Sydney Festival 2011

Beach House © Sydney Festival

My absolutely favourite time of the year is nearing and I thought it’d be nice to share with you my best-loved events for everyone staying in Sydney over summer.

Just like every January, Sydney Festival will light up our city with over 80 events across venues like the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Theatre, CarriageWorks and temporary venues like Beck’s Festival Bar and The Famous Spiegeltent. We will have the opportunity to see a very diverse and attractive mix of Australian and international artists covering dance, theatre, music, visual arts and more over three weeks of the festival.

Firstly, let me tell you how stoked I am about the Baltimore-based dream-pop duo Beach House hitting our shores this summer. With its atmospheric and dreamy marvel, the band’s third and highly acclaimed album Teen Dream has received outstanding reviews and won them a ‘band to watch in 2010’ tag from big industry guns. They are here for the sold-out St Jerome’s Laneway Festival in February and will do a few side gigs at the Sydney Festival. They play Beck’s Festival Bar with Parades on Wednesday 26 January and City Recital Hall Angel Place on Thursday 27 January.

Wire is a 70s English post-punk band whose live performances are said to be “full of urgency and vitality”. The band has been around for over 30 years and has over 10 studio albums, and has influenced the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and REM. Wire will play with the Los Angeles four-piece HEALTH at the Beck’s Festival Bar on Thursday 20 January.

Catching Brooklyn-based Sufjan Stevens and Holly Miranda this time around would also be good. It’s their second visit to Sydney and both will be playing material from their new albums, The Age of Adz and The Magician’s Private Library, respectively. Set in the beautiful Sydney Opera House and backed by a large orchestra and video projections, Sufjan’s performance should be a treat for the senses. Dates to look out for are Thursday 27 and Friday 28 January. Holly Miranda will play at The Famous Spiegeltent on Saturday 15, Sunday 16 and Tuesday 18 January.

I am also very excited about seeing two of my favourite Australian acts, Paul Kelly and Gotye. Both will be on stage at the City Recital Hall Angel Place, Gotye with one show on Thursday 27 January, and Paul Kelly with a few from Thursday 20 to Sunday 23 January.

Live: An intimate video study of the art of performing is precisely that … a large-scale video installation showing a collection of performances of over 20 of the world’s best singers and musicians—Jarvis Cocker, Peaches, Róisín Murphy, Sarah Blasko, Warren Ellis, Rufus Wainwright to name a few. Its purposes is to create an intimate connection between the performer and their audience, and offer a profound, larger-than-life front row experience. Live will be showing from Friday 14 to Sunday 23 January at Sydney Town Hall.

Free Sydney Festival events are always great fun. For photography lovers like myself, Exposed will be a delight. It’s an engaging and diverse collection of images showing the role photography has played in capturing different interpretations of the classic nude. Works included are by some of the greatest photographers like Max Dupan, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau. Exposed will be on from Tuesday 4 January until Friday 11 March at The Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney.

And if you’re into large-scale picnics in the park with some form of music or entertainment in the background, then head to Festival in The Domain. Especially if you are fond of Latin beats and rhythms and don’t mind a bit of a dance to the late 80s hit La Bamba! Catch the East-LA Chicano rock legends Los Lobos and the Sydney-based mariachi band The Real Mexico for a true fiesta experience on Saturday 15 January, in the Domain.

If Latino isn’t quite your cup of tea, what about a Symphony in The Domain instead? Bring your picnic rug and set up camp early to get the best spot for a night of Sydney Symphony with Bell Shakespeare and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs under the stars. Relax to tunes from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Then watch John Bell enact scenes from Shakespeare’s Henry V, accompanied by the mesmerizing Sydney Symphony and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. Symphony in The Domain is happening on Saturday 22 January.

Well, so much to see and do and so little … Enjoy!

Free bands at Bondi

Free gigs at the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi

Every Wednesday night Beach Road Hotel in Bondi showcases an up-and-coming local indie band or two for free. Last night I went along to see a Blue Mountains indie pop quartet Cloud Control. If you’re into your Jays, you’d know who I’m talking about as their debut album Bliss Release has been a feature record all this week. Just like every Wednesday night, the room upstairs (The Rex) was packed with hipsters in their early 20’s. If that’s your kind of crowd, get out there and support the local music scene.

Generally, the support band kicks off around 8.30pm and the main act starts around 10pm. Entry is free and beer is cheap. Upcoming shows (and more to be announced) are listed below:

The Dirty Secrets + The Protectors  + Royal Chant (9 June), Wolf & Cub + Kids Of 88 (16 June), Midnight Youth + Meow Kapow (23 June), Amy Meredith + Demon Parade (30 June), Tbc + One Jonathon (7 July), Tbc + The Chemist (14 July), Lost Valentinos + Alter Ego Mania (21 July),  The Joy Formidable + Jinga Safari + The Temper Trap Dj’s (28 July), Vasco Era + I Am Giant (4 Aug), Parades + The Laurels + Rushcutter (11 Aug), Sound Casino + Sticky Fingers (18 Aug) and Snowdroppers + Jack Nasty Face (25 Aug).

