I don’t usually remember my dreams. Only twice in my life have I had recurring dreams; the one I had in the 60s in which I was trying to deny that I was Jewish, having watched a documentary about the Holocaust. The interrogating officer said, “of course you’re Jewish, look at your father!” (Irony of ironies to latterly discover from my DNA that my unknown Grandfather was indeed Jewish!) And I had a recurring dream about frantically diving into the depths of the sea in search of Stace. Surely he was there somewhere, on the other side, standing in the light…… With that backdrop of exceptional cases of recurring dreams emanating from deep distress, it is interesting that I do remember two singular dreams that ultimately were inextricably linked. The first, I’d had a baby and buried it in the back yard. I was quite matter of fact about it and called a friend and calmly told her what I’d done. She came round straight away and I pointed to the ground and the loose soil under which I’d buried my baby. “There, the baby’s under there,” I told her. She took me to the police station and again I calmly told the Constable on duty what I’d done. Then the dream skips to the court. The thing is it was Stacey’s baby. Absolutely it was his and I had buried his baby in the back yard. The defence lawyer claimed that I was somehow mentally deranged. But I said, “no, the baby was Stace’s, I’m completely in my right mind and this is what I have done.” I had this dream before Stace died and at the time I assumed that I was burying the possibility of having a baby. Even though my bio-clock was ticking I honestly had no desire to have a child and Stace had his gorgeous girls already, so there was no way it was going to happen. So I thought the dream was saying, “well that’s that then!” Skip to the part where Stace had “shuffled off this mortal coil,” and the depths of my grief. (At some point I will enlarge upon all that….) I had some beautiful counselling from several different people one of whom was a psychiatrist who specialised in dreams. That wasn’t the reason I went to him. It was just that he was recommended by the counsellor assigned me by the Traffic Accident Commission once I’d used up my quota with her. Peter O’Connor didn’t delve into the dream thing straight away and his question “do you remember your dreams?” was almost an aside really. The searching for Stace dream was all I could come up with immediately, but then I said, “there is this weird one I had about burying Stace’s baby in the back yard.” And so I told him about that dream and my assumption about what it might mean, if dreams HAVE to mean something. I was a bit cynical about it all if I’m honest. Anyway, Peter told me that when women have dreams about babies, they’re actually dreaming about their creativity. He asserted that my belief that the baby was Stace’s was no word of a lie; that there was something I could do that was absolutely born from being with Stace, but that it wasn’t able to grow at that time and that I had indeed, quite consciously popped it away somewhere. He also said that I would likely have an antidotal dream at some point. Jump a couple of years to my early days in Toronto and the purchase of a book of Blake’s verse; my delight in rediscovering that extraordinary, visionary, artist, poet, mystic, philosopher and social commentator. And the thrill to also discover that I happen to share his birthday. (28th November, which was also the date of our Sossie Final Chorus as it happens…) At about this time in 1999 I had the antidotal dream….. I was at home in Somerset, riding a motorcycle towards Glastonbury. (For those who don’t know, Stace was killed while riding his motorcycle). It was twilight when I passed a school playing field where there was a sort of farmer’s fair happening and I saw a little cub cowering in fear being trampled by a clod-hopping herd of cows. I dismounted and ran into the field and rescued the poor little thing and took it to a woman who seemed to be some kind of official. She was very busy and brusquely told me not to bother her. Somehow I did divest myself of the cub and continued on my way. Once in Glastonbury I met up with my lovely Mac.Rob Chamber Voices and began warming them up for a performance. The woman from the fair had followed me, caught up with me and angrily shaking the cub by the scruff of its neck thrust it at me. I grabbed it, now realising it was a little tiger cub and I held it, warm and wriggling, under my jacket until it was soothed and snuggly and I knew I could never let it go again. A while later, returning the way I’d come I dropped in on some very dear friends and told them what had happened. To my astonishment there were now several tiger cubs and I set them down in my friends’ garden. They advised that I should stick with the one I’d rescued and let the rest go into the wild. I can remember thinking, “well those others are probably still out there somewhere…..” I had composed LAWA by this time. What followed was reams and reams of poetry and cascading KateSongs as I travelled further into my post Stacey life, taking with me my Muse that I named Blake. Tyger, tyger burning bright and all that! I haven’t thought about this for years. It is no small thing then, that the very first thing I did on this epic trip was to go to the New Getty with my new found cousin Kevin where we enjoyed a wonderful exhibition about William Blake…. And, whilst I have huge emotional swings about leaving ChoirKate and my beloved Sossies behind, I have never wavered that the time was right to turn the page and obey this pull towards my next chapter. Trust me there’s disbelief, fear and self-doubt a-plenty about it. I mean it seems to me an act of sheer audacity that I dare to suspect it possible that I may just, perhaps be, a writer? On the way to the Getty I told Kevin that my favourite William Blake quote goes like this - “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason or compare; my business is to create.” Who would’ve thought we’d find it emblazoned on the wall. In red!!
