Restless Dream | Bob Weatherall, Halfway, Digi Youth Arts & Alethea Beetson
It’s through Uncle Bob Weatherall where the reality hits that we are experiencing more than art and performance - it’s truth telling performed with rawness and honesty. Restless Dream tells the real-life journey of Uncle Bob’s efforts of repatriation and bringing back the ancestral remains of those who have died to be buried back on their country, back to Kamilaroi. Bringing peace and ensuring a real passing can happen.
Street Serenades | Brisbane Festival
I seem to have spent quite a bit of the last week lurking around Brisbane parks (and even a council pool). Don’t worry; I was waiting to see circus, dance, theatre, sword-swallowing, and to catch some local bands. And I wasn’t alone, as I was in the company of a few other hardy souls, as we waited for the latest Brisbane Festival Street Serenade.
For Honeyman Street | Sean Sennett & Band
Having six female vocalists to call upon meant that Sennett was able to craft a set that touched on a different aspects of love, and embraced a variety of musical styles. From country to rock, from Bowie influences through to a Beatles vibe, and from funkier pieces through to soft rock. Not at all bad for just one hour.
The Freshblood Festival 2021 | Vena Cava Productions
The Freshblood Festival allows a platform for emerging artists to showcase and workshop their work in a professional capacity. Each performance I viewed was written by current QUT students and alumni. I must admit that I was blown away by the level of professionalism that was showcased in this festival, and I hope that I will be able to get to the festival again next year.
Shanty Club | The Salty Sirens
There’s such a power to communal singing. When a large group of people can come together with a similar interest and sing in union, whether you think you’re a good singer or not, it feels special joining in on the choruses and sharing in the collective voice. Elyse and Kristy have that understanding and knew how to get the audience engaged as they built up to the final shanty which allowed members of the crowd to come up with their own lyrics for us all to sing along to.
Vibrations | Dots+Loops
I am greeted by the delightfully odd, creatively fruity and ASMR-inspired sounds of Provocative Vibrations. Clearly extremely well thought and articulated and AT THE SAME TIME an unnerving chaotic mash-up of sound, action, noise and voice, this is a cool weird experience. There is something so delightful to think that right now, in Brisbane, there are people making such a fabulously strange mash-up of noises, and rehearsing them perfectly, and there are eager audiences out there braying to get a hold of it. It’s heart-warming, it really is.
High Fi - Jazz Lounge - Feat. Bobby Singh & Na Moja
The intimate venue of The Sideshow in West End played host to High Fi, a Jazz Lounge like setting featuring four talented musicians: Bobby Singh beating away on the tabla, Matt Ottignon’s breathtaking display of the sax and clarinet, Benjamin Walsh adding in the drums and percussion and Shenzo Gregorio dazzling us with the beauty of the viola, guitar, and custom stringed instruments.
Songs My Aunties Taught Me | Heru Pinkasova & Dr Rhythm
Wow wow wow. I feel like my eardrums have just been given a delightful, melodic pounding. Songs My Aunties Taught Me is part opera, part beatboxing, part comedy, and one hundred percent remarkable. This first collaboration between songstress Heru Pinkasova and the beatboxing, drumming Dr Rhythm is a melodious fusion of two very different art forms, which tells the stories of influential women in Heru’s life; both her mother and aunties, and the great women of colour who sang before her.
Songs My Aunties Taught Me | Heru Pinkasova & Dr Rhythm
The interactions between Aunty Heru and Jonny Drama brings out a humorous side to the show and the chemistry between them is endearing as it feels like they have both known each other for a long time and that they have toured lengthy with this show despite it being their first. As talented as Heru is with her voice, Jonny’s beatboxing skills are similarly impressive.
Nonstop | Dots + Loops
Is music still music if one rejects a central tone or key? A melody or chorus? The usual instruments in their usual styles? Dots+Loops provides excellent answers to all these questions, bundled together into one odd, eclectic, at times mesmerising evening.
Feedback | Dots+Loops
Feedback offered a sublime balance of artistic innovation and inviting, engaging audience experiences. If one were ever pressed to showcase the unique charm and potential of Brisbane’s creative community in one event, Feedback would do nicely.
Conviction | Dots+Loops
It’s hypnotic, beautiful and, in a strangely weightless way, gripping. The kind of performance that could easily open the minds of more populistly inclined audiences to the brilliance of opera and medieval art music. Which, when considered as a feat independent of the specific performance context, feels almost miraculous.
Skyward | Republic of Song
We begin with a beautiful dreamy introduction, a delicate song performed on cello and piano as we watch a mesmerising timelapse. Throughout the performance, Bale explores the inherent urge to escape, to fly free into the sky, and the inevitable sadness that comes with the realisation of gravity, and impossibility, and mortality.
Yothu Yindi and the Treaty Project & Yirrmal
This is truly political music. Music that heals. Music that challenges. Music to dance to. Music to rise up with
Pub Choir
So, what makes Pub Choir, so popular? A lot of it comes down to the able direction of Astrid and Guitar Wizard, Waverney Yasso, who live by the ethos that everybody can sing, and it’s their mission to prove it. Each month, they choose a song, break it down into harmonies and effortlessly guide the group through the song until they’re singing in glorious harmony. All in under 90 minutes.