Australasian Special Events

According to the Sydney Festival getting to the Parra Opening Party on Saturday “There’s buses, trains and ferries running to Parramatta. The RiverCat is a great way to get there”

What they don’t tell you is that if you want to come home on the RiverCat you will have to leave the event by 7 PM as the last ferry leaves 4 hours before the event finishes! Duh!

Last year I attended the Trocadero Dance Palace in the Sydney Town Hall and had a great time.  So I was excited that it was to come back for the Festival this year. However I was disappointed to discover that it would not be held in the Town Hall again this year (in fact I don’t think there are any Festival shows in the Town hall this year - is it closed?)

Instead a large stage was set up in Elizabeth St - what a concept! Thanks Lindy!

Trevor Ashley introduced the show… 

The 17 piece Sirens Big Band struck up…

and then eight amazing dancers took to the stage and the two catwalks running out into the audience

although the dance was based on 40s and 50s Lindy Hop and swing it was very sexed up

Dan Barnett crooned through a few numbers 

and blew his ‘bone

while the singers Lisa Adam, Josie Lane and Lizzie Moore belted out contemporary songs along with those from the big band era.

and they were joined by Trevor Ashley

after a 75 min set the band must have been exhausted 

and the audience were fascinated

congratulations to everyone - this was a great event (just disappointed that the trapeze act was canned)

Director: Kris Stewart

Musical Directors: Dan Barnett and David Theak

Choreographer: Cameron Mitchell

Set and Costume Design: Kate Roberts and Mat McCall

Lighting Design: Matthew Marshall

Host: Trevor Ashley

Singers: Lisa Adam, Dan Barnett, Josie Lane & Lizzie Moore  

Musicians: Sirens Big Band

My favorite spot at the Sydney Festival First night turned out to be the Elizabeth St stage.

I happened by during the afternoon when the stage was being set up and was mightily impressed by the huge skyhook from which dangled a trapeze rig. Excited! 

However it never appeared during the night.  Subsequent inquiries revealed that the Festival’s insurer would not cover the Public Liability for the use of the device - bloody spoilsports - it would have been spectacular!

The entertainment kicked off with a very lively set from Electric Empire

who were followed by The Jolly Boys from Jamacia.  All the Boys looked like they would be over 80 and they were all incredibly lively…

especially lead singer Albert Minott… 

who pumped out his version of songs more associated with the rock oeuvre including an amazing version of “One Perfect Day”

while Egbert Washington made his banjo sound like a calypso steel drum.

Derrick Henry showing he has the moves as well..

Then there was the Trocadero Dance Palace - in the next post

Just a few observations by me from a punter’s point of view - with pix (because I do)

Love the concept of blocking off Elizabeth Street…

… and Macquarie St… 

… which gave some performers the opportunity to put the hat out as they warmed up.

However the use of Police horses in such a dense crowd seemed a bit of overkill. OK, I know they are well trained but they were being pushed through the crowd. Overall the Police presence reminded me more of APEC than a friendly festival.

This tangled mess in Hyde Park was a huge hit with the kids and, surprisingly, fun to watch…

… and then it was all pushed up to make a canopy for budding pole dancers.

The FOH compound in the Domain has now grown to the size of a house - it was bigger than the stage in Elizabeth St.

The Domain quickly filled to capacity - 45,000 pax according to official Sydney Festival estimate.  Not bad for a venue that only holds 28,000 - but that is another story (on its way).

However, pedestrian traffic through the Sydney Hospital grounds was blocked, so punters were diverted to either end of the block. At the Lands Office end they were funneled through a 3m wide gap and at the Stage Library end the gap was only 2m.

If this practice is going to continue then surely the State Government needs to fund an underground access route from The Domain to Martin Place station as part of the Domain overhaul - Future Domain report

OK so it looked like it might rain – but that was no excuse not to go.

I really enjoyed The Dynamites at the Festival First Night in Hyde Park on Saturday night and was keen to see their full set at the opening night of the Beck’s Festival Bar at Hyde Park Barracks.

