Barry Lenny - Page 63

Jazz pianist, Dave Brubeck, put together a quartet that played during the 1950s and 60s and that put out the first platinum selling jazz album, with the title Time Out. It contained the track, Take Five, which became the top selling instrumental piece of all time. Take Five - The Dave Brubeck Story is a tribute to that particular incarnation of the quartet.

Director, Yasmin Gurreeboo, only arrived in Adelaide a few months ago from Britain and has already made her mark with this production. Aside from selecting two people who are perfect for the roles she has hit on an innovative method of quickly and seamlessly presenting the flashbacks.

Rachel Rai, Claire McEvoy, Brady Lloyd, and David Salter are the four singers for this performance, and they all know how to deliver comedy, many of the songs finding the laughs in highly inappropriate lifestyles and relationships.

Annie Siegmann is performing her latest cabaret performance at the very intimate venue, La Boheme, which ideally suits the even greater intimacy of her production. Siegmann has not touched alcohol for just over six months now, and so this is a very personal, revealing, and often dark tale of her struggle with the demon drink.

Becky Blake, who had the great Clemens Leske as one of her piano teachers, began her career, she told us, as a pianist at Adelaide's Hilton Hotel. She is now the pianist and singer with the very popular show band, Chunky Custard, as well as working in solo shows and small groups.

Adelaide cabaret stalwart, Libby O'Donovan, takes a very different tack for her latest production, Songs Only a Mother Could Love, a collection of songs that she, and others, learned from their mothers as children. O'Donovan is one of the most highly skilled and much loved of Adelaide's cabaret community and so every seat was filled and a good many more were happy to stand, just to be able to attend her performance.

Harriet Allcroft came to the attention of Adelaide audiences when she appeared in a show case performance following one of the Adelaide Cabaret Summer Schools. She extended this short performance into a full length cabaret show which she titled Barely Legal. she is back with a new show based on her observations during the four years that she has been working in the retail sector.

Barb Jungr made a very welcome return to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, her last visit having been in 2006, when she presented her unique interpretations of the songs of Bob Dillon. Together with her musical director, accompanist, and co-writer, Simon Wallace, her performance consisted of a combination of interpretations of songs by several other famous singers, and a number of her own songs.

Stephen Sondheim has written songs for many crazy people in his musicals, some permanently so, and some pushed beyond their limits by circumstances who become temporarily that way. Sondheim's music is often exceptionally difficult and a classically trained trio, Blake Parham and Tahlia Ries, accompanied by Joshua Mollart on keyboard, is an ideal combination to do his work justice.

Barry Lenny talks to Barb Jungr, who is appearing at the 2013 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

Rachel Rai and Claire McEvoy, aided and abetted by accompanist Aaron Nash at the piano, presented Tears on My Pillow: Cry Another Day, a sequel to their earlier hit show, Tears on My Pillow: Cry Harder, that was presented at the 2013 Adelaide Fringe and completely sold out.

The Adelaide Festival Centre was opened in 1973 by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and the Premier of South Australia at that time, Don Dunstan. To celebrate that opening, the Adelaide Festival Centre and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra jointly presented this sensational concert.

The Marie Clark Musical Theatre Company have chosen a show that is not often performed in Adelaide. The last time that I saw this show was in 1982, where I watched it every night from my place in the orchestra pit, and I have fond memories of that production. Happily, this group kept that memory alive and well, with a very fine performance.

Maestro Antonio Fava is the world's leading practitioner and teacher of the 16th Century Italian comic art form, Commedia dell'Art. This is a brief profile, gleaned from the conversations during a dinner in his honour, containing fascinating information that you will not read in any biographies that you will find on the Internet.

In his short 32 years Schubert composed an enormous amount of music, including over 600 lieder (songs), nine symphonies, including his famous Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the Unfinished Symphony. This concert was performed by soprano Emma Horwood, male alto Matthew Rutty, tenor Martin Penhale, and bass Timothy Marks, accompanied by Jamie Cock on piano, who also played two solo works during the evening.