Surfing at Freshwater Beach

Freshwater beach
Watercolour on Arches paper

On Saturday I was at Freshwater Beach on Sydney's north shore where the water was dotted with black clad figures waiting for waves.

The sky was blue, the weather balmy and the water was calm and clear with waves breaking just offshore and rolling in with boarders aloft.  Walkers basked in the sun as they strolled along watching the surfers. It was a perfect Sydney winters day.

Perfect?

Kids with surfboards making for the beach

It is the warmest June I can remember, another record no doubt.

The kids in this photo will have cause to blame us if we don't take urgent action on our warming climate. Tony Abbott, are you listening?

Accepting children as they are

"Accept the children the way we accept trees--with gratitude, because they are a blessing--but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are." 
--Isabel Allende




This quote is taken from the blog of a father who has struggled with his son becoming addicted to drugs. It has been a long journey back, but the family seem to have made it. All power to them. 

Passionfruit

Passion fruit flower

It is already June but the passion fruit plant in my garden continues to produce flowers and fruit. It is as confused as many other plants are by the unseasonal warm weather.

The abnormal autumn comes after our hottest year yet.  I am wondering if summer will always be as long as it was this year.

When Australia has particularly warm weather New Zealand seems to have particularly cold weather. There was snow in Dunedin not so long ago ... will this become more common as well?

Musical moments, Sydney 2014

Sayo Lipman plays harp
Pearl Beach, 8/6/14

The last few months have been very musical for me and I have sketched as I listened.

I have just put my sketches online. They include mezzosoprano Deborah Humble, pianists Lukáš Vondrácek and Michael Curtain, Principal Viola with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Roger Benedict, harpist Sayo Lipman, singers who have performed for the NSW Wagner society and three musicologists.

Roger Benedict in Pearl Beach

Roger Benedict with Viola
(and Simon Tedeschi in background)

Last night Roger Benedict, Principal Viola with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, gave a concert with well known pianist Simon Tedeschi in the small Pearl Beach Community Hall. It felt like one of those small venue concerts in Europe, great crowd, great acoustics and wonderful enthusiasm. And fantastic playing! So nice to hear more of the viola.

The concert was is part of the June long-weekend two day music festival organised by the Pearl Beach Progress Association. Long may they continue.

Bush path up the hill

Alone, walking up the fire trail from Pearl Beach this morning, I marvel at the colours and the winter stillness. It takes about thirty minutes from the bottom to the lookout, more if you meander and take pictures.

Red earth path

Banksia flowers in bloom

And at the top, a view over the mouth of the Hawkesbury river to the sea. How could one ever tire of such a view?

Sailing boat on the Hawkesbury; Palm Beach in the distance

Sydney is having an unprededented warm spell. Twenty three days so far above 20C in May and it is to continue until at least 6 June. What will summer be like?

Mezzo soprano Deborah Humble

Stephen Mould on piano, Deborah Humble singing

On Wednesday Deborah Humble sang lieder by Brahms, Wagner (Wesendonck Lieder) and a long lost song by Mendelssohn for an appreciative audience at the Verbruggen Hall in Sydney.

Lieder (= songs in German) show off a voice or show the imperfections.  Deborah is a mezzo soprano but I prefer the old fashioned term contralto which seems to me more fitting for Deborah's deep and expressive voice, a voice and quite up to the task of a whole evening's continuous singing.

Her concert was a real pleasure. Now she is busy rehearsing for her concert in Melbourne.

After the concert (from Deborah's Facebook page)

Coffee with music

Fancy silver coffee pots, once very popular and now found in antique and op shops, were the basis for these intaglio prints. These were printed in Dunedin in 2008 and have been sitting in boxes since.  I am retrieving them and making a 'coffee pot' collage series.

Intaglio print/ink

Intaglio print/ink/collage

Coffeepots

Coffee pots for my coffee shop.

I framed up a couple of intaglio print and ink collaged coffee pots for the wall of my local cafe this week  There is printed music on the pots which you can't see on these images as the pictures were taken after framing ... so not the best. Creating coffee pot images while listening to ABC Classic FM was a nice respite from budget politics.

Coffeepot 2

Coffeepot 1

Music on the coffeepot (just visible!)

Gonski is a hero

There are heros in Australia as well as creeps (last post) and one of them is the businessman David Gonski. 

David Gonski is the gentleman who co-authored the 'Gonski Report' on education funding.  He says that he had thought when he began his research that the bureaucracies were responsible for education problems but when he met them he realised he had been wrong.

 Watch his video.

Gonski's report highlighted the big gap in funding between wealthy and poor schools in Australia and provided a path to recovery.  Julia Gillard was very keen to close the gap but Tony Abbott's 2014 budget will result in even greater disparities of wealth between schools.

Just plain 'yuck'!

Prime Minister Tony Abbott's minders must have had their job cut out making him look like a man you could trust.  After presenting a budget that punishes the poor, the young and the sick he is getting extra scrutiny and revealing his true colours. Australians are discovering he is much worse than they had ever imaged: a congenital liar, a sleaze and just plain yuck.

We hear that at uni he was a far-right misogynist thug who took pleasure in terrorising women.
"He was a very offensive, a particularly obnoxious sort of guy," said Barbie Schaffer, a Sydney teacher who was at Sydney University with Mr Abbott.

Abbott amused by grandmother's plight

Now a video has emerged showing he hasn't changed.   On a radio show a grandmother asks him how she was going to make ends meet after July when Abbott's budget cuts come in.

She said to pay the bills she works on a phone sex line, at which Abbott winks, smirks, giggles. Then he catches the eye of a minder and tries to look serious. He tells her he is getting rid of the carbon tax but she can keep the offset she received.

Can this be a Prime Minister? Not for long one hopes.

