tour dates..

ok. so tour dates have finally been announced. phew! check out the website for details.. sunwrae.com
please subscribe to our mailing list, help spread the word!!

it was a busy week's end on friday gone, licking stamps (how fun you say), stuffing envelopes and organising the distribution of tens of thousands of flyers and posters. i can now happily say that they'll arrive in your letterbox today or tomorrow (not all of them)... and that is, if your name is on our mailing list already!

then it was off to the ballarat acoustic music festival on saturday. and what a lovely festival it was.. a great range of music performed entirely acoustically (how refreshing!) in intimate venues & cute coloured tents at the ballarat observatory. mel robinson and i performed two sets (cello & vibes) for a very attentive audience.

and now it's heads down. music creation time. hoping to post some mp3 snippets here this week if i can work out my recording device... fingers crossed.

and good news...
rabbits without spleens album is finished... finally... 6 years later (i never thought i would take that long to finish something!).
as well as my improv album with eugene skeef! yay! hoping to have both albums pressed for the tour, or at least the melbourne show. we'll see.

10-4.
r

tour planning...

it's been a busy few weeks here, planning for the next sunwrae tour with the string quintet. i was in brisbane for a couple of days, spruiking sunwrae to queensland venues for a possible 2012 tour, then soaked up some music at golden plains festival in meredith, victoria and since then it's been all go, finalising tour dates, flyer design and marketing materials for publicity and promotion...

i'm playing a show for the ballarat acoustic music festival this saturday (26th march) at the ballarat observatory. i'm on vibes, playing with a wonderful cellist melanie robinson. it's an event for earth hour, so all acoustic performances, with some other fabulous muso's from victoria. hopefully it'll be a clear night so we can gaze at the sky through the telescopes too!

after that, it's all looking very exciting.. it'll be heads down for me to write some tunes, then the tour begins... mid way through, the sunwrae string quintet are jetting off to ho chi minh city to perform for the australian consulate too! of course the preparations are rather frantic, but i have a fabulous assistant kellie jayne chambers working with me to make sure all the logistics are smooth sailing.

more news to come when we officially announce the tour dates.. sunshine to ya'll!

a new season..

ok. an update in the life of rae.. 2011 has started fabulously.. fabulously challenging, busy and creative in oh so many ways. i've been playing piano more in the last 3 months than i have for 3 years. i now wonder why there's quiet times as it's always the best way to start the day (well, after my walk through the forest with my dog!). here's a summer pic of the hound looking surprisingly innocent!

i've started writing an orchestral piece (partly funded by the regional arts fund in oz), so i have my head buried in orchestration and arrangement books some of the time. i've also built a cork board, from many years of wine drinking (who ever knew that drinking so much wine would make me more organised?!)... and a hat stand from an old wooden cot i found in the garage (if you saw my hat collection, you'd wonder why it took this long).. it's also probably about time the old letterbox out the front of my place got a workover... maybe next month's energy spurt!

apart from all these creative ventures, it's been pretty darn crazy in the office. the sunwrae string quintet (piano & string quartet) are touring may 5th to june 9th in australia... and there's also (ssshhh!) a date in the waters outside oz in the middle of that. it's due to be announced very soon...

from the feedback we've been given lately, from our lovely audience members at many years of sunwrae performances, i've decided to start the easvesdropping series in melbourne again.. it'll be a bit different that the richmond shows, smaller groups to start with, but also an exciting finale performance with (hopefully!) an international guest... and the launch of a long lost album to go with it! very exciting indeed.

mid-year i'm also involved in a theatre show with st martins youth theatre in south yarra. i'm looking forward to working in the theatre again... solo performing has never been more missed than now!

well. that's probably about it for the moment.. i'll update you shortly when the tour is announced... and hopefully this blog will become more a weekly splurge of thoughts whilst things progress over the next couple of months...

rae :)

happy festive season....

for the first time since i was, perhaps, 5 years old, i was in bed by 10pm on new years... it was actually quite exciting to be up at 6am and walking through the bushland near my place, and not because i had been up all night! who would have thunk?! it was sooo quiet. absolutely no disturbance. well, except for the early morning revellers at nuggety dam that is. they were still up dancing or swaying awkwardly around the campfire (is that allowed this time of year?) as i walked through the forest.. i felt like a real dork being so sprightly that early!

my bright idea was to start the year on a positive note, creatively, so i was on the piano by 9am and switching between playing and editing some piano compositions on the computer.... day 3 now and still feels good, so hopefully i can keep up the productivity! i have a few projects to sink my teeth into over summer.. an orchestral piece and a number of piano & string quartet works, as well as a solo piano recording... many hours to go yet, hopefully my studio can keep up... above is a late night pic of my piano & vibes where i work by the way...

i'm not sure i really believe in resolutions, but i have decided (and i've said this before i know) to write more here. i'll probably need to vent a little more once the orchestral piece comes along. mmmm. see you back here soon then eh?

ps. happy festive season. i spent christmas day at home with a few friends. prawns and champagne for breakfast, roast turkey for lunch and many mixed drinks for dinner! the table tennis table and dart board got a bit of working over too!

