BY MARK BOSCH
Phoebe Green + SPIRAL
BackStage Music
22 September, Woodburn Creatives
Woodburn Creatives feels a little bit like home. I’ve only been there twice yet, the little Redfern warehouse off Cleveland Street. But it feels like a very special space indeed. (Read on to find out why.)
Opening a live performance review by remarking on the venue may seem a little bit unconventional, but it feels appropriate after the final hour of BackStage Music’s Phoebe Green + SPIRAL: a panel discussion, chaired by music journalist and academic Matthew Lorenzon, on the subject of sustainable spaces for making music in Sydney.
The discussion opened with the consensus that the subject of Sydney spaces has given rise to spirited conversations for several decades. Ever-increasingly spirited, given the context of the city’s slide into mega-hyper-unaffordability and the recently closed parliamentary inquiry into the sustainability of the national music industry, which we covered this month. I was grateful for the opportunity to take copious notes on the perspectives of these industry professionals and veterans, who covered ground on the topic with great nuance.
Some of the most actionable points came from City of Sydney live music and performance strategy adviser Lex Davidson, who asserted that music venues be approached “as essential civic services”, “as a social right”. Among other things, this means moving away from the city’s status as a “nanny state of building stock regulation” — councils must be more flexible — and continuous subsidising.
The panel noted that there is often a honeymoon period in which venues are nurtured through funding only to the point where they are seen to be self-sustainable as commercial entities, which is really leading to their increasingly unstable, fleeting lifetimes. And — without harping on any further — that is precisely why I think Woodburn Creatives is so special. Because, as the proprietor himself said in contribution to the discussion, it may be gone in just a few years.
But, for now, it’s here. And it’s playing host to one of Sydney’s best new music series, BackStage Music.
The first two hours of the evening, then, were devoted to some very satisfying music making. SPIRAL, the young, trailblazing, seven-piece chamber ensemble and band (they describe themselves as both) opened with works from two of their own, Oscar Smith and Sarah Elise Thompson. Both works were tasty minimalist morsels. Smith’s Iron Filings (2018) filled the room with a frenetic energy wrought from constant, suddenly shifting instrument combinations and circuitous melodic contours; while Thompson’s Bixler 225 (2018) transfigured the manic momentum into something for which there’s no word other than ‘beautiful’.
Thompson used the group’s two keyboards – one at which she was sat – to great effect, paying implicit homage to the saccharine stylings of more prominent musicians like Max Richter or Ólafur Arnalds without ever slipping into the saccharine herself. Above the hypnotic shimmering of the keyboards were the smoothly sailing melodies of the guitars, flutes, and double bass, with the latter’s uppermost registers handled with superb accuracy by Will Hansen.
The colours created with Bixler 225 were the perfect complement to the earthier sound of Iron Filings, which I can’t help but return to, by virtue of its place in the program, as the work which prompted in me the thought that, ‘wow, these people are my peers, and their work is all the more exciting for it’. You’d be most wise to keep an eye on SPIRAL.
But BackStage was still more enriched with the presence of Melbourne’s Phoebe Green, a violist of tremendous musical taste and champion of Australian new music. Green’s contribution was a tour de force of five works, three of them Australian, not one of them parenthetical.
Her unbroken performance of Steen-Anderson’s Study for String Instrument #1 (2007) and Xenakis’ Embellie (1981) was totally convincing, although her performance with saxophonist James Nightingale of Alex Pozniak’s Quest (2011) did put the room into a bit of a lull. Originally composed for a dancer, the lack of one at Woodburn Creatives meant that the work’s 20+ minutes might have been abridged without too much lost. Or, more idealistically, a dancer could have taken the floor in a choreographic reimagining and thrust the night into truly top-notch territory. Nonetheless, Green and Nightingale engaged the composer’s use of the tensile relationship between fluidity and restraint with real clarity: their tasteful, empathic duet made them sound as one.
Green then retook the spotlight with Liza Lim’s Amulet (1992), although it was her performance of Lisa Illean’s Cranes (2016–17) that took the cake. Green’s personal relationship with the composer, mentioned in her preamble, became immediately apparent in the assured way she penetrated the work’s tender, understated sensuality. Her performance was a gentle expression of melancholy that verged on but never tipped into sadness, leaving me emotionally entranced. Green never seemed to go above mezzo piano, but she was all I could hear.
Then, I knocked back two glasses of red and settled in for the panel. A lovely liquid companion for a sonic feast that left me feeling full, if even a bit bloated. There’s so much to appreciate about what BackStage is doing, it’s difficult if not impossible to give everything its due. That I missed their previous event was a great shame, so you can be sure that I have every intention of returning in November for their last entry for 2018.
Images supplied. Credit: Ollie Smith.