To quote the Sydney Morning Herald today:

• " The wink video is also not the first time the Coalition has been caught up in a "footage issue" in recent days. Last week, there was much controversy about whether Christopher Pyne said "grub" or something else in the House of Representatives chamber. And then again, when footage emerged of him apparently signalling Speaker Bronwyn Bishop to shut down applause for Bill Shorten's budget reply speech."

Igudesman & Joo in Vienna

Australian budget ructions are gathering speed .... so a bit of musical humour hits the spot.

A concert with a difference...

March in May: Sydney

A lot of people marched in Australia today to express their concern at the direction the Abbott Government is leading the country. People turned up despite the short lead time.

Marchers in Belmore Park, Sydney

Signs

 More than ten thousand people marched in Sydney they say. The crowd included lots of children and was a good willed group. They were there because they care.

Australia Tea Party

Australia is still in shock after a budget driven by vindictiveness and a pro-coal agenda. No wonder headlines such as this are being seen in the newspapers (though not in the pro-Abbott/coal Murdoch papers).

You read a lot about sociopaths (people unable to empathise with other people) doing well in business. Obviously they have done well in the Liberal Party too and are transforming it into an Australian Tea Party.  Problem is, they kept their Tea Party aspirations secret before the election. No wonder there is a back lash. Even the business world is rattled.

Demonstrations in larger cities are planned for tomorrow:  March in May

Lukáš Vondráček

He looks such a happy fellow, hair slicked down, walking rather shyly onto the stage, smiling a welcome to the audience.

Lukáš Vondráček on Monday night at
the City Recital Center in Sydney

Then he sits down, collects his thoughts, lifts his hands to the piano ... and suddenly the music just erupts from the instrument.

Lukáš Vondráček's concentration while he plays is extraordinary. I found myself thinking of what he must be seeing: piano keys, hands and nothing else. He plays as if his life depends on it. His audience feels the urgency and is dead quiet.

He plays Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Brahms.

When each piece is finished and Vondráček comes up for air he looks as dazed as we all feel.  He stands up, sways a bit as he collects himself, smiles sweetly again at the audience and walks in his lilting way out the door.

What a performer!

[I was so energised after seeing Vondráček play that I worked away online until past midnight ... as you can see from the time stamp on my Conchita Wurst post.]

Metgasco license suspended

Woman with teapot
(Dunedin Cafe, 2007)

This is how I am feeling this morning, over my cup of tea, having just heard the news that the Bentley Blockade has been successful. Rather bemused but very pleased.

The NSW Government has suspended the Metgasco license for an exploratory gas drill in northern NSW and has passed information to the corruption inquiry!

The licence was revoked because Metgasco had not consulted with the community adequately.

Margo Kingston, the citizen reporter who alerted us to the ongoing crisis in the north writes that she is "privileged to report an historic people's movement proving that citizen co-operation can change the world without violence."

Go Margo!

The Bentley Blockade (pic #lockthegate)

Margo had reported that senior police were worried that the smashing of the Bentley Blockade this weekend was a lose lose situation. They were right and the NSW Government is to be congratulated for seeing sense. Now the license needs to be cancelled.

It is a back down that will inspire many others who are threatened by fracking and coal mining activities.

If you want ot be inspired, listen to this woman talk about why she is taking action against the Whitehaven Maules Creek Mine:

Protesting rabble?

Do these people look like protesting rabble?

Well that's who the Government thinks they are. They are the farmers from the Bentley Blockade. Surveys show 97% of farmers in the area don't want fracking on their land.

They have come to Sydney to meet Premier Mike Baird, to tell him that the licenses granted to coal seam gas companies should be void since they were approved by corrupt ministers.

Do you think the Premier met with them? (Rhetorical question ... he didn't have the guts.)

Rather singers than cigars

Orchestras and choir at Notre Dame

Instead of listening to the 2014 Australian budget being read out by a treasurer who smokes big fat cigars,  I listened to the wonderful Berlioz Requiem Op 5, that was sung for Claudio Abbado in Notre Dame in Paris and broadcast by ABC classic FM.

It is such fantastic music produced by 220 musicians from two orchestras. Abbado was a nurturing and caring person and would have loved this tribute I am sure.

It is a pity the Australian Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey doesn't have even a little of those qualities.

Before the election he promised (cross your heart and hope to die) no cuts to health education or welfare. So what has he done? Cut health, education and especially welfare but also foreign aid, ABC, CSIRO. There are no cuts for the wealthiest, the carbon lobby, or defence. This tweet sums up the feelings of many. 

Conchita Wurst and Wiener Würstchen

Conchita Wurst (from Eurovision TV)

So, Conchita Wurst (Spanish/German translation = chick with a dick) has won the Eurovision contest. Apparently she grew up a gay in a small Austria town and survived by creating Conchita Wurst.

I have just seen the online version of the song and I agree with those who are saying it sounds like a new 007 James Bond theme.



Austria is home of the Vienna Philharmonic, renowned for it's misogynist hiring policies and some wag has created a cute cartoon. .

(Cartoon from von heute auf morgen website)

The subtitle says 'There are rumours that the Vienna Philharmonic has been infiltrated by females.'

The inspector in the picture is saying "Aha ... and what is this??"

Cecilia Bertoli as Castrati

Cecilia Bartoli

Sorely in need of a musical interlude, I am listening to the astonishing voice of Cecilia Bartoli, with the equally astonishing and vibrant Il Giardino Armonico .

I saw Il Giardino Armonico  perform in Maribor a couple of years ago and it was a performance I will never forget.  They were stunning. Many of the old instruments are more difficult to play than their modern equivalents but they make paying them seem easy.   Just like Bartoli, who sings without seeming to breath at all.