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Some will have noticed I have been noticeably unnoticeable for a few weeks now!🥴 Been fully occupied on this trip of trips. Four countries, four currencies, three time zones and ultimately 12 different beds in four and a half weeks! More of that I guess..... Meantime, my trusty little red friend of countless air miles over ten years, has spat the dummy with three of its four wheels succumbing to the ravages of time over New Year. With it I went backwards and forwards pretty much twice a year for a decade; crossing the globe to be with my little old lovelies as they struggled into their 90s, Dad caring for our ailing Mum for about five of those and then struggling with the reality of needing care for her and ultimately himself. That’s what did him in in the end. He literally worried himself to death! Baby boomers will of course recognise the story of the pointy end. And so, my little red friend, which was a cheapie BTW, has served me more than well. Someone with a mathematical brain might be able to come up with a number from all those above. Where’s Phil DeLosa when I need him? 🤣 I hope the grand total correlates to the love in my heart. I suspect it will be found wanting. Meanwhile, my smart new grey one sporting a red trim (score!!) I hope will see me through to my remaining globe trotting days. Amazing adventures have heralded this new and unprecedented chapter. Gratitude and humility in spades to be seeing the possibilities of what may come. Love to all for 2024 and whatever comes your way. Kxx “Now I walk in beauty, Beauty is before me, Beauty is behind me, Above and below me.” https://youtu.be/BtyYkmEQ1Jo?si=xNd5Dgz4ugtBPGiG I have been beset by a foment of blessings, wonder, sadness, humility, gratitude, amazement, joy, uncertainty and my toes have suddenly decided to be arthritic! 🤣 So I might be hobbling in beauty sooner than I would like! But all in all, confusing though that seething mélange may seem, life remains a thing of wonder and beauty to me. I pinch myself. I have too many words and too few that are in any way adequate. Nonetheless to those who love this funny, often off-beat old gal, I thank you. Let’s see what happens next…… Love to all and have a glorious week enjoying this and that; all things of beauty, little and large. Kxx Well I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life when fear has gripped me. This is such a time. A big scary thing tomorrow, in the coming weeks and the unknown quantity of 2024. Fear can be foisted upon us of course, but in this case I’m just making a change; it’s a conscious decision. But really it had its roots a couple of years ago when "something" came upon me. I was napping on the couch (rare) when suddenly, “bang” - this thing made itself known loud and clear. It’s happened a few times in my life and each time my reaction was “oh no, no,no, please go away.” But that certainty was there to make a change and once felt, there was no getting away from it. So there you have it lovelies. Susan Jeffers’ book said it in the title. That’s one of those books that’s a quick read, you know, glancing at the cover is all you need to do. Not sure how I will go swapping something I’ve done all my life for something which is completely unknown territory. And yet, it seems, I am compelled to move forward with it. You can wish me luck. I might need it! Love to all and have a brilliant week. Kxx PS - I will still be teaching from the Vestry at Wesley and running my beloved Performance Skills Classes Ah simplicity! I confess I am far from simple according to that list, although I am reading a simple book at the moment. ✅ Is it possible to embrace simplicity when there’s creativity knocking around a person? Certainly these days the tech involved with creativity ramps up complication at every turn like a kitten with a ball of wool. With SOS finishing up next week I am turning a corner I guess, so we’ll see how that goes in the simplicity stakes. (Friends rolling their eyes and having a laugh at my expense!