Artist in Residence and Tour Preparation...

we're half way through an artist in residence program at the moment.. that is, the sunwrae trio... myself on vibraphone, luke richardson on double bass and emily rosner on harp. we're preparing for the 'primavera tour' in september, which heads up the east coast of australia.. performing in Ballarat (our preview show), Melbourne VIC, Corowa NSW, Albury NSW, Sydney NSW, Port Macquarie NSW, Uralla NSW, Bundagen NSW, Byron Bay NSW, Brisbane QLD and Eumundi QLD. for details of dates etc., please check out out official website...

for now and this coming week, we'll be based in regional victoria (ballarat), at the 'backspace' arts venue.. for those that know, it's the old police station in camp street, behind the art gallery. it's a cultural initiative of the city of ballarat, providing us with a space to rehearse from, developing our music for the tour. we're holding some workshops this week for the local music students here and presenting a performance on thursday august 19 at the helen mcpherson smith theatre. the students from the university of ballarat's live production course will be recording and filming us during the performance too.

so it's been great this past week to focus on the music, arranging some pre-existing compositions of mine, especially for the trio, as well as learn a couple of brand new works i've written since i had the amazing experience of my residency in brazil. the tour's looking to be absolutely fabulous!! in the meantime, here's our promo flyer for the ballarat show...
i'll post some pics of the events during the week as they unfold...
stay tuned for more!
rae

a day in the life...

so it's been a busy few weeks here, hence no blog posts! i have a little cabin fever from the 3-week-12/14-hour-each-day studio time, but i think it's been worth it and i've been very productive! i've finished notating 7 piano solos (including some back from 2001), an eighth is on the way and i've made a good start on two works for string quintet, as well as (gulp!) an orchestral work. wowee huh? hopefully i'll be inspired to keep it up when i'm back keeping the home fires burning in australia....

it's great to be so productive here and also kind of ridiculous to realise that i've been 9 years behind in putting my works on paper. i've made a plan to keep in front from now on. the other composers at the centre are busily working, so it's not hard to hibernate for a few days, then emerge with some stories (and new manuscripts!) over a beer or two. i've met new swedish composers here almost daily in the past week (who are studying at the school, which is in the same building at VICC), each with fabulous stories about their work and various projects and who are genuinely interested in all things music (they also assure me that gotland genuinely has lots of sheep, not just concrete ones). it has inspired me to think about studying again (yikes, did i really say that?) to challenge myself a little. yesterday a few of us saw the gotland symphonia perform at the university library. beethoven, ives and a local composer were the flavour of the day. it's a little strange for me, because day by day i'm interested in listening to more & more orchestral work. it must be a sign.

mmm. so as well as music for sunwrae, i've been doing a little electronic work. a week or so ago jon cohrs (NY/berlin, who i work with in 'rabbits without spleens') visited me here in visby, to continue working on some tracks we started (has it really been four?) years ago.


coffee, whiskey, peanuts and chocolate kept us going into the early hours each night, editing, recording and mixing what will eventually be an album of wicked electronic work (recorded in banff canada, melbourne australia, new york usa, berlin germany and now visby sweden... where to next?!). i'm sure any sunwrae fan will enjoy this fine music. i can't wait for it to be complete!

i also hear in the pipeline that the latest sunwrae recording (live at the thornbury theatre) is just about complete! i'll have it in my hot little hands when i arrive back in oz in may. stay tuned to our website homepage sunwrae.com in the coming weeks for sales...

so there's not long to go now. i'll take a few more pics this week and put a few mp3s up here to give you a taste of what's coming..

A hop, skip and a jump to Sweden... what is it with islands?!

happy easter out there! so i've just landed in a new part of the world (for me). it's the island of gotland in the middle of the baltic sea. the air is freezing (the water probably is too), but the snow has just about gone and the spring flowers are starting to emerge.... so what is it with these islands i find myself on? firstly itaparica in bahia brazil, then park island, hong kong and now gotland in sweden. maybe my first set of compositions during my residency here will bear the answer... or maybe not. apparently to dream of an island means pleasant journeys and fortunate enterprises?! i'm happy to believe that. no more questions.

so after a few weeks catching up on long lost time with friends in hong kong, switzerland and germany (note to self: must go back to berlin soon!), already i feel the effects of a successful venture. just two days here in the medieval town, at the visby international centre for composers (and although i haven't written much yet), i can say that it's an inspiring place to be... it's trully amazing what you see on a daily basis walking around town (admittedly i didn't take all of these photos, but could have if i wanted)..

so, as a unesco world heritage site and built sometime around the 12th century, as you can see, the stone walls, churches and structures are pretty old~ already they've outlasted some of the houses in australia. who would have thunk? enough of history though, that's not what i'm here for. now. i'm not sure what their fascination is with sheep (i can imagine the visby folk would get along well with new zealanders)~ but there are statues of the critters all over town. hopefully when this easter holiday weekend is over and i've successfully collected and eaten all my well hidden easter eggs, i can buy some much needed ugg boots to help the local economy. apparently lamb is the flavour of the decade too, so i may just have to arrive for dinner at the local bar tonight and wash it down with Wisby Påsköl, visby's local easter beer. see? it's not all about history.

well, best be off to start hiding all my easter eggs. it won't take long. see you back here when something else exciting happens.... like music ;)

i'll leave you with a couple more colourful pics of visby, so you don't get the impression it's all grey, doom and gloom...