Latest news with #AdelaideCabaretFestival
ABC News
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
David Campbell, Virginia Gay, Natalie Abbott and Victoria Falconer on Australian cabaret
David Campbell inspired Virginia Gay to get into cabaret. She was just 14 years old, and Campbell was teaching at her performing arts high school in Sydney's inner west. "He was very young and very handsome," Gay recalls. "I developed a psychotic crush on him." Still in her school uniform, she would travel to RSLs across Sydney to watch Campbell perform, sometimes carrying the gift of a bunch of gerberas in her arms. "David Campbell is one of the best in the world at cabaret, even [in his early 20s]. He felt so close to us in age, so we were like, 'Ah, you're doing it!'" she says. "And I remember thinking, 'I cannot get enough of this art form.' "I loved that sense that, with no set at all and with just a little bit of subtle lighting, just David and a piano, he'd suddenly built a whole world." This year, Gay asked Campbell — who is now a good friend who never brings up her teenage obsession — to be one of the headliners for Adelaide Cabaret Festival, her second and final as artistic director. It's a job Campbell held himself, 15 years ago, from 2009 to 2011. Campbell exemplified one strand of Gay's 2025 program: a focus on legacy artists, alongside the likes of cabaret royalty Rizo and Carlotta. The rest of last month's festival combined the "cutting edge" of contemporary cabaret — with local artists like Victoria Falconer and Reuben Kaye, who assumes the role of artistic director next year — and performers working across genres, including performance art, burlesque, drag, circus and comedy. It also looked to the future of the form, with artists including Natalie Abbott (ABC TV's Aftertaste; Muriel's Wedding the Musical) and Seann Miley Moore (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) performing their debut shows. Funnily, Campbell's first festival as artistic director was Gay's first as a performer, in Gentlemen Prefer Jokes, with Trevor Ashley and Courtney Act. "I was like a demented nurse who also just got up and did her dance numbers, which was little more than a box step," she says, with a laugh. Within three years, she was performing her debut solo show at the festival: Dirty Pretty Songs, following it up with Songs to Self-Destruct To. Along with artists like Yve Blake, Eddie Perfect and Tim Minchin, Gay honed her creative voice through cabaret. It led her to making works of theatre like Cyrano, which she toured last year to Edinburgh Fringe. "Sometimes people dismiss cabaret, and I think it is so vital," she says. "There's a real immediacy in the authenticity of a totally unique, magical voice that is delivered very intimately and with a really strong connection to an audience. "It is about what makes live theatre exciting, and it is unreplicatable." While Gay is still a regular on stage and screen, she rarely performs cabaret anymore. Instead, taking on the top job at Adelaide Cabaret Festival has made her realise how much she enjoys creating space for other artists. "Perhaps it's a kind of ego death, where I don't need to be the star," she says. "What I love is to make a space for other people to play in — both audience and performer." David Campbell came to cabaret out of necessity. In the early 90s, he moved from Adelaide to Sydney to work as an actor, but a couple of years into his career, work started to dry up. The son of Cold Chisel frontman Jimmy Barnes, Campbell had been reluctant to sing professionally because of the inevitable comparison to his father. His then-manager encouraged him to do it anyway; to "do something different [to Barnes]", Campbell recalls. That's when he started combining personal monologues with songs from musical theatre, performing them on stage in bars and cabaret venues to audiences of anywhere between 6 and 20 people. "[My cabaret] started out very strict and clunky, and very angsty and emotional," Campbell says. "I was so stressed by being on stage, being a people-pleaser and not wanting to do anything wrong." At the time, the local cabaret scene was dominated by powerful women performers, including Nancye Hayes and Geraldine Turner. "It was seen as a chanteuse-y world, and here I was, an upstart, trying to be like, well, maybe I could do that too," he says. But it wasn't until Campbell moved to America in the late 90s that he truly found his cabaret voice. "Going to the US was extremely freeing for me because they didn't know who I was, they didn't know who my dad was, so I could start again," he says. "It was really a great safe place, without the eyes of our industry here in Australia looking at me going, 'Ah, he sucks. There were only 15 people in the audience, and he did a Jimmy Barnes joke.'" In New York, he met performers — including White Christmas star Rosemary Clooney and Broadway legend Barbara Cook — who encouraged him to try new things, and taught him how to work a room. "These people were themselves on stage," he says. "They were the song. You know, my dad does it: it's when the song and the singer become one. It's just this amazing thing. "You do need runs on the board to do that. It doesn't just happen." Now 30 years into his cabaret career, Campbell says he wants to be "reaching down" to support the next generation — just like Clooney, Hayes and more did for him. During his tenure at