A masterclass from ‘unplugged’ Simon Tedeschi

Simon Tedeschi playing one of the requests.  Photo: Peter Hislop

Simon Tedeschi Plays Your Requests

Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture

September 18, 2026

Reviewed by David Whitbread

Starting with the boisterous theme from The Simpsons and ending with an equally boisterous ragtime-infused theme from Super Mario Brothers, Simon Tedeschi astounded his audience with a masterclass in the piano.

Well, that’s what you get when you ask your audience on arrival to nominate what they’d like to hear – and you build your program by randomly selecting from a box of their requests!

It takes a special performer to be so comfortable with the unpredictable – this is only the fifth or sixth time he’s done it – and a prodigious memory to then perform to the outstanding level of artistry we witnessed.

Just a word of disappointment with the audience, not the performer.

Given the hosts were the ACT Keyboard Association, the almost capacity audience was made up of many piano teachers and students.

So why were the requests so predictable? Short of the bookends, there were no surprises in the requested composers, also no women, no Australians … it read like the contents list of European master piano works from the Baroque to the Impressionists. Yep, the B composers Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Debussy … With only one other – Gershwin, of course (more later).

Tedeschi looking through the requests. Photo: Peter Hislop

The rules of the engagement are that, once played, a composer cannot be played again. Also that, while you can request a particular work, the pianist may play any work by that composer. He will also mostly deny requests for works written for piano and orchestra.

Tedeschi is an affable host, telling often funny stories prompted by the random selections and then performing immaculately. While always stylistically informed, he has a penchant for heightening the dramatic possibilities in any era. His interpretation is guaranteed to hold an audience in the palms of his hands.

Bach’s Great Fantasia (without Fugue) originally for organ showed how Bach foreshadowed what was to come – particularly in this realisation. It still retained the turns and trills, the counterpoint, but the shaping was exceptional.

A nine-year-old piano student requested Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 19 that Simon had played at Sydney Opera House when he also was nine. It demonstrated the required crisp clarity of fingering and interpolated the dramatic orchestral dynamics.

Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin has become synonymous with Tedeschi. He first performed it with Tommy Tycho in 1993. It is his most performed and requested work.

Understandably – when you hear this mighty solo piano interpretation.

After the opening sections, it got into its rhythmic centre with Tedeschi channelling Gershwin in the wild speed and shifting harmonies, with a mighty crescendo leading to a sudden stillness prior to the big romantic theme. Enormous dynamic contrast and a great, inventive walking bass line led to a thrilling climax.

When Debussy came up, Simon chose his most famous piano work, Clair de lune. A contrast to so many works on the random program, this had an incredibly beautiful and peaceful opening, so delicately played with melting harmonies and ringing tones, particularly in the upper register.

Yep, by the end, I had teared up.

First published at Canberra City News, September 19, 2026.

'I think I can write as badly here as I can in London': Monty Python star Eric Idle's 55-year French escape from fame

By Brendan Sainsbury

The Monty Python star bought a shack in Provence in 1972. Here's how he spent the next 55 years making it his refuge from fame – and how it somehow became a celebrity retreat.

Eric Idle is enjoying a pain au chocolat in the Provençal village of Cotignac. He is also drinking a cuppa. It's a fitting paradox: Idle has made a career out of satirising Englishness, but one of Britain's funniest men has been quietly consorting with the French for 55 years.

"It chose me, in a way," Idle told the BBC.

He first came to Provence in the early 1970s, as Monty Python was making him increasingly famous, and was immediately smitten. "It was just idyllic. It was fantastic. I said, 'I think I can write as badly here as I can in London'."

Soon after, he bought a three-room shack with no road, water or electricity. Over the next 55 years, Idle turned it into a 22-acre "shackeau": part writing refuge, part escape from fame and, somewhat improbably, a hideaway for friends including David Bowie, George Harrison and Ronnie Wood.

Now, as he publishes Idle in Provence: A Brief History of Thyme, he reflects on the place in France that has shaped more than half his life.  

Eric Idle is a founding member of British comedy troupe Monty Python.

 

The comedian, author, actor and musician has written many beloved songs, including Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, as well as the book and score for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Spamalot. He is the creator of the Beatles parody band, The Rutles. Originally from the Northeast of England, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Cotignac. 

You've had this home for decades now. What does Provence give you that nowhere else does?

Relaxation. As soon as I'd get here, I'd walk around my grounds, and I'd start to smile and I wouldn't stop smiling until I left. It's comfortable and [the people] are very sweet. They're nice to me, though not in a way they'd recognise. That's just how they are. Someone once said. 'What's it like to be a foreigner?' And I said, oddly enough, I'm not really a foreigner because foreigners are people from Paris. So, I'm beyond the pale. 

