choir

Born To Sing 1000 – Thousand Voice Choir + More At Perth Concert Hall, 11 June 2023

Overheard Productions Art and artists, Fremantle and Perth, Music general , , , , , , , , , ,
Image courtesy of Born To Sing

Perth Concert Hall will play host to a very special event on Sunday 11 June 2023 from 5pm to 7.30pm when a 1000-voice choir and many others take over the venue for one evening only.

The Born To Sing 1000 event features:

– a 1000 voice choir encompassing several local and WA choirs plus many individuals in four-part harmonies
– 250 ukulele players
– seven-piece jazz band featuring Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts graduates
– Perth Highland Pipe Band
– a few extra surprises some of which not even the choir knows about yet.

Image courtesy of Born To Sing

At the time of publishing this short article, about 80% of the tickets have been sold, and the rest will go quickly. So if you want to experience this amazing live event, go to: www.perthconcerthall.com.au/events/event/born-to-sing immediately if not sooner.

The concert runs from 5pm to 7.30pm with a 25-minute interval at 6pm. Food and beverages will be available.

Some funds raised through ticket prices will go to the Fiona Stanley Hospital Cancer Clinical Trials Fund.

Overheard Productions is a proud sponsor of Born To Sing 1000 – 2023.

Image courtesy of Born To Sing
Continue reading →

Kavisha Mazzella — Sydney Launch of Riturnella at Django Bar, Marrickville, 2014

Overheard Productions Interviews, Music general , , , , , , , , , ,

Image courtesy of Kavisha Mazzella
Image courtesy of Kavisha Mazzella

Kavisha Mazzella is an accomplished singer-songwriter from Melbourne with a substantial body of work behind her and a long career of touring solo and with bands of various composition (no pun intended).

Were that the end of the story, it would be laudable enough, but it literally crests just the tip of the iceberg of this remarkable woman. Leader of community choirs in Australia and Italy, flexible and adaptive musician who lends her talents to a litany of projects including providing backing to a silent film from the 1920s — live.

It’s any wonder that when Bill Quinn caught up with Kavisha earlier this week he kept the chat time down to under 20 minutes. There are just too many things to talk about.

Kavisha Mazzella launches her Riturnella album of centuries-old Italian songs on Sunday 4 May at the Django Bar, Marrickville.

KM1
Image courtesy of Kavisha Mazzella

*** Audio file will be removed at the end of February 2020 ***

Continue reading →

A Punter’s Perspective 06 — Sing! Sing! Sing!

Overheard Productions Music general, Trad and Now , , , , , , ,

Bill-singA Punter’s Perspective
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage

#6 Sing! Sing! Sing!
First published in Trad and Now magazine, October 2007

By Bill Quinn

When you front up to any given festival, you’ve generally got a fair idea of who’s on the bill. And yet, one of those grand moments of the settling-in period, after you’ve been tagged and show-bagged, is to scan the program for your favourites. Pen in hand, there are those tantalising moments of deflowering virgin program pages with flowing strokes of biro circles around the tried, the trusted and the ‘man, you just gotta see’ acts.

Conversely, there may be other acts or genres that you zip over, or choose to ignore, or even scratch a dismissive mark through. (The author will refrain from venturing examples here as his insurance definitely doesn’t cover such off the cuff observations.)

For this punter, anything that had ‘choir’ in the title was always a category to avoid like the fugue. However, one of the true joys of many, many discoveries over the last few years has been to admire the wonders of the massed one-to-four part harmonies of many voices.

Choirs rock.

Community choirs, singing groups, singing sessions, and the big daddy of them all (or many of them): the festival choir. There’s a sweet science behind the process of putting several to several hundred voices into beauteous harmony, but to the punter, it’s just a chance to let one’s jaw drop to the canvas, their eyes roll back in sheer aural ecstasy, and to feel the very hairs up the back of their necks stand out in perpendicular, involuntary admiration.

Festival choirs have become a mainstay of many festivals, and they’re well worth seeking out. In smaller festivals, it helps when they’re seeded by established choirs, but after that, it’s open to all comers, because many of the festival support staff, volunteers and even paying punters are closet warblers.

As a friend said many years ago, and it’s stuck to the point of my adopting the phrase, ‘Do I sing? Sure. I give daily concerts in the shower and in the car!’ Continue reading →