🤣) Have a lovely week my lovelies. Apply the KISS rule of thumb. I will if you will! Love to all. Kxx Indeed, it’s difficult to deny, but there it is and here we are in a place where, once again, the poor and the powerless near and far, are at the bottom of the heap. But let me do a Stacey share with you to make you smile. He was conducting a fiendishly difficult score for a left of centre opera company. The composer had written something in 17/16 or thereabouts, with an ornament mid-bar and Stace was in the middle of explaining it to the ensemble when the composer came into the rehearsal. He drew her to one side to ask her for assistance with it and she said, “oh don’t get hung up on the beats! It’s just the general effect I’m after.” Have a lovely week perfecting the general effect of your days. Love to all. Kxx Good morning my lovely friends. Excuse the radio silence for a while….. I am with like-minds on my FB page so my guess is that most here are all a bit betwixt, between, bothered and bewildered! If nothing else I hope that jumble of metaphor and Rodgers & Hart made you smile! I missed “bewitched” in there some may have noticed. Didn’t quite fit somehow and yet maybe that’s the very point of my MMMs. You know, add a little charm and joy into the mix to give folks a lift as they face the week. Love Rilke on this topic and the cute meme. “To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world’s full reserve, the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.” So there you go my lovelies. Doing my best, for it is all we can do sometimes. Step out and seek out a little song as you go. My love to you all, Kxx So it is my lovelies, that we come to my beloved Sossies! I say “my” possessively, but in reality they are OUR beloved Sossies, Sue Webster’s and mine. (SOS was originally Sounds of Southgate, where we were based, but rebranded Sounds of Singing when we moved to Wesley, post Covid) Gorgeous Girls and how that all that panned out in the end was again stressful! (Yes, there is a pattern here……) But because Sue was on the touch line of that through her involvement of bringing that special album into the world, she was also there to declare, “before you say it, you’re not done yet……your next choir needs to operate 21st Century style and you need to be able to focus on the music.” And so it was that she enticed me back on the horse again, but with her driving the managerial/PR side of things. Match made in heaven! The other big difference was that it was to be an adult choir. I’d never had one of ‘em before! I loved my youth choirs, but there’s no question that things had become cumbersome as we, all of us, got bogged down in the post 2000 era of terrifying technology and with litigation breathing down our necks! At least with adults we were able to create our own policies and protocols and Sue came up with a streamlined version of the nuts and bolts “show within the show,” as it were. We were very small to begin with. I even had to get Astra mates in to lend their voices in our early seasons. I decided that this choir, community choir though it was clear we were, would be ALL about the music! I was so uncaring that I didn’t even give the Sossies a tea-break, preferring to hold 7/11, a short solo workshop at 7pm for 11 minutes, to give their voices a rest, yet keeping them on task with the singing thing, and at the same time give budding soloists a bit of extra performance practice. And our early start and therefore early finish, meant that we were user friendly for workers and families. That Sossies increasingly chose to go to the pub was not my affair……🤣 So, the sense of community grew despite me and of course, it IS the case that the very act of singing together creates, well, togetherness! I used to joke about it. “None of those warm and fuzzies welcome here!” I laughed, all the while getting teary with the tingle factor myself! Anyway, SOS has brought me so much joy and has turned out to be my longest running choir thanks to my darling friend Sue. Our first big moment was at the end of 2016, our second year of SOS, when The Stacey Trust finally closed its doors after 20 years of our award for emerging conductors. (We had finished ten years of fund raising in 2006 when VoxSynergy was on my block, but we continued to give our award for another ten years) Out came “Make Our Garden Grow” one final time for the last hurrah Stacey Night! What a night it was! I was so proud of my Sossies that night. Musically, it was off the scale for us. Literally! But even though there were few Sossies who might have understood the importance of the occasion, nonetheless they went the distance. The other thing that Sue and I had devised was that our seasons would only ever be about Tuesdays. It has been rare for us to do things outside Tuesdays and we always made it clear that it was never an expectation that we’d have a full choir if we stepped outside that day of the week Nonetheless, for that Monday night gig, they were all there! The Sossies were joined by dear friends of Stace who came to support The Trust one last time; so with our ranks swelling we were a match for the Stacey All Star Big Band and blew the room away with Bernstein’s glorious finale to Candide. And the following night, our regular Tuesday night rehearsal, still they all turned up. That night was the 20th Anniversary of Stacey’s passing and I was taken out to the concourse at St Johns, serenaded with “Where Everything Is Music” while balloons were sent out into the sky to honour Stace and the moment. Getting teary thinking about it…..all of it. That generosity of spirit has been the hallmark of our beloved Sossies. Of course I wrote loads for them, tweaking even the commercial charts we bought to make them singable and user friendly. I had started doing part files long before SOS, by crassly putting my phone in memo mode on the desk and singing along to the Sibelius file playing from my