   

What was it like for you here in the early days?

It was such a wreck you wouldn't believe it. It had no road, no water, no electricity. We built everything bit by bit. We first came in 1972, and I think we were eight years without electricity. It was great though. [We were] adapting to a life where everything was oil lamps. There were no telephones. You don't have the convenience of communications, but you get all the calm and peace that results from not having them.

I'd lived in London for 15 years; I'd worked at the BBC. I'd always been doing television and writing things, so it was nice to get away from all that. I had a little writing shack up in the woods that burned down in '79. I liked the routine of going up there early in the morning, taking my flask of tea up the hill and writing about what I was thinking. And for the rest of the day, I could enjoy myself.

What makes Cotignac such a good place to escape from fame?

[The locals] don't care. It's no big deal. I believe even [George] Clooney comes and dines here. I think that's because it's more comfortable. You really don't want people pretending to take selfies and all that. It's hard. It stops you being completely relaxed. Here, the people are just getting on with their own lives.

Idle always looked on the bright side of life in his Provençal shack with no electricity (Credit: Courtesy of Eric Idle)

Did the locals eventually come to accept you?

I was [seen as] a visitor for many years. We were living just outside the village. I knew at first the people who helped us build the house: the carpenters, the glaziers. Then, in 1983, The Meaning of Life won the jury prize at Cannes. It was on the front of [the local paper] Var-Matin. They finally realised what I did for a living – that I was a lunatic, an idiot! They were very nice about it, very proud that we won as part of the village.

Did they get your humour or was it lost in translation?

The French actually liked Python from about The Holy Grail in 1975. We had to go to Paris to open it and they loved that. They liked The Life of Brian, but they thought it wasn't blasphemous enough. So, a very French reaction.

In your book you describe having to learn French. Have you made any faux pas in your adopted language?

I once asked a waiter for a cul de Champagne [arse of Champagne] instead of a coupe de Champagne [glass of Champagne] and watched him biting his lip. He was laughing so hard I realised I'd got it wrong.

For Idle, Cotignac has been an excellent hideaway from fame (Credit: Brendan Sainsbury)

You were retreating from celebrity life, but ironically, your "shackeau" turned into a sort of celebrity retreat. Do you have any stories to tell about visits from your famous friends?

Ronnie Wood was the first. He came up on a motorbike. He was just joining the Stones and Mick [Jagger] had given him two [cassette] tapes – all the Stones songs he had to learn, and another tape about 'how to get laid' in French.

I took David Bowie to the local coffee bar, the Modern Bar. [A woman called] Muriel ran it. I knew she had pictures of Bowie inside, so I didn't take him in. We sat outside and had a coffee, and she couldn't believe it. She looked at me and just went to get the coffees. But it was lovely because nobody made a fuss. And I could never do anything wrong with Muriel after that.

George Harrison was here early 1978. There's a picture of him outside my writing shack. He looks a bit bothered. We were on our way to watch Barry Sheen at the motorcycling grand prix.

Cotignac was known as the Saint-Tropez of the Haut-Var for a very small amount of time. There are recording studios at Miraval [nearby]. I went there one night in 1979, and [Pink Floyd guitarist] Roger Waters was recording Another Brick in the Wall. So, he had: 'We don't need no education' and, I said, 'You do. We don't need any education, if you don't mind'. We became pals for a little bit – tax exiles.

Has living outside Britain made you feel more or less English?

I am what I am… inescapably English.

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

First published at BBC, September 18, 2026

'He wanted to maintain an illusion of agelessness': The secret life of outrageous showman Liberace

By Nick Levine

The glitzy pianist, who famously hid his sexuality, was dismissed as a "vulgar joke" in his lifetime. But a new play gets to the truth of who he was, in private as well as in public.

The outlandish pianist and singer Liberace was such an accomplished purveyor of glitzy escapism that he famously called himself a "one-man Disneyland". During his heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, he was also regularly described as "the world's highest paid entertainer", a claim that is impossible to verify and may well be untrue.

Still, there is no doubt that he liked to project outrageous wealth on stage. When he performed his final live residency, at New York City's Radio City Music Hall in 1985, Liberace made a grand entrance by stepping out of a giant recreation of a Fabergé egg, wearing a cape made of hot pink turkey feathers.

Liberace was known for his flamboyant shows in which he played classical and pop tunes alike (Credit: Getty Images)

The man born Władziu Valentino Liberace – but who achieved global fame as a fabulous mononym – died in February 1987 from an Aids-related illness. He had learned around 18 months earlier that he was HIV positive, but never spoke publicly about his diagnosis, just as he always refuted rumours that he was gay. Since his death, however, it has become common knowledge that he enjoyed several long-term relationships with men.