As it turned out I was very disappointed – and it had nothing to do with the band or the rain.

When I arrived I Like It Like That (the support act) were in full swing with punters dancing on the outdoor dance floor and it sounded OK.  Then I moved into the main tented area and thought the mix was very compressed, despite the fact that this is a big band with plenty of percussion and brass – but hey, it was the support act and this was first night after all.

When The Dynamites hit the stage the sound was unfortunately no better.  The rain had also started so that meant that listening from outside wasn’t an option (where for some reason the sound was crisper).

The worst of the mix was the Hammond organ. I’ve no idea where the Leslie speaker was miked from (certainly not the rotating horn) but all that could be heard was the bottom end.

During “Summertime” a muted trumpet is featured – and this could not be heard at all.

This was all such a disappointment because the band are fantastic and Charles Walker is a great frontman.  The audio mix the previous night in Hyde Park was excellent with plenty of colour and dynamics and the Hammond organ and the trumpet sounded great.

Now I know there are issues with the venue because it is next door to Sydney Hospital.  In fact I had to deal with those issues when the venue was first used as a festival club over 20 years ago because I was the technical manager when it first started (as the Bacardi Festival Club).  In those days we had audio systems that where no where near as sophisticated as what is available today (three ways systems – bass, 4560 mids and separate horns).

Yes we used compressors and limiters, but the operators I used then understood how to produce a dynamic sound without annoying the neighbours (or the SPL monitor Nazis).

So it seems that these days because the kids listen to their music on mp3 players they no longer get what real dynamics are in music.  But this was a fantastic soul/funk band that relies on being heard properly.

It might have been fine for a Gen Y audience but there were plenty of us Baby Boomers who grew up on this music and appreciate the nuances.

I recently had a rant about the mp3 mix at the Bon Jovi concert at the Sydney Football Stadium and I was hoping that the compressed mix would not be the new norm – at least the Hyde Park mix proved that there are still guys out there who do understand dynamics.

I really liked the overall visuals at the venue – the projections onto the front of the building, the artist working in the courtyard, the mass of LED tubes strung along truss to provide the house lighting in the main tent.  But I wasn’t keen on the video screen behind the band – it worked well with graphics during the DJ sets but was just bloody annoying behind the band for two reasons – firstly the image delay of a couple of seconds and then because it was fed from a fixed camera with remote control the operator kept loosing the subject and we had images of roadcases or the floor.

This is the fourth Sydney Festival First Night and so having missed the other three I thought I had better take it all in.

Rocked into the city late afternoon so I could do a tour of all the venues, the first thing that grabbed my attention was just how many road closures were going to be put in place.  Fantastic that an arts event can close down so much of the CBD traffic.

At the Martin Place stage I caught the Chinese group Hanggai going through a couple of numbers for their sound check.  Liked what I heard and would have liked to catch their set.

However I was mostly interested in the acts that would be appearing in Hyde Park so I headed over there.  First stop was the Silver Screen (well LED screen actually) where an eclectic Orchestra Del Sol had people dancing in front of the screen under the lampshades (very cool design element).  Later in the night I caught a piano accompaniment to old films showing Sydney.

Missed all the ukuleles on the main stage and came in on Alice and Alice – very clever mash up of sayings from Lewis Carroll with (often naughty) children’s rhymes.

Kitty, Daisy and Lewis were great fun.  Skipped Eddie Perfect because I intend to see his full show and headed over to Cathedral Square for a bite to eat and caught a very bizarre wedding photo shoot on the steps of St Mary’s that could easily have been a performance art piece as part of the festival.

Wandered through The Domain – plenty of space available for the punters who would be rolling up for Emmylou Harris.

Back to Martin Place – by his time I had missed Hanggai and something called The Last Kinection were on (and not very interesting – but the wrong genre for me, not into doof)

Up on the other Macquarie St stage TaikOz were preparing for their show and I caught up with Dan Barnett.  Dan is musical director for the Trocadero Dance Palace that I will be attending next week at Sydney Town Hall and tonight was assisting on the TaikOz follow-up performance with the balcony drummers.

