CD Launch of the Andrew Dickeson Quintet at SIMA Sound Lounge (Sydney Improvisational Music Association)

The CD launch of Weaver of Dreams by the Andrew Dickeson Quintet at the SIMA Sound Lounge of the Seymore Centre in Sydney. The quintet features Andrew Dickeson on Drums, Eamon McNelis on trumpet, Alex Boneham on double bass, Roger Manins on Saxophone, and Steve Barry on piano. Some of my photos of previous gigs feature on the CD cover...

Critical Path

My friend Richard James Allen invited me to document a dance performance he had choreographed and was performing in as part of a month-long residency at Critical Path, a dance research studio in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney. The residency involved a collaboration amongst a group of choreographers and dancers with some German esoteric lighting and sound installation artists. The dance space of the performance was set with a series of fluorescent tubes suspended from the ceiling in a 6 x 6 grid. The whole lot was then rigged up to infra-red sensors that fed into a synthesiser and computer system so that sounds and light were triggered by people moving closer and further from the tubes. Both the audience and the performers were able to trigger the effects, and the audience was encouraged to move around the space while the dancers were performing, to increase the serendipity of the effects.

Afro Moses at NOTES in Enmore.

Afro Moses, who I made some photos with last year at the Opera House, sent me a ticket to his gig last night at Notes, a new music venue in Enmore, at 73 Enmore Rd. A singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and teacher of music, Afro Moses was born in Ghana in West Aftica where he hit the charts as a teenager, becomming known as 'The African James Brown'. Moses makes the most joyful, spirited music, using traditional instruments played masterfully - the thumb piano, a beat-box, his voice - to share his message of unity and individual beauty and talent. At the Notes gig last night, Moses was supporting the tour-launch of another group based around Indonesian singer-guitarist Tommee to celebrate the release of his fourth album “Material is Thick”. Tommee is a renowned musician who has also toured with The John Butler Trio, Harry Manx and Blue King Brown as well performing in Indonesia, Canada, Europe and Japan. The group is a fabulous trio comprised of Tommee and his exciting new rhythm section, Rory Brown on Double Bass and the very fluid Walter Piccolruaz on the Pandeiro (electric Tambourine). Of course I took my camera along...

2009 Wrap-up! and Plans for 2010

Here's a mosaic of my best 16 portraits from 2009 - a tase of things to come via my Big Plans for 2010.

The creative agenda is for 2010 to be a year of portraits.

So hear ye, hear ye, friends, Romans, Country/Citypeople: step right up, get your portraits while they're hot! (and for a limited time, free). I've lined up a bunch of friends to model, (don't be shy, there's still room for more!!) and a loose collection of keen and like-minded photographers, and we're ready to start rolling early in the new year.

So Watch This Space...!

Afro Moses Concert Sydney Opera House

The multi-talented Brad Robinson of FIG also moonlights as the guitarist in the Afro-Moses Band. They recently had a series of gigs at the Sydney Opera House, playing back-to-back concerts to large groups of two, three, four and five - year-olds in a kind of African version of The Wiggles. They invited me to make pictures during some of their concerts. I lacked a really fast lens, so some shots are a bit fuzzier than I'd like, but the energy of the performers more than made up for it.

The Afro-Moses band members include:

Afro Moses Baidoo singer/ leader
Sibo Bangoura on percussion/ djembe drum
Wendy Anggerani on keyboards
Aicha Keita dancer Rebecca Bryen dancer/ singer
Victor “Worldwide” on drums
Junichi Shiomi on bass
Bradford Robinson guitar.

FIG at Hot Lips in Enmore

The return of music to small venues in Sydney has been a welcome development in cultural activity in the city. Along with the ban on smoking in pubs, clubs and restaurants, it makes the whole idea of getting out to hear some great live music again an absolute pleasure. Local Inner-West band FIG played at Hotlips Cafe in Enmore early in October 2009. The line-up included the multi-talented: Bradford Robinson on guitar, Gregg Telian on saxophone, Pumps Haller on Percussion, along with their this-time-absent but reputedly amazing bass-player Sean Parker. The whole gang will be performing again in 2010, when FIG will be playing at Hot Lips @ 200 Enmore Road in Enmore on Tuesday 2nd Feb 2010 at 7:30pm. They will be playing some of their original material and invite you all to come on down and have a drink and some Italian food while soaking in their tunes.

Rives - Performance Poet Extraordinaire!

I have just discovered John G Rives - a very clever, very funny performance poet.
Rives is a performer, a storyteller and an author. He has appeared on multiple seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam and was a member of the Def Poetry international tour group. He has made multiple appearances at the international thinkers TED Conference and has published several pop-up books for children.

Here's his rap on YouTube about Deaf Poetry:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbtVepS53t0




Here's his "Mockingbird" remix of the 2006 TED conference
http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_remixes_ted2006.html



Here's his rap on TED.com on the conspiracy theory of Four In The Morning:
http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html



And a cerebral poem interpreting emoticons...
http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_tells_a_story_of_mixed_emoticons.html


enjoy! :))

A Smorgasbord of Dancers...

My long-time friends Dr Richard James Allen and Dr Karen Pearlman of the Physical TV Company invited me to witness the next stage of their creative process, a documentary film about Dance called: Doesn't Fit into a Box, inviting me to take stills photographs during the filming.

Over the last few years, Karen has been doing some Post-Doctoral Research in the Dance-Film area through a Fellowship with an organisation called Critical Path, based in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney. Through that research she says she didn't so much come up with answers, but rather - as is often the way when delving deeper into things - discovered still more questions.

So in this stage of the documentary-making, Karen was posing her questions to a diverse range of professional dancers and choreographers, asking:

"Where does Dance come from?"

"Where does Dance go when it leaves you?"

- and the ultimate existential question - "What is Dance for?"

It was fascinating to listen to the varied responses of the professional dancers and choreographers who were being interviewed. Their expertise ranged from classically trained ballet, to flamenco, to indigenous performance, to Japanese Butoh, to yoga and martial-arts, to contemporary experimental cross-media arts that weave movement and text and light and voice together into dance.

Sitting very still for 20 minutes at a time - not a pin may drop during filming! - over a twelve-hour day and focusing intently on the responses of these professional artists was an intense meditation that made me reflect on my own creative practice.

And I found myself coming up with my own responses to Karen's Questions:

"Creativity comes from the air;
through the crackling impulse of the thoughts and experiences we share with each other;
though the moments of inspiration that we scatter like seeds from our flowering;
through the enlightenment that the burning of our flame sheds around us...

When it passes through us, creativity continues -
in the lives we have touched, in the minds we have changed - it goes back into the air.

And 'what is creativity for?'

- well, you might as well ask:

'what is breathing for?'..."

Here is the view out the window of the dance studio as dusk fell. It had rained heavily throughout the day, but as you can see, all clouds have a silver - or in this case golden - lining.













Yum-oh!