Adelaide Cabaret Festival, he nurtured emerging cabaret artists, like Gay, Christie Whelan Browne and Hugh Sheridan. He also set up Class of Cabaret, an ongoing initiative of the festival, which mentors high school students. "There might be some young David Campbell or Virginia Gay; nerdy kids that don't fit in with everybody else that want to do this," he says. "To be able to say, 'Come in, this place is for you as well,' is really important." Like Gay and Campbell, Victoria Falconer is a cabaret artist who wants to create space for others. She's the co-artistic director of Hayes Theatre Co in Sydney, a small theatre dedicated to musicals, which in June hosted a winter cabaret season, including some of the artists from the Adelaide festival. She's also the musical director for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, now in Melbourne for Rising, before touring to Sydney. For Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Falconer curated a late-night salon, The Parlour — an opportunity to bring together performers from across Australian and international cabaret, including the local independent scene. "It's the perfect level of controlled chaos, where I personally feel like I thrive," she says. "Seeing the magic that happens when you bring everybody together is something special; that's what The Parlour is about." But, like Campbell, Falconer had to leave Australia to forge a career in cabaret. She moved to London in 2003, where she formed "risque cabaret character comedy" duo EastEnd Cabaret, with German performance artist Bernadette Byrne (aka Bernie Dieter), started playing the musical saw and experimented with androgyny on stage. "I knew I wanted to make cabaret because I was obsessed with Marlene Dietrich and cabaret performers of the 30s," she says. "When I first started performing with [Byrne], we thought that we were the only people doing what we were doing. "Once we started putting it out there, other weirdos started finding us, finding each other, [and] creating [cabaret] nights." It's a reflection of the DIY attitude of cabaret artists across the world — where performers stage their shows wherever they can, from dedicated theatres to queer and dive bars. "Cabaret gets made, regardless of whether there's a stage or not," Falconer says. "There's an inherent need to create new spaces where there weren't spaces before; to express beyond what a lot of mainstream genres can do; and to connect to audiences that maybe don't feel as comfortable or welcome in mainstream spaces. Falconer stresses the depth of talent that exists now in the Australian — and especially the Adelaide — arts scene. "When I moved back from London and lived here for a few years, I knew the arts scene here was fabulous," she says. "But I think it needs to be talked about more." As for what's distinctive about Australian cabaret, Falconer describes it as "larrikinism that then gets draped in feathers and sequins". Her role as host and curator of The Parlour is about outreach; finding performers who are already doing something like cabaret on Australian stages (and in the corners of bars). "If I find them, I will put them on a cabaret stage, introduce them to a bunch of other people who are also doing weird stuff, and foster community that way." One of the artists who performed their debut cabaret show at Adelaide Cabaret Festival was musical theatre and TV actor Natalie Abbott. Her show Bad Hand was a meditation on grief, love and loss — through song. It was the product of a real tragedy: the sudden death of her partner. In May last year, Abbott's boyfriend production runner Ryan Cuskelly, died after he was diagnosed with a severe and highly aggressive immune deficiency disorder and virus. "When my partner passed away, I thought, 'I'm not going to ever perform again,'" Abbott says. "I was going through a really nihilistic stage of my life … One day I woke up and I was like, 'Oh, nothing matters.'" Perhaps unexpectedly, it was a feeling that propelled her forwards. "Some people might think that [thinking nothing matters] is a sad realisation but it's actually very freeing." In the past, Abbott had been overwhelmed by feelings of self-doubt. So, when Virginia Gay suggested Abbott make a cabaret show while she was deep in her "nihilistic phase", she thought, "Why not?" "Because, in 100 years, no one's gonna remember if it was good or if it was bad," she says. Abbott decided to play a collection of country songs on acoustic guitar about life and death. "I have things to say now," she says. "[Writing this cabaret] I've been able to get a lot of my thoughts out there in a creative way. And I've been able to get back to my creative roots, and I've picked up my guitar again, and I'm singing songs that make me happy." Bad Hand soon expanded from a "country cabaret" to something featuring all the styles of music she enjoys, from musical theatre and country to pop and Australian rock. Think Rodgers and Hammerstein, but also Hunters & Collectors, with a little bit of Kasey Chambers and Tina Arena mixed in. And a song from the soundtrack to Twisters. "The songs that are in my cabaret have been chosen for a particular reason: because they now have a very tremendous impact on me. And they have had an impact on me through this horrific year, and have helped me grieve," she says. "You try to find meaning behind loss, because if it doesn't mean anything, then, what's it for?"
