The rocket man wows with hits and glitz

Thursday November 15, 2012

Elton John aboard the piano at Canberra Stadium, Bruce. Photo: Melissa Adams

by Stephanie Anderson

There's nothing understated about Elton John, and his performance at Canberra Stadium on Wednesday was no exception.

Taking the stage in a sequined blue suit emblazoned with the word ''fantastic'', the 65-year-old singer took fans through a number of favourites including Benny and the Jets, Tiny Dancer and Believe.

Accompanied by his band and occasionally the crowd, Sir Elton sang and joked with the audience.

''Last time I was here, you had more rain than you had for the last 45 years,'' he said. He also spoke about playing to the 80,000 strong crowd in New York following 9/11.

''None of us who played there will ever forget it,'' he said.

Fans gathered from as far as Western Australia and Queensland to listen to the legendary musician as he celebrated the 40-year anniversary of his single Rocket Man.

Concert-goers also took the opportunity to get in costume. Among the expected 12,000 audience members were numerous fans adorned in sequined jackets, glittery glasses and multicoloured tuxedoes.

Support act Croatian cello duo Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic. Photo courtesy Loudwire

Wednesday's performance also included guest acts, including Croatian cello duo Stjepan Hauser and Luka Šulić, who kicked off with crowd-pleasing covers of Michael Jackson, Nirvana and AC/DC, later joining Elton's band for the entire concert.

The tour continues in Sydney on Thursday and Friday before heading to Launceston next week.

First published at The Canberra Times, November 15, 2012

Article: STILL STANDING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, Croker and Magee at Teatro Vivaldi, July 22 and 28 2012, By HELEN MUSA

Tintin comic cover fetches record price

The hand-painted cover is now the most expensive comic book in history
(AFP: Joel Saget)

A rare hand-drawn illustration of the comic book character Tintin has sold at auction in Paris for a record price of 1.3 million euros ($1.5 million).

Belgian comic artist Hergé, who dreamed up the boy reporter, painted the cover of the book Tintin in America in 1932.

It is one of only five such works of cover art remaining by Hergé.

It shows the young adventurer dressed as a cowboy sitting on a rock, his dog Snowy at his side, as axe-wielding three native Americans creep up behind him.

The previous owner, another Tintin collector, had bought it for 764,218 euros ($979,000) in 2008, which had until now stood as the record price for a comic.

AFP (Agence France-Presse)

First published at ABC News, June 4, 2012

Teatro Vivaldi / Ian Croker & Tony Magee "I'm Still Standing"

Canberra Dilettante

Sunday July 29, 2012

Ian Croker (left) and Tony Magee

by Sarah Byrne

July 29, 2012

This may not be the right way to start this post, but I want to just put it out there: I love Tony Magee. He's a wonderful pianist, a wonderful accompanist, and I have good reason to believe he's also a wonderful person. I know Tony only to nod to in foyers, so I base that last assertion on bits of pieced-together and sometimes second-hand observation. But the first two were very much in evidence in his collaboration with Ian Croker at Teatro Vivaldi. And when I'm next in the market for a piano, I will be heading down to Davis Wheeler to buy it from Tony.

Anyway... A few songs into this revue I found myself wondering if the things that make a good person also make a good accompanist - an empathy with others, a lack of ego, and a readiness to put others first. This revue was all about Ian Croker, but it was Tony Magee who made it so. It was beautiful, sensitive work (with a special mention for the neat little quote from "March of the Gladiators" in "Puppet on A String", and when I remembered to look, I enjoyed watching Tony watching Ian almost as much as I enjoyed watching Ian himself.

Ian Croker himself was in fine form, and if not in his best voice ever, still had plenty of those rich deep tones we know and love. His opening gambit of "Wilkommen" would have seemed a bit cliched if it wasn't for his explanation that his first role in Canberra was as the MC in "Cabaret". His first set was largely a series of classic pop songs from the sixties, strung together with anecdotes about his youth that might go some way to explaining the man and performer he is today. The audience had come prepared to love him, and got a lot of love back; it was great fun, especially for anyone, like me, who is familiar with him only from his many and remarkably varied performances across the years, and the occasional encounter at a theatre bar, but hasn't got to know him personally.  I savoured these anecdotes and I would have liked more of them (I have often wondered, for example, whether he actually studied theatre or is just a remarkable natural talent, and I still don't know).  Set in this context, his performance of "What Makes A Man A Man" was palpably moving.

The second set contained no more anecdotes, alas - I hope this means he is saving a few for another bout - but a lighthearted and more varied repertoire of show-tunes and cabaret that was right up my street, from Flanders & Swann to a reprise of his Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" earlier this year. There was a lovely cameo from Old Time Music Hall, there was a performance of "One For My Baby" that, if not word-perfect, was absolutely heartfelt, and a nicely-built "Forty-Second Street" that had the audience whooping.

