AuthorRichard

Paul Kelly and his band with Fanny Lumsden, Llewellyn Hall, Canberra, 11 March 2022
Frances Madden, The Street Theatre Canberra, 12 March 2022

It’s great that live music is back in Canberra after a long COVID hiatus. Last week we attended concerts as paying patrons over two nights in venues a stone’s throw away from each other – but in some ways, worlds apart.

Great music, but an experience diminished

I guess we should have twigged what was ahead when the long lines for bar service showed no sign of shortening when the bells rang for the start of the show.

Llewellyn Hall at the Australian National University is best known as a classical music venue. Whether it was a lack of available alternatives (such as the Royal Theatre) or other reasons, the organisers of Paul Kelly’s concert (a second show was held the following night) made a poor choice of venue.

Don’t get me wrong – the acoustics and facilities were fine, and the all-too-short opening set by Fanny Lumsden and her band was great. Paul Kelly, his guests Vika and Linda Bull and his band, were most generous with their time, performing for well over two hours including two encore sets.

But a classical music venue with limited legroom and long rows of seats is not the right setting for a rock concert, at which, it appears, people expect to come and go as they please in the middle of the performance, with or without liquid refreshments in tow, and seemingly oblivious to their fellow patrons.

When you gotta go you gotta go, but if you do, please at least wait till the end of a song before you clamber back to your seat and disturb others in the process. This behaviour is not only disrespectful to the performers, but in a closely-packed and dark licenced venue like Llewellyn Hall, it raises potential safety issues. And the youthful door staff appeared not to have the authority to hold people back from re-entering the auditorium until an appropriate break.

Our enjoyment was also not enhanced by a couple of people in the row behind us conducting a singalong when everyone else just wanted to listen to the band.

Kelly is a masterful singer-songwriter and I’m looking forward to his next visit to Canberra – but at a different venue, please.

Picture of Paul Kelly: emimusic.com.au

Jazz hits all the right notes

I have no claim to be a jazz expert, having come to appreciate the genre later in life – but I know what I like, and I loved Saturday night’s performance by Sydney-based singer, pianist and composer Frances Madden and her band.

Madden was at The Street to launch her third album, Beautiful World, for which she wrote all but two of the 10 tracks.

The concert also featured jazz standards, and Madden’s beautiful voice and virtuosic playing were accompanied by four excellent musicians on double bass, drums, brass and guitar, plus two female backing singers. Of particular note was the band’s versatility, and Carl Dewhurst’s solo jazz and blues guitar performances were simply outstanding.

The audience certainly appreciated the concert, and I hope we will see more of Frances Madden before she departs our shores for an extended period overseas.