Music is a place

A highlight for me of our recent Museum of Old and Modern Art festival (Mona-Foma) was an interview with Philip Glass, accompanied by a recital from talented Hobart group 22SQ of Glass's brilliant Concerto for Saxophone Quartet.  After a dazzling performance the group received an enthusiastic ovation from the audience and praise from Glass, who then sat down with Mona-Foma curator Brian Ritchie to talk about saxophones, India and the way Glass's music had developed.   It was an interesting and engaging conversation, during which Glass revealed that he  had always wanted to know where music came from.  Eventually he realised he was asking the wrong question.  

Music, he said, is a place.

This event was held in the beautiful Bahai Centre in Hobart, a work of art in itself and well worth a visit.  The soprano, Joan Edwards, also performed there during the festival.  She sang two song cycles composed by Andrew Ford, the last one with a string quartet.  She sang beautifully and the blending of voice and instruments was particularly appealing.
 

Afterwards

Now that the Queensland floods have receded from an area as large as France and Germany combined (and Brisbane has begun to send around 200,000 tonnes of resulting rubbish to landfill) water has since covered 25 % of Victoria and will soon reach South Australia.  Only the tail end of the rain reached Tasmania, but even so it was enough to cause considerable damage to northern roads and farms.  Following the long dry these floods have been calamitous personally and nationally.

Yet another cause for reflection on the management of our land of drought and flooding rains this coming Australia Day.

Deluged

I was in Brisbane around Christmas visiting family.  It is hard to reconcile my memories of the Brisbane CBD and its marvellous cultural precinct with the today's tv images of a vast surging expanse of water covering a ghost city.  There have been truly shocking images of the inland tsunami that hit Toowoomba and extremely poignant stories from some of the survivors from the 12,000 houses that were inundated, the 15,000 that were partially inundated and the 5,000 businesses that were affected in Brisbane alone. There have also been impressive performances from the local, state and federal authorities, as well as outstanding volunteer and community involvement.  It's hard to avoid comparison with the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  At least this catastrophe hasn't been made worse by negligent authorities.  It will still be a long, hard year for Queensland, though.