HOPE springs eternal as a group of enthusiastic undergraduates in music and art at the ANU embark on a crowdfunding project to help take them to Germany and Austria.

Not content with playing the widow in Queanbeyan Players’ current “The Merry Widow from Bluegum Creek”, soprano Louise Keast is heading up a trio of creators that also includes ANU School of Art student Alexandra Hobba and Brisbane mezzo-soprano Shikara Ringdahl.

They’re all keen to revitalise the great European art song tradition through a touring concert of cycles by Mahler and Korngold, enhanced by background projections from Hobba “to elevate performance of lieder to ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ – a total work of art,” they say.

But first, the three are soon heading an artists’ residency in Stolzenhagen, Germany, followed by vocal, language and movement lessons in Berlin and Vienna, where Hobba will shoot the footage.

The “Revival House Project”, as the name suggests, aims at presenting a new perspective on the great German song-cycles of the 20th century and Keast tells “CityNews” they’ve confirmed recitals at the Drill Hall Gallery, with others planned in Sydney, Brisbane, Ballarat and Melbourne in the works.

“This is evidently a costly exercise,” she says and they hope music and art lovers in Canberra will chip in to their campaign to raise funds to assist travel, concert and hire expenses.

pozible.com/project/the-revival-house-project

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