Year: 2019

Photo by Prudence Upton Sydney Festival with Daptone Records, present, ORQUESTA AKOKAN, in the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent Festival Garden (Hyde Park) 15 and 16 January. ORQUESTA AKOKAN, is a big band mambo collective, comprised of some of Cuba’s finest musicians and others from New York, celebrating Havana of the 1940’s and 50’s. The band is led by Cuban singer Jose ‘Pepito’ Gomez and piano player Michael Eckroth and Jacob Plasse featuring a crack brass section. The Spigeltent had had all its furniture cleared and we entered into a ‘mosh’ pit style accommodation with the permanent ‘bank’ table and benches surrounding…

Photo by Prudence Upton SHANGHAI MIMI PTY LTD, FINUCANE and SMITH and CAEG, present SHANGHAI MIMI, at the Riverside Theatre, Parramatta, as part of the Sydney Festival. 10th – 20th January. SHANGHAI MIMI, is a cabaret entertainment having its World Premiere in the Riverside Theatre, Parramatta. Inspired by the legend of 1930’s Shanghai, the ‘Paris of the East’, an international port city of foreign enclaves, a city famous for its flamboyant clubs and heady nights, a live band (led by John McCall) playing vintage Chinese jazz and blues, a group of artists (eight, in number) feature as dancers (Choreography, by…

Photo by  Zaina Ahmed NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR, is a 1922 German Expressionist silent horror film, Directed by F.W, Murnau and starring Max Schreck as vampire Count Orick. The creators were sued by the Bram Stoker family – the author of DRACULA – 1897 – for copyright infringement, which they hadn’t sought to acquire, and this was despite their attempts to disguise the source, by changing names of characters and the narrative. The penalty demanded was that all copies of the film were ordered to be burnt. However, one print had already been distributed around the world. Copies of it…

Photo by Victor Frankowski Sydney Chamber Opera in association with The Song Company Australia, present LA PASSION DE SIMONE, an Oratorio. Music by Kaija Saariaho, Libretto and Lyrics, by Amin Maaloof, in Bay 17, Carriageworks, Redfern, as part of the Sydney Festival. 9th -11th January. LA PASSION DE SIMONE, is an Oratorio by Finnish Composer, Kaija Saariaho, to a Libretto, with Lyrics, in French, by Amin Maaloof. It featured an orchestra, choir and electronics. It premiered in 2006. A Chamber version was presented in 2013, with no electronics and the choir substituted with four vocalists. This is the version that…

Sydney Festival presents, HOME, Created by Geoff Sobelle, at The Roslyn Packer Theatre, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay. 9th- 18th January. HOME is a work that was created by Geoff Sobelle through workshops and residencies in four American institutions: MANA Contemporary (Jersey City, NJ), BRIC Art House (Brooklyn, NY), Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA), and ArtsEmerson (Boston, Philadelphia). HOME premiered at the 2017 Fringe Festival (Philadelphia) and has been travelling the International Festival Circuit since, including the Edinburgh Festival, the Brisbane Festival and a stint in New Zealand. Now in Sydney. A group of seven actors led by Geoff Sobelle…

Griffin Theatre Company in association with Sydney Festival and Riverside Theatres present, SINCE ALI DIED, Written and Performed by Omar Musa, in the SBW Stables Theatre, Nimrod St, Darlinghurst. 8-19 January. Rapper, Poet and Award Winning Author is Omar Musa. In this memoir monologue performance he is a brown man in a black country talking to, mostly, white people, about how he has felt – feels – stigmatised as being ‘unAustralian’ for most of his life. SINCE ALI DIED is a Memoir Monologue, originating from a young man who has a Muslim Malaysian father (Borneo) and a white Australian mother…