The trial that made Liberace  

Now a new stage play about Liberace, I'll Be Seeing You, which opens this month in Scotland, explores the apparent disconnect between his private and professional lives, as well as the flamboyant piano man's most immaculate deception. In 1959, three years after the Daily Mirror published an article heavily insinuating that he was homosexual, Liberace successfully sued the British newspaper for libel.

The actor who portrays Liberace in the play, revered British Shakespearean Simon Russell Beale, tells the BBC that Liberace made a significant "gamble" by taking the case to court – had he lost, his career could have been ruined. But Beale also observes that the "specific lie that Liberace told" under oath, when he insisted that he was "against the practice [of homosexuality] because it offends convention and it offends society", was "merely part of [his] continuum of lying" – or at least being evasive about – his sexuality. As it transpired, the court ruled in Liberace's favour and awarded him £8,000 in damages – the equivalent to £167,000 ($225,000) today.

“I never saw him without his hairpiece, though it did change in colour and style” – Bo Ayars

Vincent L Stephens, the author of Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music, believes this victory was an emboldening turning point for the nascent showman. "After he won, he gradually became a lot more flamboyant and outgoing in his public persona," Stephens tells the BBC, pointing to the succession of "handsome chauffeurs" that Liberace hired to drive him on stage in his signature Rolls Royce.

One of these, Scott Thorson, sued Liberace for $113 million in palimony in 1982. He claimed that the entertainer had left him penniless after abruptly ending their five-year relationship. Liberace vehemently denied that he was gay and stated in court depositions that Thorson was never his lover. The case was settled in 1986 with Thorson receiving $75,000 in cash as well as three cars and three valuable pet dogs. 

The former driver's 1988 memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, was later adapted into an Emmy-winning TV film starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson. Conductor and arranger Bo Ayars, who served as Liberace's musical director from 1973 to 1986, tells the BBC that 2013's Behind the Candelabra succeeded in "really showing [Liberace's] idiosyncrasies" as a person and performer.

Liberace signing the hand of one of his female fans at London's Royal Festival Hall in 1954 (Credit: Getty Images)

Directed with affectionate irreverence by Steven Soderbergh, it doesn't shy away from showing Liberace's determination to maintain a different kind of façade – foregrounding his penchant for cosmetic surgery and showing him undergoing a facelift so extreme that it allegedly left him unable to close his eyelids completely.

Ayars says Liberace believed unwaveringly in "keeping up appearances" as he grew older and increasingly bald. "I never saw him without his hairpiece, though it did change in colour and style," he notes. To Stephens, Liberace's fondness for plastic surgery was entirely "in keeping" with his rigorous approach to image management. "Since his initial appeal was tied to a certain boyish innocence, it seems likely that he wanted to maintain an illusion of agelessness for his audience," he suggests. 

I'll Be Seeing You has enough pedigree to kickstart another revival in interest around Liberace. And in a serendipitous coincidence, it arrives hot on the heels of Liberace & Liza, a musical comedy tribute show in which David Saffert and Jillian Snow play affectionate parodies of Liberace and Liza Minnelli. The cabaret-style romp, which has toured extensively on both sides of the Atlantic while building a healthy following on TikTok, hinges on the irresistible fiction that the two entertainers, who probably never met, were great friends and collaborators.

“He understood what his female audience wanted, which was a well-groomed, amusing man who was not unlike an unthreatening brother – Simon Russell Beale

"As I looked into his career, I started to realise that he was rarely given enough credit as a musician," Saffert tells the BBC. I'll Be Seeing You star Beale says he is especially interested in "how we regard Liberace" as a cultural figure because he was often dismissed as a "vulgar joke" in his lifetime. "I think there's a huge amount of snobbery surrounding him," Beale adds. "Nobody ever mentions that he must have worked at being such an extraordinary piano player." 

His journey to the top of showbiz

In fact, Liberace worked incredibly hard from the start. Born in May 1919 to parents with Italian and Polish roots, he grew up in a working-class household in Wisconsin where his father, Salvatore, did manual labour in addition to playing the French horn in local bands. His mother, Frances, had been a concert pianist before she was married, but it was Salvatore who determined that the young Władziu – or Walter, to friends – should begin piano lessons at just four years old. 