computer. Sue took me in hand and taught me how to use GarageBand. I’m sure you can hear her rolling her eyes because it took a while to get me over that line, let me tell you! Never been fond of tech learning curves, but of course she was doing me a favour. It was never the case that we expected Sossies to be music readers, although as time went by we have attracted some great Sossie musoes, I have to say. But most have work and busy families and so practice in the car is where they get to know the season’s songs, often with the kids singing along from the back seat too! But yes, those part files have played a big part in the Sossie success. Our shows were always that. I wasn’t beholden to anyone. I had been going down that path for a long time really. I mean, you can take the girl out of the theatre, but you can’t take the theatre out of the girl can you?! So we had segues and theatrical devices and now the solo items were also drawn into the arena. Typically our performances have had anything and everything across history, continents and all manner of vocal styles and genres all joined together in one glorious continuum, the music speaking for itself. Any good song welcome here my friends! I love the thought that people go away having heard something new and different, something they might never have come across were it not for the SOS experience. There have been so many special moments, I barely know where to start, let alone finish, but finish I really must. We’re now in the land of YouTube, so no, there is no Sossie album, but plenty of memories forever in the ether. Sue has devised countless mash ups and song highlights so you can fossick to your heart’s content…. (Remember to google both Sounds of Southgate and Sounds of Singing) But, tip of the iceberg though these are, here are some selections I hold dear….. My first two are arrangements which I created from the ground up as there was no sheet music, not even a lead sheet or chord chart for these babies! Thank you Trinity College for all that laborious ear training drilled into me all those years ago!!!! Ruwenzori is by Miriam Stockley. Caleb Salizzo - piano JoJo Kitley - clarinet Nadene Gilmore, Evie Anderson and Mairead O’Connor -percussion https://youtu.be/krDTLmVobCs?si=B9aAovJzVnHpylDK Hold On To Love is an original of my bro Toby Sadler Morgen Pepper - soloist Linda O’Brien - piano Annie Gleisner - saxophone https://youtu.be/L10T_4_ITLA?si=Yg2O-jEkD3akvzzO One of the Sossies’ greatest achievements was marking the Centenary of the WW1 armistice in 2018 with our Centenary Cantata. Not The Great War (KS)>There’s No Place Like Home (as per Dame Nellie Melba)>Nella Fantasia - Morricone Jane Devlin - soloist Linda O’Brien - piano https://youtu.be/xyruIBYfE-4?si=3U42Yr7Rjfi2a0FP And finally a couple of KateSongs: Song For Mother (for our Mum’s, Sue and I - both passed since) Sara Grenfell - soloist Linda O’Brien - piano https://youtu.be/vViaW1CUnIQ?feature=shared As with many choirs we were knocked around by Covid, but kept going on line, keeping our voices in trim and learning new songs even in those strange circumstances. When we were finally able to sing together again we needed a larger, safer, airier space and we were thrilled that Wesley gave us such a warm welcome as we fired up again. We nearly managed a season in the first half of 2021, but Covid had other ideas! Since then we have had four fabulous seasons in 2022 and this year 2023, to round off what has been for me, not only a beautiful experience, but a fitting end to the 50 years of my adult life as ChoirKate; with the last 25 years spanning the first utterance of LAWA and the last chorus of Sing Like There’s No Tomorrow on 28th November. I never expected KateSongs. I like to think that they are Stace’s gift to me…… Thank you to Sue for everything that gave ChoirKate this extra decade of fun, friendship and music making with our beloved Sossies. Finally…… “Hear the sound of all those voices As they sing in harmony, Reaching down to heal all sorrow, A sweet celestial symphony. Though it takes many a light year To reach across the universe, The day we’re born it starts its journey, To hold our hand in every verse, every line and every word, The song of our Guiding Star.” Song of the Guiding Star Lareen Ashbolt - soloist Linda O’Brien -piano Klara Rawdanowic- violin https://youtu.be/TZVLFqRK_6A?si=HWxJPRUAckWLnlVK It has been so for my life thus far and I have no doubt it will hold true in whatever the next strange chapter holds for me. May it be so for you too. These Memory Lanes have been for my own benefit really. I could have just as easily kept a journal and saved you all the eye-rolling relentlessness of my recollections! But hey, it’s been fun to set it down. But if you have journeyed with me either here, or for a year or two singing with ChoirKate, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for every moment of our time together. The richest of blessings to have shared so much for so long with so many beautiful souls. Kxx I was really quite at sea after the storm of VoxSynergy. Exhausted from it. I didn’t really want to go near a choir again, but you know, I was born to do that choir thing particularly, so when my friend Ophelia asked me to fill in for her contemporary choir in 2010, I obliged. I had a bit of fun there, but wasn’t ready for any