The launch of Lady Sings the Viol CD was a joyous occasion in the almost full Independent Theatre in North Sydney.
They wanted the night to be a celebration and not feel like a concert, and they achieved that wonderfully. You could feel the buzz and energy when entering the Independent Theatre. Jenny Eriksson always looks like she is having so much fun when she performs and was even more elated than usual on Saturday night.
With David Hidden MC’ing and Christopher Lawrence launching the CD with passion, humour and insights into how it came together and background about The Marais Project, they then performed the works on the CD which spanned centuries of original work.
As Jenny Eriksson says in the program:
What I wanted to do with Lady Sings the Viol was to create a CD of “covers”, new versions of old songs like jazz and some rock singers do. But instead of drums, bass and guitars we used our instruments of choice: viols, violin, theorbo and percussion.
Many of these songs we have been doing for years but never at the one place and time. Having put down such a varied CD our final challenge was to find a single night when almost 20 freelance musicians were all available to put on a launch concert.
I often find the musical experience on baroque instruments can be broken up by the regular tuning required however because this concert had a regular flow of performers between the works it wasn’t as noticeable and the regular flow of performers was done in a way that it felt like they were having a party on the stage.
It was interesting to see these instruments performing music from such a range of periods – it was great listening.
Kate Tribe, ClassikON, August 2013
