August 2023 Newsletter

Posted on by Filita
August 2023 title page

Welcome to the August 2023 Newsletter. It has been a nice settled month. Full of concerts, sewing, books and music rehearsals. Plus the normal sport, YouTube and documentary watching.

Concerts

Diana Doherty performs Ross Edwards

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra put on this concert as part of the celebration of Ross Edward’s 80th Birthday. The first piece was Peggy Polias’ Arachne which was commissioned as part of the 50 Fanfares project. It was pretty good. It was a bit unmemorable in comparison in what was to come.

The next piece was Ross Edward’s Oboe Concerto “Bird Spirit Dreaming”. It was written for Diana Doherty, principle Oboe player of the Orchestra. She was wearing a bird inspired jacket. It was absolutely lovely. I love getting to hear music that was written for the person playing it. It also had solos for Cor Anglais, Diana’s husband Alexandre Oguey (side note you can see him perform at my next concert). Here is a video of Ross and Diana talking about the making of the piece.

A new Ross Edward’s piece “Bennelong Caprices” was next up. It was a lovely piece I really enjoyed it. It was short but perfectly formed.

The last piece was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No 8. It was beautiful. It started with a vibes and brass. I really enjoyed it and the journey it took me on. Check out the playlist that has been recorded here. The program notes are very informative.

Burn the Floor – WALANBAA YULU-GI featuring MITCH TAMBO

A big gang of us went to Burn the Floor at the Chatswood Concourse. The show was called WALANBAA YULU-GI. It was amazing. The music was brilliant. I put together a playlist of the music. The dancing was phenomenal. It was an amazing show with all the music being Australian. The combination of First Nations dancers with ballroom dancers was brilliant.

I had never heard of Mitch Tambo before and was blown away with his performances. I loved his outfits and shoes, yes the shoes were brilliant. Tyler Azzopardi, the music arranger and the singer in the band was amazing, his version of ‘Get Back to the Land‘ was heart wrenching. Here is some of his music on sound cloud.

Andrew Haveron directs Britten’s Serenade

Thursday night at Angel Place as part of Classics in the City. Saw a program of Britten and Shostakovich performed. The first piece was Prelude and Fugue for 18 Solo Strings by Benjamin Britten. It was brilliant there were solos for everyone including each of the double bass. At the end of the piece there was even a audience member who called out “Go the Double Basses” which was cool.

The next piece was not as cool for me, there was singing. It was good singing by Andrew Goodwin but still it was singing. The piece was Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. It was great to see Stefan Dohr on horn, he is rated one of the best in the world and I can see why. There was eight movements, a song cycle. Each was a piece of English poetry set to music.

The last piece was Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 10 arranged by Rudolf Barshai and renamed Chamber Symphony. It was a lovely way to finish the program and recover from the singing.

The playlist is available here and the program notes here. There is also a review in Limelight with pictures.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony

I topped off the month by going to see Wynton Marsalis‘ epic All Rise. It featured the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonic Choirs, The Consort of Melbourne and solo singers. I think Epic is an understatement.

The experience started with attending the pre-concert talk by Sam Weller which was funny and informative. The concert started with a welcome to country by Brent Grapes, Associate Principal Trumpet, who also shared that growing up he had a photocopy of a Wynton Marsalis album cover on his wall. I can relate I really wanted a Nigel Kennedy (from the amazing Four Seasons concert in 1989) poster and had to make do with Richard Tognetti looking like this. They were both a bit rockstar.

The 12 movements then kicked off. I’m not sure how to describe it. Engaging, surprising, beautifully written, full of story, multi-genred epic. You really need to listen to it yourself. If you ever see it on a program go!!!! Here’s the link to the program, a recording on Spotify and YouTube music. There is also a wonderful interview with Wynton from a couple weeks ago on the ABC Australia.

To read more about the concert and the music check out the program.

Best cookbook in the world

So my favourite cookbook has been featured in this SBS article about the common sense cookery book. I have three versions for three generations. Grammy’s (Mum’s mum) version, Mum’s version and my own version. Mind you my go-to version is Mum’s one. It is my bible for all things basic cookery and has the best pikelet recipe ever.

From the Web

YouTube

Sabine Hossenfelder’s channel Science without the Gobbledygook. If you like your Science news with German Sarcasm check it out she always makes me smile. I’ve been meaning to share for a couple of months. Check out her most recent science news here.

I fell down a rabbit warren of Time Team. It started with the latest releases that are now being released on YouTube. Like this one for a dig in Norfolk. Followed by classic episodes on Time Team Classics, Chronicle Medieval History Documentaries and Odyssey Ancient History Documentaries.

Here is a couple of other videos that are worth checking out

Books

After many months of not reading any books. I managed to get a couple of cosy novels in.

Coming up

There will be a range of concerts, some sports and a massive change.

University

So university starts on 11th September and exams end on 8th December. I’m doing 2 subjects. ‘Dynamical systems and Chaos‘ and ‘Linear and Discrete Optimization Modelling‘. It’s exciting and scary in equal amounts.

My concert

My next concert is on Sunday 24th September at 2:30 pm. You can read more about it and buy tickets here. I hope some of you can make it.

Have a wonderful September