If there was one disappointment, it might well lie only with my own increasing age and experience, and it is that I really hope in cabaret to find some undiscovered jewel I hadn't heard before, and as entertaining as the repertoire was, it was fairly familiar stuff. There's a different sort of charm in that, of course, which may be more appealing to many, and I do get about a hell of a lot. At the same time, if I know a pop song, it's a pretty bloody well-known pop song.

As for "I'm Still Standing", well, yes, he is, despite a somewhat snide cry of "that's water, Crokes!" from an audience member (whose name I could mention, but won't), and a couple of lapses of memory. To be fair, I saw Steve Ross forget the words of the same song last year, so it was pretty forgiveable, and unlike Ross, Ian Croker came back with the correct lyric. And yes, more than one table was quaffing the "Wasted Talent" sauv blanc.  But if Ian Croker is in fact wasting his considerable talent in Canberra, then I'm glad he's wasting it on us.

First published at Canberra Dilettante, July 29, 2012

Morricone concert labelled 'fiasco' after it's interrupted by V8 Supercar race

A gala concert conducted by Ennio Morricone in Adelaide has been labelled a "fiasco" after it was disrupted by noise from a nearby V8 Supercar race.

by Jonathan Pearlman

05 March 2012

Ennio Morricone CREDIT: Photo: EPA

The last forty minutes of the special outdoor Morricone tribute concert were described as "cringeworthy", as moments of silence were filled by the sounds of engines from the Clipsal 500 event.

The disruption prompted the Premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, who was at the concert, to try to have the race stopped, without success.

"It is disappointing that such a world eminent artist's concert was disturbed in this way," Mr Weatherill said. "We took steps to have the car race brought to an end. It was in the final stages of the event in any event."

The intrusion, during a concert to open the Adelaide Festival on Friday night, drew an angry response from some concert goers.

"I think it's a total embarrassment to the entire state," said a former Adelaide Festival director, Anthony Steel. "The fact that there's so much going on in March, and let's forget about the car race, just so much in the broader sense of the word the arts... I think that has been a total disaster for the festival."

One attendee told ABC Radio: "Right in the middle of 40 or 50 V8s roaring around the track - hopefully the poor old maestro and the orchestra couldn't hear or see any of that."

Another said: "This was a fiasco."

The festival director, Paul Grabowsky, said the concert was a triumph but the car race should not be held at the same time as the festival.

"The actual event itself was not destroyed in any way, shape or form," he said.

"Of course it wasn't ideal and it shouldn't have happened. [We] did everything possible to maintain communications with Clipsal about any possible scheduling conflict and at no point during those conversations were we told that this race was going to be happening at that time.”

First published at The Telegraph (UK edition), March 5, 2012

West End dream for North Walsham High School teacher from Wells

By Sophie Wyllie

09 January 2012

Elizabeth Dark at the rehearsal of Angelis, a musical which she wrote.
Photo: Matthew Usher

A performing arts teacher has written a musical with a difference which she hopes to take to London’s West End.

Elizabeth Dark, of Wells, wrote and choreographed Angelis - a production set in Northern Ireland during 1275 - which features amateur and semi-professional musical theatre performers from Norfolk.

Ms Dark, originally from Melbourne, Australia, moved to Wells in 2008, after meeting her partner Robert Smith, Wells harbour master, in 2006.

She has taught performing arts for the past 20 years and is currently a teacher at North Walsham High School.

Ms Dark spent a year researching the history for Angelis, started writing the musical in July 2010 and rehearsals started in October last year.

She said: “The cast is brilliant, they are really talented with gorgeous voices. I’m quite confident this could go to London, everyone who has heard it is quite impressed.

“It is very different to anything else. There is no Medieval musical out there that knocks your socks off.”

Ms Dark added that the production, which includes adult themes, was strong, hopeful and powerful and contains an “eclectic mix” of music including Celtic, folk, rock and Latin.

“It is about being human. It is very deep but there are also comic moments,” she said.

BBC presenter David Whiteley is the narrator and Ms Dark plays the older version of the main role, Osana. Rowan Perrow, 14, of Norwich, plays the younger Osana.

Miss Perrow, a Hewett School pupil, said: “I’ve been interested in musicals all my life. Angelis is brilliant. I’m really looking forward to the performance and what happens afterwards.”

Angelis is being performed for one night only at the Dragon Hall, Norwich, on January 22, but all 120 tickets have sold out.

It features a cast of 15, aged between 11 and 60, 15 songs and will be filmed in Norwich to be shown to London producers.

The musical is part of Ms Dark’s final project for her year-long course in song writing, which she undertook at the London Song Company, in Clapham.

At the start of the production Osana is 12-years-old and it follows her life, during which she runs away from an arranged marriage and lives in a Cistercian monastery where she becomes pregnant. The shows ends with her committing suicide in her early 30s.

Ms Dark was inspired to set the show in Northern Ireland after a trip to Galway in 2006, where she visited old churches.

She said she wrote the musical to take place in 1275 because by going back 1,000 years it allowed the audience to have an objective view on what is happening in the world today.

For more information about the show visit www.angelismusical.com

Originally published in the Fakenham & Wells Times, January 9, 2012