brisbane hate

It’s done! The premiere of Being Mrs Bach was yesterday at 5pm and it simply flew by. It’s almost impossible to sum it up...but the great reward, when you’ve dreamed up a project and you can see it in your mind’s eye, and then months later that image actually becomes reality and does what you want it to do - that’s a good feeling. Mrs Bach backstage. #townsville #afcm #afcm18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #beingmrsbach A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Aug 1, 2018 at 3:05pm PDT The original commission for Being Mrs Bach came through last summer from Kathy Stott and Tom and I took off to Leipzig to experience Bach’s environment as far as humanly possible. The trip made a big difference to the story, because there is information at the Thomaskirche, the Bach Museum and the city museum in the Town Hall that provides colour and authenticity that would not have been available to me from the comfort of my bookshelves. Anna Magdalena’s tragedy was that she gave her wh...

Concert on #orpheusisland with Julian Bliss and JP Jofre - a spot of Libertango... #afcm #townsville #australianfestivalofchambermusic #afcm18 A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Jul 31, 2018 at 2:50pm PDT Pity the group of youngsters in their little motor-boat and sea-kayaks who turned up for a nice, private swim on the deserted beaches of Orpheus Island. Just as they were getting their towels out, in pulled a Sealink seacat and disgorged about 200 festival-goers and a bunch of musicians carrying some very peculiar contraptions, which they proceeded to unpack and play. Two trumpets, a clarinet with golden keys, a rose-gold flute, a pearl-inlaid bandoneon and an extraordinary Chinese sheng took up residence for about an hour, surrounded by ecstatic music-lovers who stood, sat, lay, or knelt at their feet, or went into the water and stayed there to enjoy the performances from the cool comfort of lapping crystal-clear shallows. Tine Thing Helseth and her new husband Se...

There’s that moment when after a 24-hour journey you peer out of the plane window at the country you’re about to visit and you see...Australian sunlight. I haven’t been here for 15 years and had managed to forget its unique nature. The quality of it is like opals, brilliant and translucent and full of gold, ochre and purple. You have to screw up your eyes against it, or rush for sunglasses. Strong, pure and irresistible, as if shot in technicolour, it makes you wonder if the Land of Oz was so named for a good reason. Toto, we’re not in Kansas any more... We’ve made it to Townsville, in the dry tropics of Queensland, and now it’s the morning after the night before...and that was the night after the day after the journey before. We left London with two big suitcases on Tuesday night, spent a pleasant few hours in Hong Kong airport and arrived in Sydney on Thursday morning...with one big suitcase. Sole free day in Sydney was supposed to be spent happily reuniting at leisure with my aunt, ...