Return to Perth

One of the films in this year's Perth Festival collection at the Somerville Auditorium was a documentary about Marianne Faithfull. I've dipped in and out of a being a Faithfull fan. I was too young to appreciate her early work in the mid-1960s, but discovered her with the album Broken English in 1979 which is full of strong, bold songs that still resonate with power 45 years later. After that, every so often I'd dip and out of her repertoire being fascinated by her album of the Romantic Poets, She Walks in Beauty (2021) and being in love with her reading of the letter at the heart of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's epistolary novel from 1782, Les Liaison Dangereuses. I've managed to track down what I suspect is an illegal recording of her reading it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chhYlqRoJVs The book it comes from is an absorbing work which I read, day after day, on the beach during a Perth Summer holiday years ago. It's inspired all sorts of responses including...

On the one hand, I have no interest what so every about the lives of the rich and famous who thought that mixing with Jeffrey Epstein was a good thing. On the other hand, it's hard to avoid all the press coverage about this ongoing story. So what's the best balance?  I decided that reading Virginia Roberts Giufree's autobiography Nobodies Child  would give me one important perspective. And it did. Although written with help, her voice reaches out with such clarity after years of abuse and then years of standing up to her abusers. A tough read but if you're up to it, I recommend it. After that, I needed to find a good analyst recommended by believable sources to make sense of her story. Hamish Macdonald, one of the hosts of Radio National's Global Roaming  suggested an interview on the Ezra Klein Show and as I've always found Klein's choice of interviewees interesting, that's where I went. He interviewed Anand Giridharadas a journalist/sociologist of Amer...

  After writing a post about the Iranian war yesterday, I was feeling up to watching what I knew was going to be a difficult documentary. Some people weep through it. Some people object to it's manipulation of the death of young girl. And others, like me, say you must watch The Vocie of Hind Rajab. It's the story, the real story, of the death of 5 year old Palestinian girl in January 2024 and the attempts by Red Crescent staff based in the West Bank (because there's nowhere safe for them to be in Gaza) to negotiate safe access for an ambulance, that's only 8 minutes away, to rescue her. You may have seen commentary on social media at the time. The genius of the Tunisian film maker,  Kaouther Ben Hania, is that she uses the recorded voice of the child and even some of the original recording in the Red Cresecent phone room. A child who is hiding in a car with 6 dead relatives. A child who is in kindegarden. A child who is afraid of the dark. A child whose voice finally go...

I don't know where to start. It's 8 days into the illegal US/Israeli war agains Iran with no sign of either side being willing to compromise. I know Iranian-Australians who are terrified for their families back home. I know Jewish people terrified about the existential threat that the Iranian government and its proxies are to Israel. And I have a friend, on her way to a well deserved holiday in Paris, whose flight out of Doha was turned around on the night of 28 February as war broke out. She shared this pattern of her plane's journey: She's been stuck in a hotel in Doha ever since although there was word today that she might get a flight out.   Every story that comes out the Middle East is horrible but the one that really shook me yesterday morning was the an interview of the new Israeli Ambassador to Australia. When asked about the attack on the school in southern Iran. The BBC is saying that the satellite and video evidence appears to show that the school was attacke...

One of Festival of Perth highlights was a Scandinavian singing group, Akervinda.  Named for a Swedish wildflower whose roots spread far and wide, the award-winning group is made up of four jazz singers – Lise Kroner, Iris Bergcrantz, Linda Bergström and Agnes Åhlund – united by a deep love of folk music. In the words of their publicity" "Celebrated for their fresh, modern interpretations, and praised across folk, jazz and a cappella scenes, they breathe new life into traditional Scandinavian folk tunes."  Their concert was at St Mary's Cathedral and the first thing that surprised me about the event was that there was a bar outside! I've never seen a church, let alone a Catholic cathedral, serve wine outside as well as inside! The second surprise was that their folk songs are rather pagan in concept and the concert, Spellbound, was built around spells - a journey through nature, love, tradition, womanhood & witchcraft. There was even a song for about difficult...

Going on holidays in February means that you miss some of the Perth Festival but we've still managed to squeeze in half a dozen shows plus a number of films at the wonderful Somerville Auditorium that I posted about this time last year. This year it turns out that the majority of our experiences have been in the Perth Town Hall in what is called the Embassy. We've seen: Marney McQueen, a music theatre performer, with a great band. She's probably best known for over 600 performances in Simon Philiips' production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical where she played the owner of a country pub - and now, with her husband, she owns a country pub in Wyong Emily Lubitz, started in an indi-folk band called Tinpan Orange, and  produced her first solo album at 42 last year which has a country feel with songs about her family. A stunning voice and great original music. Check out the album:  Two Black Horses   The final show was Le Gateau Chocolat - an English/Nigerian d...