John Williams writes a pretty nifty tune. Elissa managed to land two tickets for this, and I was pretty keen to go, but had been hogging the free tickets, so suggested she take her father. Then on the day, I had a change of heart, too late. I was all set to take the bus home as Elissa wandered off to meet her dad, but then I got a phone call. "Where are you?" "Waiting for the bus" "Can you get to the opera house in the next ten minutes?".

So wandering into the foyer of the Concert Hall, the three of us were beset on each side by R2 units. Not dwelling on this for too long, we went into the hall, and the Sydney Symphony opened with the fanfare from th 1984 Olympics. From then on, interspersed with bad jokes I would have been proud of, we had music from Superman, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, ET, Close Encounters, Harry Potter, and briefly, Jaws and Psycho (the latter isn't a John Williams picture, but that shrill violin thing got a few seconds' airing anyway). The first half closed with some music from Indiana Jones.

Two things really struck me about this concert. Firstly, not having seen an orchestra play that often, I was surprised at just how loud it got, and just how deep the bass sounds were. I guess a hundred people can make a lot of noise, when they've spent their entire lives learning how. Secondly was just how vividly the images that go with the music came to mind. You could see ET and Elliot flying round the top of the concert hall, and the T-Rex leaping out behind the orchestra. Indy might has well have been swinging on the doughnuts (they have big perspex things hanging from the roof to help reflect the sound) with a couple of owls hanging round for good measure.

During the interval, I passed Darth Vader in the area around my door, as I made my way to meet Elissa and her dad. "There's a bunch of stormtroopers hanging round this side of the theatre". "I know - Darth Vader's just round the corner" I replied. So we set out to get as many photos as possible before we went back in. Sadly Darth was only stopping for photos with you if you were two pretty blonde girls. I am not two pretty blonde girls, so I settled for Boba Fett. As we aimed guns at each other I said "Now thousands of internet Star Wars geeks will be asking which of us shot first". He laughed politely... (By the way I'm not a huge Star Wars geek, I swear, I just spend too much time on the net not to pick up a few of these things).

Back in the concert hall, the lights go down until the hall is pitch black. Suddenly, with the accompanying noise, a light sabre is produced from the conductor's stand. As the lights go up, he puts it down and picks up his baton, to a quiet sigh of disappointment from a polite audience. As the Star Wars opening music dies down, Darth Vader enters the concert hall, proclaims he is the lead violinist's father, and insists that he will only spare the conductor's life if he continues to play music from Star Wars. Meanwhile, 5 stormtroopers post themselves at the foot of the stage. Music from all 6 films fills the rest of the show, the Imperial March getting the best reception. All in all, an excellent way to spend a few hours. I'm just glad I didn't end up with a seat at the front - those Stormtroopers looked pretty nasty!

Photos follow...

Labels: Australia, Culchar

Last night we saw Il Trovatore. Babies on fires, inappropriate nudity, and everyone dies at the end - that's what an opera should be like. Lots of threatening to kill people, at least one poisoning, pop-up nuns hiding in a slowly advancing wall, hatred and jealousy simmering for two decades between two people who turn out to be brothers, lust, abuse of power, revenge, insanity. The Anvil Chorus was a cracker too. The singers and orchestra were, if anything, tighter and more polished than the previous evening. If only I hadn't been so tired, it would have been a really incredible evening - as it was it was still pretty special. I think we got the two operas the wrong way round, on reflection, but I definitely don't regret seeing either.

Labels: Australia, Culchar

Last Thursday I went to see James Morrison. Not the British singer-songwriter (who I always took as being a bit polished and pop, perhaps unfairly) but the Australian jazz trumpet legend. He and Ambre Hammond, a pianist of high standing, were playing a double symphony written specially for them, by Lalo Schifrin, a world-renowned composer, conductor, pianist, but who is perhaps best known for the theme to Mission:Impossible! Before the symphony we were treated to the Australian debut of two suites of Schifrin's orchestral music, played by the Sydney symphony, all excellent stuff (though as someone with a limited experience of orchestral music I don't have much to say on it). Then the soloists came out, and showed some incredible skills on their instruments, and the music was at times energetic and compelling, at times gentle and emotional, and swung from the classical to the jazz to, well, all sorts of stuff. Again, it was great to see people perform who are really, really good at what they do. But my favourite bit was the encores.



James Morrison and Ambre Hammond came back on to play an unaccompanied version of Basin Street Blues. Morrison played part of the theme with one finger, towards the end, and Hammond played a jazz improv-style solo, interspersed with some big Romantic piano chord runs. As if that wasn't enough, Morrison and Schifrin came on afterwards and played Theme from Mission:Impossible to us, Schifrin on the piano (a little shaky and out of time but pretty solid for a 75 year old) and Morrison playing the melody on the trumpet. The orchestra seemed pretty ready for it.



I really like these free Opera House tickets.

Labels: Australia, Culchar, Gigs, Jazz

Labels: Australia, Culchar, Gigs

Labels: Australia, Culchar

I'm playing with Blogger settings and trying to make collapsible posts. This means I can talk about films without ruining them. Click on Read More! if you want the film ruined anyway, or if you've already seen them.

