18 Apr 2009
As probably the last interested person in Sydney or Melbourne to experience Lurninous, the extraordinary collaboration between the Australian Chamber Orchestra and photographer Bill Henson, I'm assured by reliable sources that the most recent performance, on April 4, was also the best.
The evening was a collaboration between the ACO, Henson, singer Katie Noonan, sound sculptor Paul Healy, sound engineer Simon Lear, and visual producer Tim Gruchy.
Luminous is a unique event in Australian culture because of the very high calibre of the artists involved and the adventurous nature of the program. One may be confident that there has never previously been a concert of chamber music that travels from Britten and Janacek to R.E.M., via the Argentinian tango king Astor Piazzolla, and includes dark and difficult contemporary works by composers such as Alfred Schnittke and Peteris Vasks.
We live in times when cheesy schlockmeisters such as Andre Rieu draw record crowds and Your ABC seems to believe that art on TV should be treated as a lame comedy routine. But with Luminous the ACO used the drawcard of Bill Henson's projected images to introduce a large audience to the sort of music that is rarely performed in a venue such as the State Theatre.
The media-driven controversies that have recently engulfed the artist may have added to the attendance figures but there were no cheap thrills on offer. During the most intense passages the images - which were admittedly distracting - faded into darkness.
The fusion of music and atmospheric imagery resulted in an evening where art rather than entertainment was the ultimate goal. In Australia, this is something usually greeted with fear and loathing by those who dread being seen as pretentious. Even worse is the blind worship of high art by the semi-erudite snobs that shun all "popular" forms simply because they are popular. The joker in the pack was probably the R.E.M. piece because it cut across those chasms of prejudice that separate classical music from the rest.
This dissolving of categories is one of the methods by which modern art plotted its tortuous progress through the 20th century.
John McDonald | Sydney Morning Herald | 18 Apr 2009
06 Apr 2009
Of all their multimedia this and cross-genre that, of all their break-outs from the confines of the classical concert, Luminous is the first program which the Australian Chamber Orchestra has ever reprised. It is a collaboration between the photographer Bill Henson, the sound artist Paul Healy and the Australian Chamber Orchestra's artistic director, Richard Tognetti, and it layers Henson's dark photographic images over a haunting soundscape of live and recorded music.
It is an ambitious work and if, after the political and legal scuffle over Henson's last exhibition, there is an undercurrent of defiance about Tognetti's decision to restage the work, it does not detract from its real artistic value.
The camera roving across the surface of the photograph, for instance, panning out at a tantalisingly slow pace as Alfred Schnittke's worry of sounds unfolds; or the spatial effects of Healey's sound design, combined with the huge skies of Henson's cityscapes; or the decision to leave the screen black as Tognetti plays out the cadenzas of Peteris Vast 's Violin Concerto under a lone spotlight, turning into a live Henson photo.
Images met and danced, brilliantly, but they also clashed and overwhelmed each other at times. You could get lost in an inch of skin, or the curve of a neck, and I often had the urge to close my eyes, not just because
the music was mesmerising, but also because one can process only so much information. For me, Timo Veikko Valve's cello solo in God Music from Crumb's Black Angels was better without visuals. But then Katie Noonan's
beautiful performance of R.E.M.'s I've Been High was a perfect partner for Henson's swollen-lipped subjects.
In his program note, Henson writes of creating a sense of "profound intimacy" through this collaboration, but, for me, intimacy was precisely what the performance lacked. The cool, ascetic music, the musicians overtly lit, miked and seated for once, the gaunt characters whose eyes avoided the camera, and flawless vocals from Noonan all seemed to evoke a strange world; moving but cold.
Harriet Cunningham | Sydney Morning Herald | 06 Apr 2009
07 Apr 2009
An array of stills of artist Bill Henson's work accompanied an eclectic mix of musical compositions in this rather dark performance.
Works by the likes of Benjamin Britten and Leos Janacek were featured as were arrangements by the Australian Chamber Orchestra's Richard Tognetti of pop tunes by REM and Yared, at the State Theatre on April 4.
The sometimes uncomfortable and occasionally beautiful intimacy of Henson's photos worked well with the ominous music, with relief provided by Katie Noonan's beautiful voice.
Thank goodness for the last work on the program, Good Night from On An Overgrown Path by Janacek. Finally, here was the light needed to balance the bleakness. The breathtaking mastery of Tognetti shone through.
Meldi Arkinstall | Daily Telegraph | 07 Apr 2009