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!