BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Since its inaugural concert in 2017, Van Diemen’s Band has spread its love of baroque music across Tasmania. It has performed intimate concerts and large-scale festivals (like this one and this one). It has recorded albums for ABC Classic and BIS, toured nationally, and facilitated education and outreach programs. Last year, it introduced its own sub-group — Van Diemen’s Fiddles.
With a leader like Julia Fredersdorff at the helm, there’s no wonder VDB is going up and up — and lifting its local community with it. This year, they’ve launched a new Pozible campaign — and have in a few short weeks raised more than $20,000 in support of a new record label for Tasmanian musicians.
Donations will go a long way to support the artists of this baroque group as they launch their new label (named VDB, of course) and break-out album. But donations will go further still to support future artists of the island, who will be able to work with VDB to release music of their own.
Julia — the founding artistic director of VDB — sits down to talk us through her plans for the new label, and why Australia needs it.
Julia, let’s get straight down to the record business. You’ve decided to use Pozible to start up your new record label VDB, with matched funding through Creative Partnerships Australia. Why did you want to jump into crowdfunding, and in what way do you feel this strategy connects you to your audience?
We have successfully used Pozible before as a platform for supporting our recording projects. Being a rewards-based platform, Pozible works really well for this kind of project as supporters can actually purchase advance copies of CDs. Some rewards allow them to attend the recording sessions, which can be a fascinating experience and allows our supporters to be more involved in the process of creating an album.
We really love to feel that sense of achievement that you get with crowdfunding. Once a critical mass of people have contributed, every one of them is an integral part of the album we are creating. We then take them on the journey with us, and they get advance copies ahead of release, which is always exciting!
With the addition of matched funding through Creative Partnerships, our supporters can have their money effectively doubled — always an encouraging prospect — and Pozible also allows people to make tax-deductible donations over $2 as well, so really our campaign page is a one-stop-shop.
You say in your Pozible video that “Tasmania, and the rest of the country, needs a new high-quality, non-mainstream label to match the best elsewhere”. How would you describe the environment in which you’re launching this label? That is, why do you feel there is a need — and that you’re the ones to step in and fulfil it?
Having a good-quality recording out there is a really important calling card for any music group. Throughout my career, I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to record for mainstream labels with young — at the time, emerging — ensembles, such as Latitude 37 for ABC Classic. These recordings put our work out there nationally via radio stations and streaming platforms, and without that exposure, maybe nothing would have come of our work. I am currently seeing a really impressive new generation of artists coming through who just don’t seem to have the same opportunities. This is the gap we are hoping to fill.
The sudden emergence of the digital world and streaming took a lot of the big labels by surprise, and post-COVID they are victims both of scale, and commercial imperatives. VDB could never be accused of the former, and is not beholden to the latter. In the scheme of things we are tiny, so the microscopically thin margins of the new paradigm don’t bother us.
You’ve already released three albums with Van Diemen’s Band as it is — the latest with the BIS label. What do you feel are the major benefits to launching your own label, rather than continuing to work with others?
We are not going to stop working with other labels if opportunities are presented, and we are certainly not competing against them. However, having our own label allows us to focus on the aesthetic and repertoire that is important to us, and record them in the way we want to.
I suppose it gives us greater creative control. Also, as streaming is now dominating physical recordings, there is not as much reason for us not to start our own label, as we are less reliant on distribution, and we are more easily able to get our work out to an international audience via these platforms.
Of course, having a reputation through our three previous CD releases and the increasing profile of our brand is important, and without these we probably wouldn’t have felt so confident in making this work.
We recently published an interesting story with an Australian clarinettist who spoke about how to release music without a label. How would you describe the differences between making your own formally structured record label as VDB, and releasing your own music without any label — that is, a straight-up self-release?
In a way, it is not different: effectively, we are putting this label in place so that we can self-release. But we also want to extend an opportunity for other artists to release work through the platform we will have already set up. This then gives them access to our networks so that they can achieve greater reach and the opportunity to build their audience.
Just as an example, we are curating and presenting lunchtime concerts at the moment in Hobart, which encompass quite a wide variety of musical styles, and we are finding that people come to concerts of music that they might never have heard of, simply because they have trust in our brand as curators of events. These concerts are beneficial to them as an audience, because they discover something new; to the artists, because they get to connect with new audiences; and to us, because we just love providing great music to our audiences. It is a triple win!
Your first intended album on your new label draws from your previous “Bohemia” program of music, which according to your campaign had garnered requests for VDB to produce a studio recording. Tell us a bit about this program, and why you think it stood out — to the extent that others want to keep listening to it at home, over and over (and over) again.
The music is lush and crazy and indulgent — both wild and rhapsodic. Reminds me of a certain song-title! It is highly specialised yet very approachable, and in some ways it has an aesthetic which is really compatible with modern ears.
This program includes the Pachelbel canon, which is probably the most famous piece of that period. But it also includes some drop-dead gorgeous pieces by lesser-known composers as well.
How important is it to you that your music is recorded and streamed, compared to live performances?
Obviously, one doesn’t have to outweigh the other — but [as an artist] you will be dedicating plenty of resources to your new record label, which means there has to be a bit of a balancing act between your live versus recorded offerings.
Recording is super important to us, and has provided us with opportunities and exposure that we couldn’t have had otherwise. For a group like ours, being based in Tassie — even with a strong presence, by design, it is a locally focused one — pretty well the only way for us to have a national and indeed an international reputation is by putting our recordings out there in the world.
Live performance is our heartland though, and we are totally committed to our regional audiences in Tassie. We are in love with road tripping around our beautiful state, and taking really good quality music to places outside of the usual capital city concert hall stages. Baroque music was meant to be played in intimate surroundings, so playing for small and super-appreciative, performing-arts-hungry audiences is our motivation.
Now, you specifically haven’t mentioned the pandemic in your Pozible listing. To me, this feels like an elephant in the room, so I’ll ask you candidly: how did the pandemic affect your desire to move more into the digital music space?
Not really much at all, to be honest. Of course, this idea will create opportunities in a pandemic and post-pandemic world, and that is absolutely vital for the arts industry. But what has driven us in this direction is more about the recording industry as it is today. So in other words, creating a label is not our way of dealing with the pandemic; rather, we feel it is a modern-day necessity for arts organisations to be self-motivated and to create our own opportunities.
As far as the digital music space, we have some filmed output, and we are soon to release a film offering that was made in response to the pandemic. But we feel that live performance needed to be resumed as soon as possible and put most of our focus there.
We don’t believe that the digital space will replace live performance; rather, we feel it is the perfect complement in this day and age — we can play live and stream — literally music without borders.
How do you feel about the future of VDB? Do you have a vision to work more as a record label or in live music — or do you want to do both, always, and keep getting bigger and better as you go?
Definitely the latter. But we don’t want to get too big. We want to stay in proportion with our home state. High quality and boutique.
Parting words: give us your elevator pitch. Why is this label going to be awesome and therefore why should people donate to your campaign?
This label will put VDB and future generations out onto the international airwaves. Let’s put Tassie on the map as the small state with huge cultural capacity.
Visit the Van Diemen’s Band crowdfunding page to learn more about the campaign and record label.
Van Diemen’s Band is also celebrating the release of its new album Handel: Six Concerti Grossi, Op. 3, out 7 May on the BIS label.
Images supplied.