Pirates of the Carribean 3: At Worlds End. ....(cont.) More of the same from the popular nautical franchise, as the reviews probably all said. It was too long by about half an hour, but if cutting it had meant taking out Keith Richards' appearances, let it run for an hour or so more, as far as I was concerned. I've been waiting, like many others, a few years now to see the Stones' guitarist make this cameo, so it was great to see it finally happen. He didn't do much, but he didn't need to. Great outfits, outrageously contrived storylines, ridiculous special effects and Johnny Depp camping it up for what must be the final time as Captain Jack Sparrow, made for a fun evening. Afterwards I ate chicken.

28 Weeks Later. Another sequel, I must be getting a taste for them. ...(cont.) Set in London a few months after 28 Days Later finishes, the British Isles are now supposed free of infection. Children are even being brought back in, among them the two heroes of the story. Taken to a secure compound in Canary Wharf, they escape to find pictures of their mother who was taken by the infected. And they find more than they bargained for when they make it back to their old house. Some incredible moments from Robert Carlyle, the bit with the eyes was particularly nasty, and when all the people are trapped in the room, and the boy sees his daddy you know what's going to happen. It's like amore grown up version of the bit in Gremlins with the swimming pool. At the end, when they pan up to the Eiffel Tower, you can't help but wonder if they'll call the next film 28 Months Later, and how they can possibly contain the virus now it's on mainland Europe.

Australia vs Wales, Telstra Stadium. I was so tempted to go, there were loads of tickets left, and now I wish I had....(cont.) Wales took off to an early lead, with two tries from nowhere, showing some pretty sloppy Australian defence. The Wallabies fought back, really working for their points. By half time the score was 17-12 to Wales. The second half was dominated by the Wallabies, but this wasn't reflected in the scoreline - by the whistle Wales were still 2 points ahead. Heartbreakingly for Wales, Australia crossed the line in the final play and ran away with it. As neither an Australian or a Welshman, I was on the edge of my seat. Oh, and I didn't abridge this for spoiler reasons, I'm just enjoying the new settings, and it'll make the post look prettier.

Circus Oz, Opera Theatre. ....(cont.) Like lots of circuses these days, no animals, just some stunnign acrobatics. Drunk contortionists, singing stuntmen, trapeze-artist-choolgirls, all giving a distinctly Australian flavour to the circus theme. There was a great variety of performance, with my least favourite being the rock-singer/ringmistress, and a slightly dissappointing 'stage engulfed with fire' ending, but well worth a look if you're in town.

I'm off to see another film tonight, an independent thing at a cinema by the Opera House, and then we're into Elissa's Birthday territory (Elissa's birthday officially runs from Wednesday to Wednesday, though it's actually this Friday). More on that later.

Labels: Australia, Culchar

Douglas Adams said "We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books."

At my old work, we had a database that was pretty impressive, but that on occasions failed to work. There were lots of "wouldn't it be great if"s and "if only it did this"s. At the company I now work with, there's a database system and it fundamentally works. But on occasions it doesn't work. Sometimes because people do silly things with it. Sometimes because computer programmers don't know as much about everyone's job as the people that do the job, so don't foresee an eventuality.

This week, we discovered a host of customers had been sent statements that were not complete. This was down to a human error but a perfect system would have highlighted the error, I think, and mentioned it during the printing process. I've spent most of today explaining the error to several clients.

I usually agree with everything Douglas Adams says, and everything he infers. He was someone who not only shared a lot of my world view, but shaped it. I shared his view, from an early age. The quote at the top seems to come from someone who makes a living without needing to use things that don't work, and seemed to imply it was a bad thing. I'm glad things don't work sometimes, and a lot of my old colleagues probably are too, if they think about it. If we ever make a system or an object that just works, it will stop people from working, and all of the offices will be filled with shiny infallible machines. And I'll have no money to buy food, clothes, long weekends in Singapore and festival tickets. Or the wine I'm drinking right now. So, I'd like to raise a cheap Australian Cabernet Sauvignon to things that don't work. Cheers!

Labels: Abel + Cole, Culchar

Labels: Australia, Culchar, Gigs, Jazz

I bought myself a kite! It's being posted in the next few days, and it's exactly the kite I've wanted, ever since I knew anything about kites. Anyway, that's an aside really, the crux of this post is the book club...

This evening, I've organised a book club, to meet somewhere in Central Sydney. All the responses I've had so far have been female (I'm kicking myself I didn't organise a book club when I was single), and interested in a wide variety of books. They're also the first people I've met socially through my own efforts, rather than Elissa's. After a month and a half, that's either a resounding seal of approval for Elissa's friends, or a pretty poor showing on my part. Possibly both.

Anyway, I'll tell you how it goes.

Labels: Australia, Culchar, Kiting, Travel

Last night Elissa managed to get hold of two free tickets to see Ying Tong at the Opera House Drama Theatre. It was a story based around the Goons and Spike Milligan's descent into depression and mental illness. Well-acted, by excellent Goon impressionists with versatile voices almost up to Sellers and Milligan, and lots of energy, it was a great show to see at the end of a long day's debt-collecting. The Guardian, in a bid to be quoted on the poster, would probably have said "A rollicking ride through mental illness, Goon Show-style. If this is manic depression, count me in!". It was a little insensitive about mental illness in places, but no more than Spike himself was afterwards. As the Milligan in the play said, you have to laugh. He said that while recounting a tale from a dole queue, presumably from Spike's real life. He said the man in front of him dropped dead, from poverty and starvation. The guy behind him said "Must've got a job". So there were serious moments in among the laughs, enough to keep you thinking, but not enough to stop it being a fun night out. Highly recommended. 4 stars. (Do you think I'll get on the poster?).

Labels: Australia, Culchar