BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
The pandemic has challenged the artists of Australia. One group of performers, composers, visual artists, and poets will confront not only the changes to their industry — but the changed relationships they have formed with each other.
HERE is a concert featuring a program that boasts four world premiere compositions, performed by a group of likeminded creatives — from harpist Emily Granger to recorder virtuoso Alicia Crossley and saxophonist Andrew Smith. (You can check out the full list of powerhouse performers right here.)
All artists hail from the Inner West, including composer Paul Castles (pictured above). In this interview, Paul takes you behind the scenes of this musical contemplation “formed in response to the lost bond of intimacy between neighbours during lockdown”.
Paul, I was reading your bio and loved the way you’re described as “a composer whose music reconjures how stories are told”. It seems fitting — the past few years have shown us how the story of an entire industry is being retold. How has the pandemic changed your story as a composer?
I was already in a big transition period in the year prior to Covid, so the silver lining of the otherwise very challenging pandemic was the invitation to embrace nothingness for a while.
Mary Finsterer, who had a huge impact on me as a composition teacher, once advised me to seek out the nothingness of silence. It feels fitting to quote her because I really went back to what first drew me to music and composing, and in doing so discovered new visions for how I want to work and what I want to create.
It’s been especially meaningful to share this period of transition with Nicole W. Lee. We’ve been in each other’s orbit as close friends and collaborators for over a decade, and she’s been undergoing her own creative and personal metamorphosis that I’ve personally found thrilling to watch.
Talk us through the ideas or experiences that underpin your concert HERE, which I understand was curated as a response to the pandemic.
HERE is really about the human experience of something unusual but passing; of existing in an intimate urban area that is, paradoxically, isolating. Most specifically, the idea of neighbourliness: the loss of it, the search for it, and the transition into a new understanding of our surroundings — for instance, what it is to suddenly know quietness in the middle of a city.
What did it feel like to collaborate with so many artists, and create something together after so many years of disconnect?
It has been invigorating in a gentle sort of way. We’re all part of an interconnected network of friends and peers, and the way we’ve worked reflects the easy rapport behind the process.
Aesthetically and conceptually, this is a DIY event reflecting the sense of community between us. We’ve created space for each artist to share in an environment that is lateral rather than hierarchical.
I’m especially excited about the contributions of visual artist Charlotte Fetherston. Also a trained violinist, Charlotte has created a unifying sequence of images in response to all the music and poetry that will feature throughout the evening.
What did this collaboration teach you about the needs and experiences of all artists during this time, regardless of medium?
It can be challenging to be creative in a void, but sometimes it’s cathartic to be free of all external expectations. I think all of us have appreciated a moment to reconnect with our craft and art during the suspended periods of lockdown, but ultimately there is nothing more essential than human connection and an audience.
I’m primarily a collaborative artist, and I’ve always relied on the back-and-forth of creative exchange. This event would never have come into being if we weren’t all there to share our thoughts and motivate each other into putting it together.
I think the role of Nicole’s poetry is especially interesting. Poetry is typically a private artform, but in HERE it’s the foundational means of expression that contextualises all the other elements surrounding it.
So what music of yours features in this event?
I’ve composed four of the pieces, two of which are excerpts from larger projects with collaborators who are far away geographically but close to my heart: a dance theatre piece with South African librettist Mkhululi Mabija, which explores a transmigration from one life to the next; and a mixed reality project with United States writer Sibyl Kempson about the Bigfoot phenomenon and the way it remakes a person’s comprehension of the world around them. Having two internationally connected pieces is an important reminder that the localising experience of the pandemic is one that all of us have shared over the past two years, despite different geographic locations and perspectives.
The largest piece in the program is the premiere of THE END OF THE EARTH, which is the first part of a larger project by Nicole and I. It’s a poetic-musical narrative that reflects on Australian identity, history, and connection to the land. We started writing it two years ago, and are both amazed at how much our perspectives and work have changed since then; it feels like a connection to the ‘life before’.
This event reflects on place and locality, and the bond between neighbours. How do you hope it will bring us together — listeners with musicians, creators with each other?
I hope that people will come, enjoy, and be open to more experiences like this.
I’m personally always keen to step away from traditional concert formats into more conceptual spaces, and I think the interdisciplinary experience opens up audiences to music in a different way. If I could, I’d propose doing it in someone’s garden or bathroom because it’s not only about what we present, but how it is shaped by light, acoustics, and placement in the story of our own lives.
But until I can convince someone to do that, we’ll try and conjure the neighborhood experience at the beautiful Annandale Creative Arts Centre.
See HERE at 7.30pm May 30, Annandale Creative Arts Centre.
Image supplied. Paul captured by Alexander Orlando Smith.
