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Cool vibe as letters fill the Fitters’ Workshop

Actor Richard Piper. Photo: Peter Hislop

CIMF, Concert 14: “Coming Together”, Fitters’ Workshop, May 5. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

THE old-fashioned art of letter-writing was at the heart was at the heart of two wildly contrasting concerts at the Fitters’ Workshop last night, but the vibe was cool.

In the first, composer Katy Abbott’s “Hidden Thoughts II: Return to Sender”, the subject is a matter of national shame, the return to lawyer Julian Burnside of nearly 2000 letters of comfort written to refugees in Nauru by ordinary Australians but returned by the Department of Immigration And Border Protection marked “return to sender”.

While Abbott’s concern has usually been the thoughts of women, in “Hidden Thoughts II”, the thoughts are balanced between the genders as she brings to life the unread, unanswered letters of concerned Australians.

Star professional actor Richard Piper took the lead in what had the feel of a theatrical production as a kind of narrator/letter-writer sitting at his desk, using his dramatic skills to enter the characters of different Aussies – a farmer, a bloke down at the pub, an architect, an Irish immigrant to Australia.

At times sympathetic, making eye contact with his fellow performers, Piper injected a note of humour from time to time.

“Coming Together”. Photo: Peter Hislop.

His counterpart, mezzo-soprano Dimity Shepherd, was placed on the opposite side of the stage, with the Flinders Quartet upstage centre.

Shepherd’s full and varying voice expressed the deeper emotions of ordinary Australians ashamed by their government’s treatment of asylum seekers as she, too, represented different characters, most poignantly the 20-year-old woman who sent her letter because her broken heart meant that she, too, had experienced some of the pain that they must be feeling.

Initially, the artists canvassed questions as to what letter writing is about – a letter should, for instance, be addressed to an individual, and yet although they had been given the names of asylum seekers, they did not know them, meaning that they’re heard searching for topics that might be of interest – their garden, the death of Gough Whitlam, what it’s like watching cricket on TV with the family. Each commonplace titbit hit the heart like a stone thrown.

Abbott’s approach to the musical score saw each instrument entering the in a kind of musical letter-writing exercise. At times the instrumentalists, Wilma Smith and Thibaud Pavlovich-Hobba on violin and Helena Ireland on viola, joined in the dialogue, repeating phrases from the letters, with a breakout vocal segment from Pavlovich-Hobba. All the while, Zoe Knighton’s powerful cello underscored the words of the letters.

The  concert concluded with an intonation, “We welcome you here”, recited by all six performers,  followed by Piper’s crystal-clear pronouncement: “everyone is precious”.

Hip-hop artist Ike. Photo: Peter Hislop

A 20-minute interval was necessary after such a powerful experience, but, doubtless forewarned of the minimalist and rap elements of “Coming Together”, half the audience vanished. That was their loss.

The background to the 1971 composition “Coming Together”, by Frederic Rzewski, was the release of letters written in prison by Samuel “Melville” Grossmann, a political activist and bomb setter who was shot dead by prison officers in Attica State Penitentiary, whose letters from prison were published in 1971.

Struck by the poetic quality of the letters and their “cryptic irony”, composer Rzewski looked to unlock a hidden meaning from the language.

Cool minimalist musos. Photo: Peter Hislop.

In this heart-pumping minimalist work, the supporting instrumentalists worked around the unchanging pentatonic baseline of Jacob Abela on keyboard (a mighty accomplishment to keep it up) to create infinite variety, while north Canberra hip artist Ike from Pluto used his sweet voice to create his own kind of music as he recited the words: “I think the combination of age and the greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing time,” over and over again, creating mounting excitement.

If the first concert was like a theatre show, this one was more like a gig, mesmerising as the tension built and feeling rather like Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”.

The enthusiastic and partly young audience rose to give the impressive instrumentalists a hearty ovation.

 

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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