"As I looked into his career, I started to realise that he was rarely given enough credit as a musician," Saffert tells the BBC. I'll Be Seeing You star Beale says he is especially interested in "how we regard Liberace" as a cultural figure because he was often dismissed as a "vulgar joke" in his lifetime. "I think there's a huge amount of snobbery surrounding him," Beale adds. "Nobody ever mentions that he must have worked at being such an extraordinary piano player." 

His journey to the top of showbiz

In fact, Liberace worked incredibly hard from the start. Born in May 1919 to parents with Italian and Polish roots, he grew up in a working-class household in Wisconsin where his father, Salvatore, did manual labour in addition to playing the French horn in local bands. His mother, Frances, had been a concert pianist before she was married, but it was Salvatore who determined that the young Władziu – or Walter, to friends – should begin piano lessons at just four years old. 

At 13, he started playing professionally at weddings, dance classes and even strip clubs to supplement the family's income during the Great Depression. Still, despite the odd insalubrious gig, the prodigiously gifted Liberace seemed destined to become a serious classical musician. On 15 January 1940, around six months before his 21st birthday, he made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, billed as the soloist during a performance of Liszt's Piano Concerto No 2.

Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover Scott Thorson in 2013 biopic Behind the Candelabra (Credit: Alamy)

However, by this point, Liberace's head was already being turned by the power of popular music. As he perfected his act at nightclubs and hotel lounges throughout the 1940s, Liberace began to blend classical compositions with seemingly incongruous contemporary songs like the sentimental folk ballad Home on the Range and energetic jazz standard Tiger Rag. Reflecting on his decision to eschew a career as a traditional concert pianist, Liberace told TV interviewer Michael Parkinson in 1973: "I love classical music, but I think I would have been a much lonelier person if I'd been a strictly classical pianist, because you play to a different audience of people." The audience he targeted with gusto, Liberace added shrewdly, were "truly the working-class people" who would "really let go" at his shows.

In the 1950s, Liberace found the ideal medium to cultivate this mainstream fanbase when his weekly TV series, The Liberace Show, became a ratings sensation in the US and UK. Remarkably, his popularity flourished in the face of thinly veiled homophobia from TV critics, who made what Stephens describes as "veiled comments about him not being a 'regular' or 'traditional' guy". However, Liberace's core demographic of mainly middle-aged and older women "rallied behind him" and remained loyal until his death in 1987, ensuring he remained an enormous live draw long after The Liberace Show ended in 1959. 

From this point on, Liberace maintained his profile with witty guest spots on TV chat shows and honed his showy yet homely persona right down to his signature stage prop, a candelabra perched on the piano, which struck the right note of aspirational suburban glamour. "He understood what his female audience wanted, which was a well-groomed, amusing man who was not unlike an unthreatening brother or [platonic] companion," Beale says. 

In 2026, when gay people enjoy greater visibility than Liberace could have imagined in his lifetime, it would be easy to perceive him as the archetypal "tragic homosexual" – how could he be happy when he hid a huge part of himself? However, this reductive view fails to factor in his sizable appetite for life. "All his friends seemed to like him and he was never accused of lacking generosity, so I think he was probably quite a simple man with simple desires," Beale suggests. "If he'd said, 'yes, I'm gay' [on record], he would have lost his career, so he chose not to. What's complex about that?"

Ayars roundly agrees with this assessment: "He always seemed genuinely happy and would laugh off comments about his private life". He believes the real Liberace was a performer of rare stamina – they racked up around 5,000 shows together, often performing twice a night – who loved to dazzle audiences while accruing the glamorous trappings of success. "His piano technique was great, though I never saw him practise," Ayars says, "but in terms of showmanship and entertaining people, he really was a king." 

I'll be Seeing You is at Scotland's Pitlochry Theatre from September 22 until October 11.

First published at BBC, September 17, 2026

Biggins inhabits Keating with humour and poignancy

 

By Joe Woodward

Theatre presents biographical stories on a regular basis; myth, heroic deeds and interpretations of reality make great subjects dating back to ancient Greek theatre.

The lampooning and satirising of all such things also provides much comedy and creative substance going back just as far. Serious actors portray characters in the first instance while comedians will offer witty and often dangerous performances within the second. Jonathan Biggins, with his invocation of Paul Keating evokes the essence of both.

From the opening monologue, Biggins lampoons contemporary political issues and personalities with a kind of tongue-in-cheek vigour; all presented with a wink and nod in a Keating style. It fills the room with laughter and recognition from people of all political persuasion.

And then, Biggins, as Keating, takes the audience into the lessons to be learned from a lifetime. He is always aware of the audience being subject to his thoughts and stories.

Biggins is actually very respectful of his audience in both the writing and the performance. The lightness in the presentation also inhabits the darkness of some of his content. For instance, his seemingly dismissive references to AUKUS were grounded in the very sceptical utterances of Keating himself.

