Bundanon 5 week 3

The beginning of our third week saw many departures. Rachael had to leave on Monday to celebrate her Mothers birthday in Melbourne, and Lisa went back to Sydney on Tuesday to celebrate her own birthday with her family. And then there were three!

Nicole, Julia and Danny spent Tuesday morning looking at the enormous collection of works by Arthur Boyd, his family and Entourage, including Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, and Charles Blackman, and there is even a piece by Picasso. We were also able to flick through the archives including letters and sketch books, which was a fascinating insight into the mind of Arthur Boyd. He has left such an incredible gift for the Australian people. Bundanon and Riversdale are a testament to the forsight and intelligence of this man, and as a result artists and musicians are able to enrich themselves not only by immersing themselves in the incredible landscape of the area, but also through access to the wonderful collection at the homestead and in the art center.
Julia (yes, ANOTHER Julia), one of the curators for this amazing collection,showed us a painting that is a kind of collaborative joke by Arthur Boyd, and Sidney Nolan, but signed with the name of Brett Whiteley! Just the kind of thing that composers also get up to when they are partying together...
On Wednesday we thought we might get a visit from Peter Garrett, Federal Minister for the Arts, who was planning to visit both Riversdale and Bundanon while he was in the Illawarra. Unfortunately he didnt make it all the way down to Bundanon but we had fun trying out some string trio music just in case; lots of early classical composers, and the formidable Mozart Eb Major Divertimento. We had a visit, instead,from the art students of SCECGS Redlands, who were staying at Riversdale for a Yr 11 art camp. They did lots of sketches of us (we tried not to pull too many faces!)
Later that arvo we went for a fantastic walk back along the driveway of Bundanon, along the river, and went a bit snap happy with our cameras as the light was so beautiful. You can see some of the results above.
Heather, one of Ironwood's younger musicians, turned up on Thursday, especially to discuss Ironwood's mentoring project in April with the young artists of Adelaide Chamber Players (link??). We will be working with them for a week,on music of the baroque era, culminating in a concert in Adelaide's Elder Hall on April 16. We had a very good planning brunch at Hyams Beach Cafe, and sampled all their different ways with eggs...
In amongst the playing and planning this week, we also discovered a bit more of Bouderee National Park, and did the walk past Murrays Beach, and around Governors Head. Spectacular views back along Jervis Bay and St Georges Basin, and we found some excellent, tasty, spicy sausages for the BBQ at Huskisson butcher on our way back to Bundanon!
Kirsty turned up again on Saturday, and we did our final bit of playing,had lunch for the last time on the Musicians Cottage verandah,and walked around Bundanon, this time the Cedars walk, looking at the amazing rock and tree outcrops, and savouring our last bit of silence for a while. We celebrated our last evening at Bundanon with a glass of french champagne and a final evening stroll around the homestead.

So,at the end of the residency; as they say 'tired but happy' we all say thanks to Bundanon Trust and all the staff there, for an incredible place and opportunity to 'be' with our artform - music, mainly, but also words, movement, and visual art - to explore and to 'play' in all senses of the word, in a childlike and in a serious manner, with ideas and music. Bundanon is a unique and special place, for artists, and for all Australians. As I drove out of the gate on Sunday, I said my usual little 'Thanks Arthur' in my head. We'll be back. Thank you!

Our next posts will be about the recording we're currently finishing with Diana Doherty, oboe, and on our Musica Viva National Tour with Miriam Allan, soprano. Til then, happy Bundanon dreaming....

Bundanon 4

Dudes!
Welcome back after a week of non stop awesome action here at the Bundanon dude ranch!
To pick up where we left off, we spent another day with Kevin March, finetuning bits of his new quartet, and demonstrating bits of it in front of a wonderful visiting school group from Illawarra Grammar School, who were spending the week at a creative arts camp over at Riversdale. They were mostly music students, who asked a lot of fabulous questions, and drew visual responses to Kevin's new work. Sadly, we said goodbye to Kevin on Wednesday morning, at a VERY chilly Moss Vale Station on the way to Melbourne (the coffee was awesome - try the Post Office cafe near the station...)

We said hello to another composer from Sydney, Damian Barbeler, who arrived on Wednesday afternoon, with another quartet hot off the press.
On Thursday we tried out Damian's new piece, which is influenced by japanese silk screens, Telemann, and Messiaen. That evening we had a very amusing YouTube night, down in 'Julia & Rachael's house' (Sherman & Gonski kitchen), and we thoroughly recommend the following links:
Dudley Moore's Beethoven Parody
What's Opera Doc? (warner bros - Elmer & Bugs)
The Cat Concerto (Tom & Jerry)
The Fast Show - 'Black' (very appropriate for an artist's camp!)

