BY CUTCOMMON
When it comes to the Australian music industry, percussionist Claire Edwardes OAM has always ventured one step ahead of the game. The artistic director of Ensemble Offspring is an award-winning champion of new music — and she’s now opened the door to a series of daring conversations. Through her new podcast The Offcast, Claire chats with artists she believes are “often perceived as the outcasts in the world of classical music”.
The Offcast facilitates conversations about diversity, industry, and change. As the first season is now released in full, we wanted to find out what Claire took away from the experience — what she found most memorable and moving with the remarkable artists she spoke to. Here, she describes some of her top picks — and you can listen to them all online.
1. Nardi Simpson
There are so many moments of pure gold within this podcast conversation.
For those who have never heard Nardi speak, this lady is the bomb (she just did the Keynote speech at Sydney Writers Festival). She has the gift of the gab — but more than that, she knows how to use silence to draw listeners in.
She also has a true gift with putting First Nations cultural learnings in a context that us white fellas sort of ‘get’. During the whole conversation, she never made me feel silly for asking ‘dumb’ questions, and I really did just want to ask whatever came to mind without feeling embarrassed or compromised. In my view, this is the reason why we are all learning so slowly over here on this white fella side — it is indeed because we are all so worried about offending without just accepting that we will make mistakes during this learning journey.
The most memorable moment of our conversation was when we talked about how place names and animal names came about. Although it was something I was vaguely aware of, it was so lovely to hear Nardi articulate it so beautifully.
I also loved her articulating the two-way process that is Ngarra-Burria — that it’s not just about the composers learning new skills, it’s also about them as First Nations artists seeing how we operate and how to ‘get stuff done’. We talk about ’the hang’ and Aboriginal culture not being outcome-driven, and that has been such a learning curve for me personally — and continues to be so.
So many amazing moments!
Listen to Nardi Simpson: Inspiring First Nations voice
2. Julian Day
Julian is the man who has interviewed me (and many other musical mavericks) over the years, so it was pretty cool to turn the tables and interview him for a change. I loved that I could steer the conversation and not wait for him to do it in his inimitable ‘soupy voiced’ way. We got to chatting about so many relevant topics to do with international new musicians and artistic trends, and I found it personally extremely stimulating!
Rather than being moved during this conversation, I was mostly struck by the memories mixed with future thinking that we harnessed during our roaming and extensive musings. I love the fact that we were both able to bring our mutual extensive history and experience in the arts in Australia and abroad, and take a trip down memory lane whilst sorting out the next steps in the arts. We nailed it!
We also chatted lots about music-world meets art-world, which is where Julian can really speak from both sides. I think people do have to listen to take their own tidbits away so that we can create more ‘intersectionality’ between new music and new art into the future!
Listen to Julian Day: Infamous broadcaster speaks from abroad
3. Jodie Blackshaw
This was the first podcast conversation I did. Having not seen Jodie for many years, this one was a big hitter in terms of realising that someone had been pushing pretty similarly to me for gender equity in the wind band scene for a similar amount of time. We both just relished being able to share our various experiences. For me, it was a real lightbulb moment where I suddenly thought: ‘I wonder how many different music scenes, where specific women are fighting the good fight virtually alone, are occurring in our world?’
Jodie’s stories really are striking and memorable. Yes, they are specific — they are about specific American wind band conductors in the most part who have not traditionally been open-minded to a particular type of music or, more specifically, music not by the known males. But where this conversation really resonated with me was the fact that wind bands is where I started. It had never really occurred to me that this was a very new scene, and therefore the music was also new — pretty much like what we do at Ensemble Offspring — so in theory, change should be easier. But this did not really seem the case here.
Listen to Jodie Blackshaw: Gender equity & colourful concert bands
4. Kyla Matsuura-Miller
I adore the moment in this chat when Kyla makes the point that it’s all about intersectionality. She says: ‘I’m not just a woman, I’m not just a person of colour, I’m not just queer — I’m all those things all the time.’ And it’s so true!
I feel like this world is not really set up for intersectionality. Even in our programming at Ensemble Offspring, we find it difficult to deal with the endless crossovers. And actually, that’s the point of most exciting stuff, so much of the time — this idea that so many people are so many things, and we need to embrace this and celebrate it, rather than limit it, is key.
I also love the moment when we talk about how money and capitalism has pretty much ruined the world, and Kyla mentions that we are ‘greedy little colonisers’. She touches on issues of privilege — that she, as all those things, has still grown up in such a privileged situation compared to say many First Nations artists. I do feel it is something we have to be super aware of as we move forward in this world — not that it is a competition.
Listen to Kyla Matsuura-Miller: You can’t be what you can’t see
5. Daniella Strasvogel
I really wanted to chat to a few overseas colleagues and friends to get a snapshot of how it’s going over there as we all come out of COVID. But also I specifically wanted to chat to Daniella because her company presents new music for kids. She calls it Schrumpf, which just means to shrink something. I really love the fact that they don’t dumb down their musical choices, but rather they program the same pieces that had been presented to an evening audience the night before, and just play shorter excerpts for the kids. She explains that it can sometimes be uncomfortable, but that is really part of the learning and familiarity process for the kids (and their parents). I genuinely feel that this model of presenting new music to kids is inspirational.
It wasn’t so much moving but rather funny. We talked for quite sometime about the Dutch violinist André Rieu, and what are the equivalents in our world. I find André Rieu quite fascinating: he is both gross and intriguing all at once. He has made classical music highly commercial and open to the masses, but of course this waters down the musical result hugely. I often like to think of how we can slightly more effectively commercialise what it is we do at Ensemble Offspring, without watering it down — but I am afraid to say that after this chat with Daniella, I knew for sure that this was never going to happen. Ha!
Listen to Daniella Strasfogel: New music trends
The Offcast Season 1 is now available to stream online, also featuring insightful conversations with Catherine Haridy, Eliza Shephard, and Jane Sheldon.
All episodes are hosted by Claire Edwardes, and produced and edited by Ben Robinson for Ensemble Offspring.
Images supplied.
