Unforgettable: Camerata evokes eternal memories
Queensland Chamber Orchestra Camerata collaborated with singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke and actor Barbara Lowing to create Your Eternal Memories, an unforgettable highlight of this year’s Brisbane Festival.
These days Brisbane Festival is comparable in scale and reach to Edinburgh Festival, Adelaide Festival and The Biennale of Sydney. Now in its 29th year, like most distinctive arts festivals it celebrates dance, theatre, fine art, film, poetry and music in a program of challenging events that dare to be different.
Care is taken to ensure that the content appeals to all age groups and a culturally diverse audience. There’s a balance between national and international offerings and homegrown content. It’s a massive undertaking but Louise Bezzina, in her sixth and final year as artistic director, has incorporated productions from local companies including Opera Queensland’s La Boheme, Shake and Stir’s The Lovers, Australasian Dance Collective’s Bad Nature (a collaboration with Club Guy & Roni and Studio Boris Acket from The Netherlands), Stephen Page’s Baleen Moondjan and Camerata, Queensland Chamber Orchestra’s Your Eternal Memories on September 13.
Brendan Joyce, Camerata’s director and musical leader’s ideology is an ideal match for Bezzina’s vision. In pursuit of adventurous and often risky programming, he is keen on collaborations with other artists including non-classical and Indigenous performers as well as other art forms.
Camerata’s broad variety of subscribers and fans welcome this classical unit’s wide-ranging events. And how easily and convincingly the ensemble delivers an eclectic spread of music from classical, jazz and pop to experimental genres.
Music is meaningful in multiple ways. It can be mood enhancing, therapeutic, educational, sociable and strongly attached to memory. How many of us turn off the radio when it broadcasts a certain song associated with a sad event or turn the volume up when it conjures something happy? Audiences were invited to share poignant memories with Camerata, which inspired this concert’s eclectic program.
Your Eternal Memories – the name inspired by John Tavener’s piece, Eternal Memory – was soulfully and exquisitely rendered by cellist Karol Kowalik and Camerata, with Brisbane actor Barbara Lowing as narrator. Lowing sat on the side of QPAC’s Concert Hall stage skilfully intersecting text with music. ARIA-nominated Kate Miller-Heidke, whose original pop songs engage the talented Brisbane singer’s natural and operatically trained voice, delighted the crowd with a selection of hits and the premiere of her new song, Isabella.
Dvorak’s Serenade, the first movement, comprised Camerata’s elegantly voiced introductory segment, which was followed by a warm interpretation of Mozart’s Cassation No. 1 with Sam Everingham’s funny reflection on the pitfalls of travel with Cobb and Co.
Miller-Heidke’s set of three songs began with The Last Day on Earth, which was warmly greeted by the crowd. The arrangement for the classical ensemble had a gracious authenticity but here and there overpowered the singing.
Where, from Rabbits, the music theatre work that is an allegory about the colonisation of Australia, composed by Miller-Heidke and Iain Grandage, fared better with Camerata sensitively nuancing the emotional intensity. Her charismatic account with superb and heartfelt vocalising was a highlight.
As a young child, Brendan Joyce recorded Therese, his mum, singing Sorry Her Lot Who Loves Too Well from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S Pinafore. Therese was a feted singer in North Queensland’s Burdekin. In a moving rendition, Camerata accompanied this old recording, with even the occasional crackle, which demonstrated Therese’s accomplished singing while the strings spun a respectfully dignified accompaniment.
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The Typewriter Concerto delivered at breakneck speed with soloist Jonny Ng’s comic and frantic “typing” lightened the mood before interval.
In the second half, Corelli’s Christmas Concerto sparkled with marvellous detailing of Baroque style. Lowing’s sardonic and skilful narration of The Dunny Man from Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs about an unfortunate calamity before mains sewers came to the Sydney suburb of Kogarah, successfully demonstrated this event’s bold fusion of words and music and the split-second timing involved in achieving it. Enjoyable though the story was, it was a pity not to be able to focus exclusively on the superb characterisation of Witold Lutosławski’s intricate Five Folk Melodies, which accompanied the tale.
This entertaining, nostalgic and unusual event braided with six dazzling performances by Miller-Heidke ended with a child’s recollection of Cindy, a menacing, marmalade cat expertly recited by Lowing. Camerata’s ironic version of Mancini’s Pink Panther, which followed, was gloriously slinky, swung and tongue-in-cheek. Admirably, this concert championed the broader goals of Brisbane Festival.