An update on the progress of two works about to be premiered over the next 4 weeks.... 

In this blog I talk about the last session I had with the Australian Art Quartet at Bundanon, the sudden flash of "I know what to do", and outline the next steps to making this work complete!

Lyrics excerpt from Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage"

The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me

I had my second session with the quartet today. I didn't have a lot of time allocated (2 hours were scheduled for me!) and I ended up going over time.

We went from easy and free to EXTREMELY CHALLENGING...

You wouldn't believe what the Australian Art Quartet did today. It is amazing working with really accomplished musicians and relating their music techniques to movement techniques, their understanding of music composition to movement composition... I'm making an integrated sound/movement work... we don't know what about yet, but we've got an 8 day residency at Bundanon to figure it out!

It's been a while between news posts, and there's a lot to catch up on... a few performances done, and a number of projects in the pipeline.... 

I write about what I've been up to for the past couple of weeks in artistic development and life!.. ok omitting a few things, but hey, there's always just so many wonderful artistic things to explore

I'm using this post to see how my Mailchimp RSS feed sender handles these things... I really want to be able to just automate everything. Wouldn't that be spectacular? 

Morphing from composer to artist, from 2016 to 2017, from Gallop House to Mattie Furphy House. 2017 Sydney Festival of Really Good Sex, Dean Walsh, The Song Company, Dapheny Chen, Australian Art Quartet, and what am I doing in a writer's residency?

The last two weeks has been immense... a few key takeaways from my experience of an extraordinary workshop

An update on the Strut / Maxine Doyle with Sarah Dowling workshop up doing... my injuries are ok, and I'm going though a bunch of developments and epiphanies whilst getting excited about our showing this coming Thursday... and you may have noticed I got a haircut. 

I’m in a hot magnesium salt bath nursing my various bruises, grazes, and what feels like a pulled left rhomboid…

I'm in a workshop with Maxine Doyle from Punchdrunk Theatre organised by Strut Dance! There's a showing in a couple of weeks time. I'm also starting this new work for the Song Company and I've started deconstructing the meaning behind the text I'll be setting... maybe you can help me with that, as I don't know if I've got it right.... 

I performed my songs for the first time today in front of a very awesome crowd.  A great announcement for 2017 happened, more dance, and more life modelling.

I had my first dance class today, by Gaga teacher Guy Shomroni produced by Strut Dance. It made me question the relationship between body, emotion, notation and performance. 

I'm continuing the path of becoming more of a performer, and discovering a few really awesome things about being the composer/performer combo along the way, as well as discovering parallels between my universes as a publisher, leader, and composer.

So I'm now writing music that I intend on myself performing, voice and piano, un-amplified, no electronics... just me, 88 keys, and the audience. I think I've changed the way I write because of it... 

I'm writing "Meth Song", a work inspired by Johann Hari's "Chasing the Scream" that highlights psychological issues as the cause of addictions, including drug addictions. 

As I stood there, waiting desperately for Bonnie to call out how much time there was left on this 30 minute pose, I remembered how time and perception are linked...

A new way of supporting artists has arisen, and I've signed up!