lives ten minutes away from Kilmore on the way home so it’s become a bit of a tradition to stop there on our way back for a bite to eat and a cosy catch up in front of their fire.

The Kilmore Celtic Festival takes place on the last weekend of June each year and kicks off with a dinner and cailaigh on Friday evening, culminating with a big lunch and concert at one of the Kilmore pubs on Sunday afternoon.

And in between there’s Saturday!

A day packed full of great bands, musicians and singers as well as markets, dancing and workshops.

Kilmore is a small festival and for me that’s part of its charm. There are always plenty of new acts to sample as well as many old favourites to revisit. And this year was no exception.

My favourite band, Ced Meledo’s Bric-a-Brac were in fine form. They represent the Breton contribution to the Celtic culture. And Ced is cute, French and wears leather pants. What more could you ask for? Oh yes, their music is great to listen to.

Another favourite act, Braemar, opened the Festival and woke us up to a set of Scottish balllads. And we enjoyed the return of Bhan Tre who are always great to watch. Each year we like to find a new act that we can add to our favourites and this year we came across two. Both are young bands from the Lake School of Celtic Music. One is called Rant and the other is Dram. Definitely two bands to watch out for on the celtic/folk scene.

And, in what has now become part of our Kilmore Festival tradition, we stopped in at Elaine and Greg’s on our way home. Topping of a terrific day with home made pizza and wine.

Aaaah! Life’s good!

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Posted by karooch on

August 18, 2008

Scrapbooking Social Media Love-in

Last month Darren Rowse from Problogger ran a Social Media Love-in for his readers. And following in his footsteps, I thought I’d set up one for on-line scrapbookers.

The object of the exercise was to help all his readers to connect with each other on the social media sites that they belonged to. They could then network better amongst the community and support each other’s blogs by notifying their friends when they post something extra good on their blogs, or when they find something good on someone else’s blog, so that their friends can read and share their social media love. That will help their blogs to grow and increase their traffic.

The social media game needs to be played carefully. registering with social media sites like StumbleUpon and Digg and then just submitting your own material is not a good strategy. You need to interact with the community and spread your love around if you want to reap the benefits of other people’s love.

Darren’s project was a huge success. receiving over 600 comments in the first 24 hours.

The thing is, scrapbooking tends to be a pretty focused niche. Non-scrapbookers frequently don’t ‘get it’ and so being part of a general blogging related network will usually not really help in your own networking efforts. You need to connect with other like minded souls.

Which is where this Scrapbooking Social Media Love-in comes in.

As a scrapbooker and cardmaker I encourage you to list your profile addresses for the social media sites that you belong to in the comment section.

Then go and visit everyone else’s and add them to your friends list. And start building relationships that will benefit both of you. What goes around comes around and I have found that giving to others in the blogosphere will send benefits back to you.

Make sure that you check the Subscribe to Comments box when you leave your details. That way you’ll be notified when someone leaves their details after you and you can add them to your friends too.

So to get the ball rolling, here are the addresses you can find me on most social media sites. My user ID is karooch pretty much everywhere.

Kirtsy (if you’re not a member of this site (and your female) then you really should be.

http://www.kirtsy.com/user.php?login=karooch

So now you list your profiles in the comments and then go and add everybody else’s profiles as your friends. Don’t forget to check the Subscribe to Comments box so you can get the ones that come after yours.

And while your at it, why not let your own blog readers know about this, or even share it with your own social media friends. And let’s start some Scrapbooking Loving!

Posted by karooch on

September 5, 2007

Dancing with the Stars

Here’s a cute story you might like.

I’ve been a fan of the Ballet for many years now and, together with my Ballet Buddies Yvonne and Sandra, we usually go to three or four Australian Ballet Company productions a year.

Well last night we went to see Destiny which was a program of 2 ballets, beautifully danced to magnificent music.

