ABR Arts
Melbourne International Jazz Festival
Building on the success of the 2022 Melbourne International Jazz Festival (MIJF) – never guaranteed, coming off Melbourne’s lockdowns – the MJIF’s artistic team, at first glance, looked to have voted for more of the same, casting a wide net to ensure that plenty of musical diversity was on offer. After the triumph of last year’s Big Saturday event at Sidney Myer Music Bowl, featuring New Zealand funksters Fat Freddy’s Drop, the Festival rebranded this year’s event Jazz at the Bowl, headlined by 1980s soul diva Chaka Khan and funk producer Nile Rodgers, best known for his pioneering work with Diana Ross and David Bowie.
... (read more)Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a perennial favourite on the Shakespeare calendar (pun intended). The twelfth night of Christmas celebrations was the olden-day version of New Year’s Eve, not because it was the last day of the year but because it was the last day of festivities, with everything returning to normal after the hangover. As such, it was celebrated as a topsy-turvy night where homeowners would play servant to their servants and bring them gifts, with much frivolity and goodwill – a bit like the boss getting pissed at the staff party.
... (read more)Dan Lee’s first play, Bottomless, premièred at fortyfivedownstairs in 2018 after receiving the last R.E. Ross Trust award four years previously. Critics drew attention to the unusually star-studded cast for a début – Mark Coles Smith, Julie Forsyth, Jim Daly, Alex Menglet, Uncle Jack Charles – but its depiction of the residents of a dry-out facility in Broome garnered a mixed reception. The effect of Lee’s writing, wrote Tim Byrne typically, ‘may be unwieldy and overstuffed, but at least it feels rich. At least it has ambition.’
... (read more)The ABR/Academy Travel Vienna tour, now drawing to a close, has revealed some of the riches in this monumental city – the architecture, the art collections (especially the mighty Kunsthistorisches Museum and the brilliant, newish Leopold Museum, with its host of Schieles and Klimts), Emperor Franz Joseph’s Ringstrasse, the general ambience of the city, not to mention the Kardinalschnitte at Gerstner Konditorei.
... (read more)The birth of a new opera is always exciting. Unlike a play or a sonata, an opera brings together a variety of art forms, with performers and creatives drawn from many different backgrounds. The libretto of Christopher Sainsbury’s The Visitors draws on a new, more gender-balanced version of an existing play, Jane Harrison’s The Visitors (2020), currently running in Sydney and Wollongong.
... (read more)Photography has held humanity in its thrall since its nascent years. Celebrated and contested, the photograph is said to have inherent power, making it both a vital, and also dangerous, medium. This exceptional and ambitious new exhibition at the NGV, Photography: Real and Imagined, illuminates why we have an unwavering fascination.
... (read more)Sophie Rowell’s first year as Melbourne Chamber Orchestra’s Artistic Director continues to impress with its attractive and intelligent programming and strong musical leadership on stage.
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