This is where Biggins work finds a liminality between himself and Paul Keating and between the real figure and the audience’s perceptions of him. Biggins inhabits the man, the historical icon and the politician in a way that takes his performance well beyond that of simple satire. His gestures and vocal intonations go beyond characterisation.

In effect, Biggins provides a self-effacing genius of endowment bridging the very act of performance with historical reality.

There is no imposition in his work. Biggins goes further than simply using an actor’s timing to make a point. He allows time to invest his every gesture and every utterance as an invitation for the audience to share in his multidimensional portrayal.

The humour and poignancy of Biggins’ creation is testimony to the artists inhabiting of a very real personage within an historical setting.

Biggins creates a distinct new genre of theatre.

He breathes life into multiple genres of theatre with his tour de force creation of Paul Keating. The Gospel According to Paul is profound writing and exceptional acting.

There is no imposition in his work. Biggins goes further than simply using an actor’s timing to make a point. He allows time to invest his every gesture and every utterance as an invitation for the audience to share in his multidimensional portrayal.

The humour and poignancy of Biggins’ creation is testimony to the artists inhabiting of a very real personage within an historical setting.

Biggins creates a distinct new genre of theatre.

He breathes life into multiple genres of theatre with his tour de force creation of Paul Keating. The Gospel According to Paul is profound writing and exceptional acting.

First published at Canberra City News, September 18, 2026

The Gospel According to Paul

written performed by Jonathan Biggins

Canberra Theatre Centre

Until September 26, 2026

Amazing restoration of the feted Hannah Cabinet

The cabinet in the gallery after the Lismore flooding had receded in March 2022. Photo: Brian Henry

By Meredith Hinchliffe

Many readers will remember the Hannah Cabinet that filled the front gallery at Bungendore Wood Works a few years ago, a six-year labour of love for its maker Geoff Hannah.

The Cabinet was returned to Hannah’s home town Lismore where, after major fund raising and with assistance from the maker, it became the centrepiece of the regional gallery.

But on February 28, 2022, after heavy rain, the Lismore river reached its highest on record (14.4 metres) and caused catastrophic damage all over the district.

The cabinet had been placed on the third floor, the highest position. But the water reached it and knocked it over completely.

The cabinet had originally been made in Lismore by Hannah and after major fundraising and with assistance from the maker, it became the centrepiece of the gallery’s collection.

Five days after the flood, International Art Services brought the pieces in climate-controlled trucks to Patinations Furniture Conservation Services in Canberra, where it was held at 2°C for several weeks to stop the mould. Nevertheless, there were marks from mould which spread over the timber pieces. 

Restorer Greg Peters (left) uses a heat lamp and vacuum on the Hannah Cabinet, watched by
Geoff Hannah centre and Wayne Creaser.

Greg Peters from Patinations in Fyshwick explained that it was full of silt, sewage, tan bark, mud and other rubbish. 

The drawers – and there were many – acted as wine barrels, holding the water. The gilding and veneers were peeling off while most of the stone in the door fronts and on the drawer fronts survived.

Fortunately, Hannah had listened to Peters give a talk at Bungendore Wood Works, where he encouraged furniture makers to use animal glue and French polishing, rather than PVC and polyurethane and had followed this advice, so the joints and finishes could all be replaced. Everything was taken apart and rebuilt. The cabinet had been made to break into six parts, and this has made the conservation and restoration a little easier. 

Hannah Cabinet when unveiled in 2009. Photo: Flawless Imaging

Hannah, now living out of Armidale, NSW, is overseeing the process of conservation and recovery. The timber is being re-French polished, and re-gilded. 

Peters expects that less than five per cent will ultimately remain unsaved, but that the average viewer will not notice this. 

“The final piece will reflect the flood,” he tells me. 

When I visited Patinations, the centre top section of the cabinet was undergoing the transformation process. 

Once finished, it will go back to Lismore where the time-consuming French polishing will begin.

“The process of conservation is a mix of traditional 18th and 19th century techniques and state-of-the-art conservation,” Peters says. 

“Vacuuming will suck the moisture out and heat lamps dry the timber. There is considerable staining around all the holes where screws were used, and we are removing all the marks, too.”

It has been a massive and expensive undertaking to return it to its original state. There has been insurance money, but also conservators have made a huge contribution. 

Staff at Patinations have worked on it almost solely since the parts arrived in Canberra in March 2022. While they will be finished soon, Peters anticipates work will not be completed in Lismore until late next year.

First published at Canberra City News, September 16, 2026