Anyway, after the production was over I decided I wanted a photo of the three of us. I had forgotten to bring my camera but I had my PDA. I knew that wasn’t going to get the best photo but it was better than nothing. So we found a handy spot in one of the foyers just in front of a suitable ballet poster. Just as I was going to ask a woman who was standing close by if she would take the picture of us, she moved off. So I moved on to a couple who were sitting on a bench. I approached and asked if one of them would mind taking the photo and the guy smiled and said he’d be happy to do it.

I take him over to the the other two and we line up for the cheesy grin. I couldn’t understand why Yvonne had gone all giggly all of a sudden. She said something like “We should be taking a photo of you.” And I’m thinking “What’s the matter with her? Why is the acting so weird?” At the same time another part of my brain is kicking in with the thought “Sh*t! That’s Daryl Somers!” Daryl Somers in the host of the Australian version of Dancing with the Stars, which is a very popular TV show in Australia.

Naturally the PDA wouldn’t work properly and we had to muck about trying to take a few before we got one that was half way decent. And he was thoroughly charming in his role as the photographer. He must have been wondering what kind of crazy fans we were because we just wanted him to take our picture, rather than trying to get a picture of us with him.

So whilst most people have photos of themselves taken with celebrities I suspect not many people can say they have a photo of themselves taken by a celebrity. So much cooler, don’t you think?

The Kilmore Celtic Festival

The last weekend in June is always a standard booking in my calendar for the Kilmore Celtic Festival. I wrote about this last year and each year it just keeps getting better.

I enjoy Folk Festivals as a matter of principal. They always have a great vibe and I get to hear some wonderful and diverse music from acts I would not be able to watch elsewhere. But the Kilmore Celtic Festival is always special for me.

The event starts on Friday evening with a dinner and a free Celtic Old Time Dance and ends on Sunday with a Celtic Banquet including entertainment from a number of the Festival performers. And in between there’s Saturday!

Saturday is the main game. Starting with the traditional Poet’s Breakfast from 8am, the Festival performances start rolling out across three venues from 10am till 7pm. Followed by an evening Concert featuring many of the Festival headline acts.

Once again Allan and I rugged up warm in preparation for the traditional Kilmore Festival weather and headed 60km up the Hume Highway for our folkie fix. We were a bit disconcerted then when the weather turned out to be quite mild (for Kilmore in June); the only brief shower occurring whilst we were indoors watching an act. It felt a bit unKilmore-ish.

Credits: Andilynn SiH Template 4, Marcee Duggar Music Kit, Shappy Princess Fall Kit Fortunately we got over it and hopped into the music. Some of our favourite acts were there, including the inimitable Ced le Meledo and his band Bric-a-Brac, with their exciting blend of Louisiana , Quebec , Brittany , North African, Medieval and Cajun music, and Ced’s jokes delivered in his wonderful French accent. Another favourite of ours Braemar. The duo that’s now a trio, played their great repertoire of traditional Scottish music. Their kilts combining with the height of the stage to raise the blood pressure of some of the ladies in the front row.

A performer that we heard for the very first time was Maria Forde. An Irish Australian (”packaged in Ireland, Delivered in Australia”) performing a great mix of traditional songs and her own compositions. And what a voice! Maria performed a number of songs, including Amazing Grace, without any musical accompaniment — always a great quality test for a voice. Absolutely superb.

Mandy and Helen performed a great set with a mix of traditional and their own compositions. Follow the link to hear a sample of their stuff. Mandy and I used to work together in another life so it was great to catch up with her and hear her play.

And the last act we caught, before heading off to Elaine and Greg’s place for a scrumptious dinner and a few wines, was Claymore. Claymore is a sensational Celtic Rock Band. They play fabulous music and are a wonderfully entertaining band to watch. They perform a mixture of traditional Scottish and Irish music with modern Celtic rock thrown into the mix for good measure.

So if you enjoy a bit of Celtic flavour to your music, check out the bands’ sites and sample some of their wares. I think you’ll enjoy.

And to everyone who lives in Melbourne or environs, I heartily recommend that you mark the last weekend in June in next year’s calendar and get yourself along to the Kilmore Celtic Festival. If you can’t make it for the whole weekend, get along for the Saturday. It’s a great value day.