On Friday, we had to go into Nowra for various medical appointments, so we detoured via a walk along Seven Mile Beach, followed by a swim, and an awesome amount of shopping, the proceeds of which were donated to the Victorian Bushfire Red Cross Appeal. Friday night saw the arrival of the masses, so we had a rather spectacular BBQ on the Musicians Cottage verandah (Nic, Danny & Neal's house), which ended in a fire blanket being thrown over the rather 'age-ed' BBQ....We salvaged all the chops and snags though!

Over the weekend, we had various people here,for lots of different planning things - Cath, Malcolm, Rob& Megan, on an administration front, Neal to cook awesome scrambled eggs with salmon, along with tutorials on Brahms, Kirsty to say 'awesome dude' and play awesome cello, and Sophie, who joined the 'I slept on the verandah' club (other brave members Danny, Adrian & Nic), and painted beautiful watercolours from the same verandah, while planning her film...

On Saturday night Cath and Malcolm cooked a huge and yummy meal of lasagne and for dessert, stewed fruit and semolina. Kirsty decorated the barn (normally our rehearsal space) with lots of candles, and we all sat round eating and gasbagging.
Lisa started a gorgeous painting of the Single Man's Hut, one of her favourite places at Bundanon. We finished the evening with a fun filled read through of the Ravel String Quartet, a very interesting exercise on gut strings!

We thought you might like to see some photos of Danny & Kirsty playing duets, taken through the window in the Barn. 'Framing' the view in a picture, or photo, was important in Arthur Boyd's working process. Have a look a some of his paintings, and see if you can spot this.

On Sunday night most of our guests had to return to Sydney for the beginning of the working week (hard for some!) so we went and had a farewell meal at Berry Pub. It was quite a strange experience to stray so far afield after 1 and a half weeks on a farm!

Bundanon 3

Greetings from Composition land.
We have spent most of today trying out the first draft of a new quartet by the composer Kevin March. It is entitled Water Dreamers and has a lot of lovely new sounds.
We won't tell you all about it because we want to save some surprises for the premier which will probably be in melbourne as Kevin lives in Victoria.
Needless to say we had a lot of fun and talked about various articulation choices, and how to make fancy fruit desserts. Kevin treated us to some of his favourites from his home town Michigan
Julia and Danny did a bushwalk in the afternoon down to Steamers beach in the Booderee National park and came across a strange wooden shelter and a ball that looked an awful lot like wilson.....
Nicole and Lisa were lucky enough to have the whole of Nowra pool to themselves and swam several thousand kilometers.

Bundanon Adventures 2

Hi Everyone, Nicole & Julia here, posting from a MUCH cooler Bundanon. The temperature has dropped about 10 degrees this afternoon, making sleeping a much more pleasant prospect.

Last night didn't get much below 30 degrees, so the residents of the Musicians Cottage (see photo?) decided to sleep al fresco, on the verandah, much as our grandparents would have done in country Australia in the early twentieth century. Danny, Adrian (our visiting choreographer & Pilates instructor), and Nicole braved the mozzies, the enormous flies and the wombats to achieve a much improved night's sleep. We awoke to the sound of the bulls in the lower paddock, Elton & Bruce, bellowing good morning at their girlfriends' in the paddock opposite. They certainly weren't a patch on Elton John and Bruce Springsteen;)

Adrian, who now works for the Sydney Dance Company, has been here chatting about improvisation, in both music and dance, and taking Pilates and stretch classes for us. Very important for musicians bodies (and highly beneficial for all, no matter what profession!). We had a fabulous class last night in the somewhat cooler evening air on the front lawn of Bundanon - a bit like 'Bikram' pilates/yoga, where everything stretched further in the heat!

We farewelled Daniel on Saturday, who explained his PhD research project to us, which involves writing journals and video diaries on our rehearsal and performance process, and have welcomed Kevin today, one of the composers writing for us along the songlines of water. We are very excited about exploring the first draft of this new quartet with him tommorrow.

In between, we thought we might leave you with some fantastic photos Lisa took this afternoon at Bouderee National Park, images of water which seem to be becoming a bit of a theme of our residency

Peninsula Summer Music Festival retrospective

Bundanon Day 1

Try and guess what this is management speak for:

Meaningful interaction with the environment and dialogue with the local/indigenous surroundings in order to facilitate enhanced artistic expression.....

We will give you a hint...see above!!


We didn't spend all day at the beach however, we have practiced, Lisa has been doing some work on her picture book, and Daniel is going to explain his research project to us.

We went to Riversdale today to meet the other artists in residence, who are multimedia artists working as a group called the 'Thinking through the body lab'. They have an interesting blog.