Art Smitten

When I heard Renee Geyer was a famous international jazz singer I was thrilled to get the chance to go and see her sing. As I am an amateur singer with jazzy vocals myself it felt like it was a match made to be.

However Renee Geyer was different to my initial assumptions. If I were to liken the whole experience to dating a person you met online, Renee Geyer would be a date you hade hopes for, only to have the actual date be considerably different to your expectations. Renee’s actuality contrasts considerably to the young pictures you see of her in the programs. They boast she is a proud Australian jazz talent. When I think of jazz, I think of swanky bars, dim lights and a commitment to seriousness to music as a vehicle for creative expression. Therefor, I’d constructed a vague conclusion that she was going to be refined, musically precise and like she looked in the picture. Malvern Town hall was dimmed, with fancy cheese platters on the tables to boot. It felt like the show was going to live up to expectations…But

When Renee finally walked on stage I thought “Is this lady her mother?”.
The lady started to sing and a raspy, low tenor voice filled the room. It was undeniably Renee Geyer, reminding me of female version of Tom Waits.

The first song was a slow song. An odd choice, but it caught the audience’s attention. Then the show really began.

A faster, rockier song was played, and Renee’s real experience as a performer shone through. Her vocal techniques began to pulse into the songs, she started to move round the stage, and the room came alive. People left their drinks and cheese platters and started dancing. It was from there on I began to see the real Renee Geyer.

Renee Geyer’s songs are not particularly special. They’re simple, catchy and don’t try to hard to be anything other than a good song to dance or sing along to. If you were to pick up album of her songs, chances are you’d like the album, but you probably just like it. It lacks the prestige people associate with jazz.

Maybe this is why seeing Renee perform is so much fun. Renee breaks the rules, get people to let their hair down and coerces them into having a great time. She is both a performer and a conductor, bringing in her band member’s parts with both dance and sharp movements. She becomes so playful with this technique, she turns it into a hilarious gag, signalling the ban by adjusting her clothing, swishing her hair and other movements that appear to have nothing to do with the music, then looks at the band like they’ve been spying on her. She milks the pauses and silences in her songs to great dramatic effect, and even plays the other band member’s instruments. The look of confusion on the pianist as Renee does a Glissando (The move where you run your finger down the piano), is priceless, yet the professional performer continues the song as nothing happened.

Renee’s own singing technique is obviously honed through years of performing. She trills with ease. She belts with clarity and confidence, even with a clearly aged voice. Her dry, aged vocals suits some of her songs but the songs she sung when she was young she isn’t able to craft like she was once was. She whistles in parts of her songs to reach high clear pitches, which changes the tone of the piece slightly, but this adds to her music in a refreshing way. Undeniably, Renee’s experience and creativity allows her to convincingly convey meaning and emotion in her music. She expresses a diverse array of life experiences through tone, timing, crescendo and other simple musical quirks and techniques effectively, which (to me) is what proves her abilities as a musician.

If you’re looking for a night of tip top jazz, then perhaps you should look for different performers, as Renee’s songs are more like Rock n roll, with Jazz and reggae influences. Though, if you’re looking for a fun night out and an opportunity to dance, Renee and her band will deliver in many wonderful ways. I would highly recommend this show to anyone who enjoys singing and dancing like no one is watching and who doesn’t mind that most of the other people dancing along side you could be old enough to be your parents.

Review written by Jonathan Calleja

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Rachel attended the opening night of Malthouse Theatre’s production of Tennessee Williams' classic 'memory play', The Glass Menagerie. 

The Glass Menagerie is being performed on 18th May to 5th June at the Merlyn Theatre in Melbourne.

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Hosts Lauren and Andrew are joined on the line with actress ROSE RILEY.  She is playing the role of Laura Wingfield in the Malthouse Theatre’s production of The Glass Menagerie.

 The Glass Menagerie is being performed on 18th May to 5th June at the Merlyn Theatre in Melbourne.

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Hosts Lauren and Andrew were joined in the studio with LENKA VANDERBOOM - Melbourne Playback Theatre Company ensemble member and Creative Director of SticksnStones on the Birrarung Marr. 

The event includes a panel event with esteemed First Nations’ Victorians followed by a professional playback theatre performance.

 SticksnStones is on Friday 27th May, 6pm at Deakin Edge Theatre, Federation Square, Melbourne.

Photographer credit: Steven Rhall (image: Diana Nguyen, Sermsah Bin Saad)

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Laurent spoke to award winning dancer CHARMENE YAP, a member of Sydney Dance Company and performer in the touring production CounterMove.

CounterMove will be performed at the Melbourne Theatre Company Southbank Theatre 25th May to 4th June

Photography by Peter Greig (still from CACTI)

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MITCHEL EDWARDS, emerging playwright, and actor AARON TREVASKIS join Lauren in the studio to talk about a new Australian and post-apocalyptic play,  Yellow Skies.

Yellow Skies is produced by Baker's Dozen Theatre and is being performed at Metanoia Theatre at Brunswick Mechanics Institute, 18th -29th May.

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Recently I got to visit the Linden New Art Gallery. The current exhibition that is being held at the moment is the ‘Wild Lands’ exhibition with two sections following different artists and there particular styles of different wild life.

