STEVE REICH – A COMPOSER FOR THE GARAGE BAND DRUMMER, THE MUSICOLOGIST, THE ASTROPHYSICIST AND THE SKINNY-TIE-WEARING HIPSTER

A single drum-hit breaks the stillness, as clear as a whip-bird call.

Silence. Another hit. Silence. The single shot is joined by another.
“guh-kuh!”. Silence. More drum-hits: three, four, five. A rhythm is born.
Shuddering, shivering waves ripple, unsettling this clean air of this budding musical ecosystem.

So begins Steve Reich’s masterpiece, Drumming.

Steve’s genius is to take the simplest idea and grow it into a teeming, complex beautiful musical ecosystem. His ideas are always direct, physical: a single drum hit, a piano pulse, a short flute lick, an organ chord, a funky rhythm. And the growth feels organic: the seed slowly gains branches, leaves, flowers. But don’t be fooled by how “natural” this music sounds. Steve’s ecosystems are tightly, minutely, mathematically, fastidiously planned. These compelling, epic road trips are preplanned and Google mapped to the final rest-stop.

Steve wrote “Double Sextet” for eighth blackbird in 2007. We had been warned in advance about how “difficult and demanding” Steve could be to work with, so we were on our guard during the rehearsal process. He certainly was demanding: on his request we sent him recordings of many rehearsals, and he replied with detailed comments, asking at various times for less vibrato, softer mallets, fewer accents, and even, at one point, a sound that was “more like a Baroque aria”.

We feel that this is as it should be: Steve is a performer who developed his unique musical sound through the sheer physical act of playing, and so he’s best-placed to know how his music can feel and sound best.

Steve is a visionary composer, but he has achieved something that very few visionaries have: he has attained rock-star status while staying true to his pure, true, unique musical vision. When we performed a Reich-stravaganza on a balmy evening last summer in Chicago’s Millennium Park, 9500 people from all walks of life joined us to relax and dance, drink, make out then sing along, sway and analyse.

Article by Tim Munro, flutist (eighth blackbird)

Steve Reich arrives in Sydney on Monday for an exclusive residency at Sydney Opera House. Culminating on Sunday 29 April in a one-off performance of his greatest work, Music For 18 Musicians performed by some of Australia’s leading musicians from Eight Blackbird, Synergy Percussion, Ensemble Offspring and more.

BUY TICKETS here.

Duelling Atheists At Fifty Paces

Media commentary about Alain de Botton’s announcement of plans for a ‘temple to atheism’ in London have focused just as much on the fact that Richard Dawkins doesn’t like the idea as on the idea of the temple itself.

Nothing like a good disagreement between prominent intellectuals, let alone one that has the religious rubbing their hands in the hope that ‘New Atheism’ is finally eating its own young.

While de Botton and Dawkins both are prominent atheists, they have very different views about what the public face of atheism should look like. De Botton describes his temple as an antidote to Dawkins ‘destructive’ and ‘aggressive’ brand  of atheism and his new book, Religion for Atheists, is all about salvaging  the best elements of religions to help us in our daily lives.

Hard-core atheists from Dawkins down find this dangerously close to making a religion of atheism itself, and want no truck with it. Reason is its own reward and does not require veneration or worship, let alone the appropriation of religious trappings.

De Botton’s view, that you can have the beautiful buildings and music, the sense of community and so on without the supernatural elements is bound to be appealing to those who have grown up with religious traditions. But it raises all sorts of questions for me about how culture really develops, and whether it is in fact possible to pick and choose from the historical lessons of religions and hope that a disparate collection of humanistic values can take root in places where the extremes of individualistic capitalism and fundamentalist religions are so well established.

While we can’t bring you de Botton and Dawkins on the same stage, Dawkins will have the last word on April 16 and I am sure both speakers will have polished and eloquent answers to these and many more of our questions.

BOOK TICKETS to see Richard Dawkins in conversation with Lawrence Krauss on 16 April.

Join the conversation at Ideas at the House.

Article by Ann Mossop, Head of Public Programs, Sydney Opera House.

Do young women feel uncomfortable about feminism?

As a young feminist, though as 30 hurtles towards me at a rate of knots I feel I should employ air quotes around “young”, it often falls to me to speak on behalf of my generation, and/or the one following it (Gen Y 2.0? iGen? Pepsi The New Generation??), when it comes to exploring feminism as it relates to us in 2012. More specifically, the brace of young people, especially women, who feel that feminism isn’t relevant to them anymore.

It’s a difficult topic to discuss, since my most honest response would be a three-minute video of me weeping and moaning, “Of course feminism is still relevant” while repeatedly slamming my head against the desk.

These people tend to be young women who, as far as they see it, have never experienced hardships based on their gender; they don’t “need” feminism because their life is fine, thank you very much. They are inevitably white, reasonably well off, and employed and/or university educated. Well, it’s possible that their life is fine, but the more compelling possibility is that the misogyny around them is so internalised and institutionalised that they don’t notice it.

(They often also don’t realise that the patriarchy doesn’t just affect women; patriarchal constructs like “masculinity” and “manhood” are vastly hurtful to men.)

The sad irony of this “feminism is irrelevant to me” stance is that feminism is still very much needed in the middle class world. For example, if I may quote an article I wrote earlier this year, “Only about 12 per cent of private sector management jobs are held by women. The public sector fares better, with women holding 36 per cent of senior executive positions” (you can read the rest of the article here. Women are still fighting for equal pay, better childcare and parental leave conditions, reproductive rights, abortion rights: is feminism irrelevant when it comes to fighting those issues?

