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I'm writing to you from my sunroom, where the cat is curled up in the sun, the plants are looking a little worse for wear and the radio is boldly blasting out Weinberg. While last year I spent lockdown pursuing a new life as an avid indoor plant-grower, this year I'm sorry to confess I'm watering them less, distracted as I am by new lockdown obsessions like learning the autoharp and how to use a pottery wheel. My music habits are unchanged. I'm endlessly devouring classical music and the stories behind it.
If you're a lover of all things outdoors, bliss out to this beautiful short film where Katie Yap sings and plays a work all about renewal and rebirth after terrible loss. Emily Sheppard wrote this piece on the beach in Tasmania, where she happened to have brought her viola on her walk around the bushfire-ravaged wilderness in 2016. She realised a baby bird was hatching right in front of her, and she started playing her instrument... it became a hypnotising new piece of Australian classical music.
If you're fond of moon gazing, tune in to ABC Classic on Tuesday night when we celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. Australian pianist-composer Belle Chen is about to return home after many years of touring the UK, and she's bringing her new EP full of odes to the moon and her family.
One of the non-classical tales I've fallen in love with this week is Mridula Amin's Walkley Award-winning exploration of one of Sydney's last caravan parks. It's wonderful radio and the stories of the people who live here are fascinating.
I watch a concerning amount of television, and am currently engrossed in iview's Australian Ballet concerts. These take me right back to my childhood, where my grandma took all of us grandkids to the ballet and I would argue with my grandpa about which ballets were the best I was always right, of course. Watching Madeline Eastoe dance to Graeme Murphy's edition of Romeo & Juliet is surely an excellent use of one's TV time, with exquisite costumes by Akira Isogawa.
Stay well and safe,
Vanessa Hughes | | |
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| Watch violist Katie Yap perform "Aftermath" by Emily Sheppard, which was inspired by the rebirth of nature after bushfire, and recorded during 2020 lockdown in Melbourne. | | WATCH VIDEO |
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Experience the thrill of ballet with these acclaimed performances of much-loved ballet classics.
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| Hidden in plain sight on a suburban Sydney street, a caravan park is proving a last refuge for pensioners, divorcees and ex-cons in an unaffordable city. | | LISTEN ONLINE |
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Enjoy this beautiful and delicate soundtrack by Mary Finsterer to the classic Australian movie South Solitary: friendship and love gain a foothold in the unlikely setting of a remote island lighthouse. | | BUY AND STREAM ONLINE |
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