The TaikOz performance was exciting (as their performances always are) and attracted a huge crowd in Macquarie St.  The performance was not amplified and relied on the surrounding buildings to reflect the sound to the audience and that sound ranged from their massive drums to tiny bells and flutes.  The nuances of which make their performances so exciting.

At the conclusion of their 20 min piece TaikOz were joined by around 150 extra drummers positioned on the balconies of the Parliament House and an adjacent building.  They then performed a call and answer routine between the three locations in a piece written by Graham Hilgendorf and comissioned for the Festival.  This should have been a wonderful experience but it was marred by far too much sound channelling up from the Hip Hop stage at the other end of Martin Place.  Something that could very well have been avoided by a more sensible programming of both stages.

The audience for this performance stood in Macquarie St and on either side of the stage, unfortunately sightlines were very limited because the stage was not high enough!

Then back down to the Hyde Park stage for The Dynamites – what a fantastic show!  Frontman Charles Walker has been performing Soul and Funk since the 60’s, and at 70 years of age he still has the energy and the voice to completely capture his audience. The highlight for me was his rendition of George Gershwin’s Summertime.  Sung with the passion that only a black American can bring to the song (as Gershwin intended) this rendition soared and the crowd loved it.

Did like the bass player and drummer using their smartphones during the number to capture the crowd from the stage.

Then the amazing Imogen Kelly – Sydney’s self proclaimed burlesque queen and her Let Them Eat Cake routine – love your work bitch!

I missed Smoke and Mirrors at the previous festival (and also at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival) so this was my chance to catch a sample from the show that is so talked about.

As the show itself has been reviewed so many times I’m not going to discuss the individual acts but rather how the show worked on the Hyde Park stage away from the intimacy of the Spiegeltent.

First up the feel of the Spiegeltent was recreated in part through the backdrop and secondly the stage is much bigger than that in the tent.  Technically – the lighting rig was installed for a one off and had to accommodate a large number of other acts, but did it all well.  Audio was excellent where I was down in the mosh pit (I wasn’t leaving my spot to check it out elsewhere) and when his head worn mic failed iOTA seamlessly moved to the handheld quickly provided by stage crew.

This performance included around an hour of material from the full 90 min show and overall this was an excellent experience marred only by the audience.

Not all the audience – just some inconsiderate gen Y types who pushed to the front in the lead up to the S&M show.  It was already crowded and people were standing, which restricted viewing of the stage, but then the latecomers where around 6’6” tall (and one must have been close to 7’), they could have had a great view from 200 metres back but insisted in pushing in front of much shorter people who had been there for hours.  Then there were the most inconsiderate of all – the smokers, (also mostly gen Y) who insisted on sharing their obnoxious stink with those who had no escape from it.

So Sydney Festival organisers some requests – higher stages in areas where people are going to stand (or maybe the MC could ask people to sit on the grass) and ban smoking in crowded areas (or even provide smoking areas well away from the crowds).  And parents, teach your gen Y kids some manners!

At the conclusion of S&M iOTA was in a quiet, reflective part of his closing song when a female voice from down near the front cut through “I think you’re fuckin amazing”

Apart from my very few criticisms, that summed up the whole night!

A postscript – as I was leaving Hyde Park there was quite a crowd listening to a busker (I think – couldn’t see) outside DJs on the corner of Elizabeth and Park.

The RTA wanted to open up Elizabeth into Park for traffic.  From my observation an obvious way to do this would have been to make an announcement via handheld or vehicle mounted megaphone along the lines of “OK folks we need to open up for the traffic so please clear the roads”.

However what I observed was the NSW Police method of crowd control – a couple of burly officers started ordering the busker to shut down and the people to disperse, then when they didn’t (or couldn’t because there quite a crowd) they brought in heavy handed reinforcements including mounted officers and managed to really piss off the punters resulting in a number of confrontations and people scrambling in all directions.  Hmmm.