Some also blame feminism’s “bad PR” for turning young people away. It should be apparent to anyone with even a basic understanding of the media machine that “bad PR” is a media construct. Feminism makes it difficult for bro dudes like The Footy Show to make sexist jokes; feminism implores our politicians to ensure that religion does not interfere with our reproductive rights – and yet we’re the ones with a PR problem?

Astoundingly, there are still people who believe – thanks mostly to the media and popular culture’s less enlightened arms – the essentialist view that a feminist is a ranting man-hater with unshaven armpits and droopy tits (she burned her bra, see). If a person is going to subscribe to such howling stereotypes then I’m inclined to think they are a lost cause to more things than feminism alone.

However, there are people and communities who believe feminism isn’t relevant to them, quite rightly, because a specific brand of white, middle-class feminism has done all it can to ignore, silence or belittle them; some that immediately spring to mind are women of colour, sex workers, Muslim women, women living with disabilities, and the trans community.

It’s our responsibility, as feminists who access privilege, to listen to, work with, and support these communities as they create a feminism that is relevant to their specific circumstances, and to examine and improve our own brand of feminism to include them. If we don’t support all women, then the myth that feminism is irrelevant becomes a reality.

BUY TICKETS to hear Clem discuss feminism in the Feminist Forum as part of The F-Word: A Day of Feminist Debate with Germain Greer & Naomi Wolf on March 4.

WATCH Clem debate the topic All Women are Sluts in the Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2011.
Join the conversation at Ideas at the House.

Article by Clem Bastow, journalist, blogger and Slut Walk champion.

Black Ideas at Message Sticks

The intervention has been one of the most contentious policy gambles of recent years, but because it is all happening ‘somewhere else’ for the majority of Australians who live in metropolitan Australia, the level of passionate interest has not been sustained. Meanwhile the intervention rolls on and on, and if you scratch the surface, it is still a hot topic.

Black and white Australians disagree with each other and amongst themselves about whether even the most emotive cases of child abuse and other social dysfunction can justify the abrogation of the human rights and freedom of the Aboriginal people affected.

If you want to find out what is actually happening, and what it means to real  people come along to Living the Intervention as part of the new look Message Sticks Festival, curated by Rhoda Roberts. The session includes a screening of the powerful documentary Our Generation and will be followed by a candid discussion on the impact of the 2007 ‘intervention’ with filmmaker Damien Curtis, Yolgnu woman Rosealee Pearson, Alec Doomadgee of the Wewanyi/Garawa and Gangalidda tribes in the Gulf of Carpentaria  and journalists John Pilger and Jeff McMullen.

BUY TICKETS to Living the Intervention

VIEW the full Message Sticks program

Join the conversation at Ideas at the House.

Article by Ann Mossop, Head of Public Programs, Sydney Opera House.

What is a Question? According to Tom Stoppard and Neil Gaiman

For those of us who go to talks, audience questions can be a blessing and a curse – sometimes the perfect crisp inquiry, that brings the most interesting answer of the night, and other times a rambling autobiographical nightmare!

In the Concert Hall on Saturday 17 December, Tom Stoppard was moved to quote Neil Gaiman’s perfect definition of a question. The night before, at the Athenaeum in Melbourne, Stoppard and Gaiman were part of an end-of-year double bill for The Wheeler Centre and Neil Gaiman defined for all time the nature of the speaker audience contract:

“A question is a relatively short set of words ending in a question mark, capable of being answered from the stage. If you feel the urge to tell us what you think about something, it’s not a question.”

As a matter of interest, the perfect question of the day at our Tom Stoppard talk was from Rosamund Christie, who asked him if he was to define Hamlet in one word, what would it be? The answer? ‘IF’.

Join the conversation at Ideas at the House.

WATCH the full interview with Tom Stoppard at Sydney Opera House.
WATCH interviews with Neil Gaiman during Graphic 2010.

Article by Ann Mossop, Head of Public Programs, Sydney Opera House.

Bugging out with Gang Gang Dance

New York’s own Art-Psych collective Gang Gang Dance return to our shores for the first time in 3 years, bringing their heady mix of tribal fuelled electronica and Indian melodies to The Studio December 10. After already having a huge ’11 with the unanimous acclaim for 5th lp Eye Contact, GGD come fresh off the face of co-headlining ATP UK, handpicked by their Brooklyn brethren in Animal Collective. If you haven’t figured out by now, Gang Gang is a near hallucinogenic experience, with one fan even speaking in tongues after a show!

Check out this taster of the 11 minute epic ‘Glass Jar’ from 4AD, filmed in a 20ft mirrored room…

There is one other thing that we at the house need to get off our chests; what exactly is the cover of Eye Contact ? Turns out it’s the work of Polish photographer Miroslaw Swietek, who astonishingly only took up the medium at 35! We love his obsession for capturing snoozing insects in a forest near his hometown of Jaroszow, waiting until 3-4am when they’re all covered in dew. Gang Gang’s use of the butterfly really echoes their renewed optimism for the future, with much of their previous imagery weighing on the tragic death of founding member Nathan Maddox.

This short documentary on the making of Eye Contact highlights how after 10+ years together, GGD still approach music with a childlike curiosity, yielding wild and unpredictable performances.

Click here for more info on this one off intimate performance.