When walking into the gallery on the left side is the ‘Wild Lands’ exhibition, featuring the artists: Chris Mason, Bronwyn Hack, Dionne Cazano, Michael Camakaris, Mathew Grove, and Ruth Howard. This section was particularly interesting especially when looking upon the works of Bronwyn Hack. I was immediately drawn to these pieces because of the rawness that they seemed to have. The first thought that came to mind was “why did this person only want to portray wolves?” The closer and longer I looked at the pieces, the information I gathered from each individual work was that it was telling a story of a lone wolf. The pieces may not be extremely detailed, but the pieces themselves express an emotion that can connect too many people.

Another artist that caught my eye within this section was Michael Camakaris. What I found intriguing about Michael’s was the fact it was in black and white, but it had not only detail, but expressed an emotion within each piece. The pieces stood out to me, because they were quite striking in that I genuinely could not look away from the work. Something about each piece made me feel the need to stand there and stare for a while. Out of the five pieces he had on display my favourite would have to be the owl trying to cover up its face with its wings. The reason why this is my favourite is simply because I didn’t know it was an owl when I first glanced at it. It actually looked like a dinosaur with something in its mouth, just the way it is shaped got me thinking it was something different.

An artist that had work within both sections of the gallery was Chris Mason. Chris Mason did sculptures of different animals such as: Buffalo, a parrot, a snake, and a hippo. What I found extraordinary about his work was the amount of detail that each sculpture had. The, I believe it to be a Python, was the largest one. It looked like it was to scale, although I have never seen a python, thank goodness but none the less it was magnificent to see.

The second section on the right side of coming into the gallery was dedicated to Leith Maguire in his ‘Heads or Tails?’ exhibition, connecting to ‘Wild Lands’. Leith Maguire’s work was stunning. It was simplistic and full of detail. When I walked into the room and saw the work, I felt a sense of comfort almost. The gentle lines and the delicate placing of the animals on the paper was so well thought out, that I felt at ease. When seeing the pieces, there is an emotional aspect to them, but instead of portraying the animals in a dimmer light, Maguire illustrates these animals in a way that made me feel like they were not something to be feared. Nothing within this section was my favourite, because I genuinely loved everything in the room.

 The exhibition is an arts project Australia exhibition and is curated by Sim Luttin and Melissa Petty, and runs from May 7th up until the 17th of July on 26 Acland Street, Saint Kilda. This exhibition is definitely worth seeing and doesn’t close until July, so you should go check it out.

Wild Lands exhibition is on at the Linden New Art Gallery until July 17th.

Review written by Vanessa Gail Gustilo

Review read aloud by Lauren Klein

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Adalya joins Lauren in the studio to share her thoughts about the Tinnalley String Quartet & Lior concert she attended earlier this month.

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Lauren is joined in the studio with DEFRON, a local Melbourne hip-hop artist and the leader behind the Walk This Way project. Defron talks about his trip to New York and the hip hop scene in Melbourne.

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Green Room is the latest film by Jeremy Saulnier, an American filmmaker whose two previous films, Murder Party (2007) and Blue Ruin (2013), both explore and analyse violence in various forms and settings. And now Green Room, which premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2015, extends this obsession to even darker territory. It centres on a punk band who goes to play at a small concert venue in the backwoods of Oregon, witnesses a murder, and is immediately taken hostage in the green room of the film's title and not allowed to leave. From then on, things only get worse. We start to find out more and more about the concert venue and the people behind it, the vice-like tension grows and grows and grows, and the blood of many a character is unceremoniously spilled.

The cast includes Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat as members of the band, as well as Macon Blair, who's acted in and co-produced all of Saulnier's films. And, in an out-of-type casting, we have Patrick Stewart who excels as the owner of the venue, the main villain of the film. His performance is sinister and sociopathic, and is slightly reminiscent of Ben Kingsley's Don Logan from Sexy Beast, in manner and appearance. It's the type of performance where it's the reserved and contained nature of the character that provides the fear and intimidation, and not the explicit violence. Importantly, he's the type of villain who is never directly violent, but rather manipulates everyone around him into violence.

And yes, the film is violent, but it's the same kind of sad and brutal violence that Saulnier has exhibited in his previous films, the kind of violence that really makes a strong point against it. The film takes no pleasure in its violence - not once in the film is the violence glorified or even shown as something for the audience to enjoy, whether it's being doled out by the "good guys" or the "bad guys", a distinction that in itself becomes increasingly blurred as the film goes on and everyone is forced into a situation of kill or be killed. In this way Saulnier raises many questions about the nature of the violence displayed by the characters, delving into the human psyche and finding out just what they're capable of. (I'm reminded of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1972) where an ordinary teacher, a self-avowed pacifist, played by Dustin Hoffman, is put into an extreme situation and has no choice but to react very violently - and indeed Peckinpah in general is perhaps an apt comparison to Saulnier's work to date - both are directors whose films examine violence and attitudes to violence in impressively intricate detail.)

Green Room is one of those rare films that is able to captivate you and capture that captivation, not letting go for the entirety of the film. It's gripping, horrifying and has just the right doses of very dark humour to tide you through the terror. Not for the faint of heart, but if you want to be taken for an intense, gory thrill-ride, then this is just the film for you.

Green Room is out now exclusive to Cinema Nova.

Review written by Ben Volchok

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