greater involvement. In 2011 I didn’t have a choir. However, at the end of that year I was one of four Australian composers to present selections of my music at a PrintMusic Works choral reading day. The others were the late Harley Mead, Paul Jarman and Mark Puddy. It was such a scary day for me! Like the Choral Conducting thing, it took a while for me to realise that actually I had the Choral Composing thing going on too! (Duh!) PrintMusic Works had taken me on for digital publication and I need to mention here the tireless work of David Wilson who fixed up my scores so they were fit for purpose. I had been learning the ins and out of Sibelius on the job and so many of my scores were frankly laughable! More recently, I am self published and now there’s even a catalogue of Learning Packs, so the singers can singalong with Auntie Kate to learn their parts! Still I did write, “Sing Like There’s No Tomorrow” in 2011. I remember it well, although that was a slow burn compared with others. But I have sharp recollection of walking down Liddiard St. in Ballarat for my next round of adjudication at South St, when the middle 8 came to me…. “When Ludwig had his trials, He’d his quill and skill employ, Defying all the odds he faced, He gave us his Ode To Joy.” Those lines still make me chuckle all these years later! And mid-year I took the Women’s Choir for the festival of choirs headed by my friend Jonathon Welch so Sing Like There’s No Tomorrow had a premier and I also composed my Hymn To St Cecilia especially for that group. That whetted my appetite a little, so when the job at Canterbury Girls’ Secondary College came up, I thought, “well, I know how to do a girls choir.” I had done workshops and adjudicated comps where these girls had been mega stars having been trained by the inimitable Beryl Nagorca for many years. The girls were every bit as fabulous as I believed them to be and I entered into another period of prolific writing and arranging. Significantly, I arranged Eddie Perfect’s “A Place By The River” for Cantabella. Such a special experience hearing him sing it in Hamer Hall, hearing the beautiful harmonies interweaving even as he sang; and then the follow up, his generosity of providing me with resources so that it was effortless. The girls did a stunning job and I’m thrilled that the chart has now had a ten year life and been sung countless times at festivals and jamborees across both the high school and community sector. (I snuck in an optional baritone part so it’s super user friendly) https://youtu.be/sEWKXuLFEoc (I put this together when we went into lockdown. Lucky for me this was within my exercise parameter) Gorgeous solo by Eilish McGregor “Where Everything Is Music” was written in my Cantabella period. My friend Heather was much on my mind for by this time she had been diagnosed with the cancer that would take her from us. She loved the poems of Rumi and I recall her reading his ecstatic Where Everything Is Music to me on my birthday. Late one night I was awake in the wee hours (you can imagine I do that a lot!) and with her in my thoughts I sat up and jotted down a little rhyme on Rumi’s theme. The next morning I taught a couple of students and was just about to cross the floor from my piano to the computer when I found myself lingering, my fingers itching with something…..then I started to play, then I remembered that I’d penned a poem in the night and out came the song, done and dusted by lunchtime! https://youtu.be/Uwc6wKN37WQ I was with Cantabella for three years and we gathered quite a fabulous collection of repertoire as the time rolled by. Time for another album! Kindly sponsored by the Australian Elizabethan Trust keen to support their alumni, Gorgeous Girls became something of a trump card for me. Understand, that the ABC’s directive for the VoxSynergy album did come with the proviso that they wanted to capitalise on Vox’s popularity on Battle Of The Choirs, so whilst I tucked a couple of my more esoteric KateSongs in there, the overall flavour was contemporary. With Gorgeous Girls I had total artistic say over the whole project. By this time Sue Webster was on my block. At the time she was studying digital design and had a keen eye as a photographer too. So our cover was, well, “gorgeous” and the liner notes and images outstanding. Gorgeous Girls was the opening track, an arrangement of mine of two old songs, Greensleeves and Douce Dame Jolie, with a bunch of groovy little riffs thrown in, all kicked off with Indian finger cymbals setting the scene. I loved writing it for them and they did a wonderful job. It’s really hard!!! Shout out to Dave Newington who was co-producer with me and played on several of the tracks and Jack Earle our accompanist at the time. I had all sorts of plans for a treble voice festival to get some mileage out of the album and also share the love beyond the school walls……. And I’d had fun putting it together so I was all set to roll another three years out and do it all again. Sadly, my vision wasn’t shared by the powers that be and no interest was shown in what the girls had achieved. That was a first for me. Disappointing. So that was that…….. But never fear for SOS is near! And so’s the end of this epic! Phew! |
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January 2024
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