Running With Cheese

My recent 10-day stint in Australia felt brief but wonderfully rich. My workshops were fully subscribed, and the singers were amazing - with so many choir directors, choristers, music students and soloists in the room I felt alternately elated and superfluous.
    About half the members in the Sydney workshop were staff and pupils at the Newcastle Waldorf School and had travelled down from Newcastle that day. I'd worked with the school last year and was impressed by the pupils' musicality and advanced listening skills, so having them at the workshop was a treat. Many old chums from the Honeybees and workshops from the '90s also turned up. Good thing about doing it a cappella is the portability, as getting into the venue was a drama, and we subsequently started the workshop outside and sang until the key finally manifested. (Thanks to my friend Stephanie King for easy organisation.)
    Took the train to beautiful Kiama for a Sunday afternoon workshop, and that turned out to be even wilder than Sydney. Again, more friends from various tours and other connections turned up and really got into it. (As always I'm indebted to the beautiful and talented Terri Rowe for her exemplary organisational skills.)
    Back in Sydney, I had a quiet week. Had a brief confab about our log-runnibg recording projects with Peter Dasent, and dropped in on the Café of the Gate of Salvation's rehearsal (and sang a couple of songs), and the choir is sounding hotter than ever. Soloists Tracey Case and Freesia Mooney can really whip it out. Caught up socially with several chums I hadn't seen for a while - my close friend Jann Hing, the unchanged Linda Medley back from Hong Kong, the interrogative and encouraging Lu Sierra, the wonderful Carol Ballantine, Judith Foster and Frank Zeichner, the old team of Peter Dasent and Sally Zwartz. Nice to hang with Frank Dasent and argue about the merits of As it is in heaven. Thanks to Fumi and to Peter and Sally for hospitality.
    Some of you may remember I played in a couple of bands with bassist Jonathan Zwartz and his wife Jane Lindsay, both of whom I've known for over 30 years. Their daughter Martha, all of 16, is a lovely singer and gifted songwriter and I went to hear her gig one night. She has a lovely voice and presence, very at ease and charming, and her songs are gems. You can hear some samples of her work at: http://www.myspace.com/thedrakes09  or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGp1Qf8RZAc.
    Next stop Brisbane, where I caught up with my friend Lisa Smith (ex-Sister Moon Ensemble), and where the workshops plain went OFF. A plethora of old chums (David Pilbeam, Yani & Pete, Cath Mundy (also ex-Sister Moon) and Jay Turner, Maria Wendt, Chrissie Schmidt among them) and returning participants took the songs to new heights. In the exhausted silence after a particularly intense and funky Nobody's fault but mine, one of the singers cried out 'I think I just lost weight!'.
    And the way they sang I say no, the song by Women of Mambazo which I hadn't done for some time, was just so beautiful and so - happy. Hearing it made me just so happy. (As always thanks to Ingrid james for the vocal tips and to both Ingrid James and Spencer Whiteley for great organisation.) Thanks also to the altos who cunningly reframed some wrong notes as 'thinking outside of the box.'
    I reckon Ingrid has been organising the Brisbane workshops for me for 15 years, I feel privileged - she has plenty of other projects in Australia and overseas, and is key in the Brisbane jazz scene. Her newest venture in Brisbane is the Sunday evening Jazz cellar at a pub in New Farm, and I went there after the workshop, heard Ingrid sing some quite demanding stuff rather beautifully. Sang one song with the band, helped out vocally by Ingrid and Kristy. A nice ending to the trip.