And an update: Ghostwood + Surf City (NZ) (8 Sept), Cabins + Alter Ego Mania + Step-Panther (15 Sept), The Jezabels + The Owls (22 Sept), The Holidays + We Are Fans (29 Sept) and Hungry Kids Of Hungary + Big Scary (10 Nov).

Shoot the Player: Sydney and music on film

A great way to start the new year is by getting out and indulging in the goodies Sydney has on offer this summer. If you need a break from the beach or find the weather rather unappealing, get out there and see lots of international and local gigs at the Sydney Festival, catch a movie at one of the outdoor cinemas, or, for something a bit out of the ordinary, head down to Carriageworks in Newtown for a very interesting project from the Sydney-based Shoot the Player.

Together with Carriageworks, they are presenting an interactive showing of unique one-take music videos featuring local and international artists doing things like hanging out in their pyjamas, performing on the street and buying pastries. The aim of the exhibition is two-fold: to experience the musicians in a new light by seeing them in places one wouldn’t expect them to be normally; and the evolution of the spontaneous and unpredictable one-take music videos as an art form and the ‘do-it-yourself’ concept of filmmaking.

The installation runs until Saturday 30 January, and is free.

Shoot the Player

Big Day Out photo exhibition

Mart Gallery

Another really cool photo exhibition happening at the moment is the Tony Mott & Sophie Howarth. A Big Day Out Retrospective. Basically, it’s a collection of photographs from Australia’s favourite festival, Big Day Out, taken by two of Australia’s most renowned music photographers, Tony Mott and Sophie Howarth. The spectrum of musicians captured on camera is very impressive. From our own Magic Dirt, Silverchair, The Dirty Three to international superstars like The Ramones, Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine, Bjork, Iggy Pop, PJ Harvey and the list goes on and on.

The exhibition runs until Saturday 30 January and is free. Mart Gallery is at 156 Commonwealth Street in Surry Hills.

Rock loyalty snapshots land at Blender

Pattie Boyd and George Harrison

Blender Gallery in Paddington is hosting a photo exhibition by Patti Boyd, former wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Labeled one of the original 1960’s ‘it girls’—or what we would now call a ‘celebrity’—Boyd was a model, a photographer and a columnist. Having lived in the most creative music period, she is believed to have been the inspiration of a number of classic songs, most notably Harrison’s Something, For You Blue, and Clapton’s Layla, Wonderful Tonight and Bell Bottom Blues.

She married Harrison in 1966 after meeting him on the set of A Hard Day’s Night movie. Many say it was her growing interest in Eastern philosophy, that ispired The Beatles’ subsequent exploration of transcendental meditation and the 1968 visit to the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Harrison and Boyd divorced in 1977, and two years later, she married Eric Clapton, who had long been in love with Boyd—Layla the ultimate symbol to their unrewarded love. Boyd was with Clapton through his alcohol and heroin addiction, before they split at the end of the 1980’s. The two are still friends, and she also remained close to Harrison until his death in 2001.

Boyd has documented these happenings since the late 1960’s. Through The Eyes Of A Muse—Photographs By Pattie Boyd is an opportunity to take an intimate look at some epoch-making lives and times, seen through the eyes of an ultimate insider. The exhibition is on until Thursday 24 December at the Blender Gallery.

Sydney Festival freebies

Circa 1979: Signal to Noise -- Photo © Sydney Festival

There are quite a few free events to catch at Sydney Festival this January—think great little bands in the Famous Spiegeltent with Late at the Garden, Festival First Night starring the gospel legend Al Green, or something a little different like Symphony in The Domain—but my favourite is Circa 1979: Signal to Noise.

Circa 1979: Signal to Noise is a celebration of one of the most creative periods in Australia’s music history that spanned from 1979 to 1985. A period which saw avant garde, post-punk, new wave and early electronic styles of music become a thriving underground scene.

Presented by Sydney Festival and  Modular, this event consists of two parts. Signal to Noise Sessions is a day of free talks exploring early experimentation in music, film and video and the cultural influences surrounding this period, and is happening at the Seymour Centre on Saturday 16 January. Then there is Signal to Noise at the Sound Lounge, an exhibition of fanzines, photography and album artwork collected in an attempt to revive and recreate the Sydney underground music scene of 1979–1985. The exhibition will run over a couple of weeks in January at the Seymour Centre’s Sound Lounge. Coupled with unreleased music and a previously unseen video archive, this exhibition is the first of its kind. A must see for any music appreciator.