IMPOSTO| Presented by BackStage Music
14 June 2024 Woodburn Creatives
On a wet winter night, I was drawn like a moth to the vibrant lights of Woodburn Creatives warehouse in Redfern. I stepped into the electrifying realm of BackStage Music’s experimental performance. All credit to the dynamic Lamorna Nightingale, who keeps pushing boundaries and serves us a platter of new and unpredictable performances. And audiences are lapping it up!
The program said I was in for a wild journey and so with Pinot Grigio in hand I buckled up for an intense evening of music, poetry, projection and performance.
Created for BackStage Music, IMPOSTO connected aural and visual works inspired by experimental writers, composers and filmmakers. The evening underlined BackStage Music’s mission to present a melting pot collaboration of musicians of diverse backgrounds, career stages and interests beginning with emerging artists Angel Grindr presenting Pallindrome. Live musicians responded through high impact percussion and wind instruments to a projection of the 1969 experimental silent film Pallindrome by New York avant garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton.
I had been transfixed by Anna Fraser’s performance of Le Labyrinthe: Leçons de Ténèbres et Miserere in March 2023 and was keen to see what this creative genius would curate next. She did not disappoint! Inspired by images selected from picture book The Wanderer by Peter van den Ende, tracing the journey of a boat along a phantasmagoric global route, Anna curated a beautiful spectrum of thought in an interplay of vision, sound and word.
Joined by soprano and performer Jane Sheldon, with Satsuki Odamura (koto), and Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba and baryton) IMPOSTO took us from contemplation to distress, the turbulent to effervescent, Japanese philosophy to The Bell Jar and back again through vocal texture from the deeply guttural to the sublimely ecstatic. The performance moved across nine nuanced and layered pieces, each a different soundworld and intellectual commentary. Check out the comprehensive IMPOSTO notes here >>
The overwhelming take out for this audience member was an extreme heightened awareness of our level of sensitivity and awareness to the sounds around us and the space we are in. Suddenly the trains pushing past Redfern station took on a new resonance. The sound of rain battering the umbrella an isolated echo chamber.
Don’t miss the next BackStage Music experience TRACE, 7.30pm, Saturday 13 July at 107 Projects Redfern. If it is anything at all like IMPOSTO it will overflow into the following days, with much texting and commentary amongst friends!
Photo Credit: Oliver Miller