Sydney Morning Herald
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
How ‘Gen Z's Mozart' almost dismissed Herbie Hancock's email as a joke
Understandably, Jacob Collier suspected one of his mates was pulling a prank. In 2013, when Collier was just 19, he uploaded a video to YouTube: a cover of Stevie Wonder's Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, which he recorded at his family's home in London. Within a couple of days, it notched up more than 100,000 views, so he made it available for purchase online. Soon after, Collier – who will embark on his first arena tour of Australia in December – received an email informing him that Herbie Hancock had bought five of his recordings. Then came a message purporting to be from the jazz legend himself: 'Wow, Jacob! Your stuff is amazing. Please keep expanding in your life, as well as your music. I believe that craft may be about melody, rhythm, harmony, the notes etc but music is about life. -Herbie Hancock.' 'My first instinct was, 'Which one of my homies is trying to pull the wool over my eyes?'' says Collier, gazing at the Melbourne skyline from a top-floor suite, complete with a grand piano, in the Park Hyatt hotel. 'I just thought, 'This is insane!' But it really was Herbie.' This was followed by another pinch-me moment when his video came to the attention of Quincy Jones, one of the world's most acclaimed music producers. 'Quincy just lost his mind,' recalled Adam Fell, the president of Jones' production company. 'He said, 'I don't care what you're doing right now, I don't care how busy you are – find this kid'.' Jones was so taken with Collier's version of Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing that he would play it, alongside Wonder's original recording, to whomever he was meeting. 'It didn't matter if it was Paul McCartney or Queen Rania,' Fell told the BBC. 'Quincy would show them that video and say, 'I've never seen anything like this! Have you?'' Loading Famously, when Jones tried to sign Collier, the young singer and his mother suggested they and Jones first get to know each other as friends. 'As a child, I created so much music in the solitary cocoon of my family's music room,' explains Collier, who is dressed in a typically flamboyant ensemble of yellow Crocs, red pants and multicoloured parachute jacket. 'I didn't have a team at the time; it was just me and my mum, and I wasn't sure what it would feel like to work with other people. The fact that Quincy and I built our working relationship on a foundation of friendship and human connection was so valuable.' When we meet, Collier, 30, is fresh from performing as a headline act in the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. He looks as though he's in his early 20s, yet he has the vocabulary and impeccable manners of a middle-aged English gentleman. Over the past dozen years, his work has racked up hundreds of millions of streams across TikTok, YouTube and Spotify. He's collaborated with everyone from Joni Mitchell and Coldplay to Alicia Keys, David Crosby and the rapper Stormzy. And he has already won seven Grammy Awards, making him the only British artist to claim at least one Grammy for each of his first five studio albums. It's little wonder he's been labelled a 'genius', a 'jazz messiah' and the 'Mozart of Gen Z' by critics. 'Whatever he does blows my mind.' 'He's so in demand,' said Coldplay's Chris Martin, who is now a friend of the Collier family. 'We all recognised, 'Oh, this guy can make us sound better'.' Jones, who died last year, declared that 'whatever he does blows my mind'. Film composer Hans Zimmer raved that much of Collier's work 'is on the edge of the impossible', while Hancock went as far as to rank Collier's harmonic talents above his own. 'I thought I was good with harmonies,' he said, 'but he was all over my stuff – and past that.' But what is it that makes Collier's music so special? As Jones once explained, Western music has used the same 12 notes of the chromatic scale for several hundred years. But Collier likes to operate in the spaces in between, with an array of 'micro-notes' and 'quarter tones' that, incredibly, he can distinguish by ear. He also plays dozens of instruments. His cover of Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, made entirely by himself, is a good example. On that track alone, he plays the guitar, mandolin, double bass, keyboard, piano, djembe drums, box drums, cowbell, egg shakers and a tambourine; he also recorded several different vocal elements – some of which sound peculiar in isolation – before stitching them together to form a beautifully layered whole. (His videos frequently use a split screen format to showcase each aspect.) 'I'd stay up until the early hours of the morning after spending a whole day at school,' Collier says. 'I was doing things harmonically and rhythmically that I'd never heard before. It was such an exciting time; I felt like I was building my own little cathedral out of matchsticks.' When Collier was a toddler, his mother, Suzie – an acclaimed violinist, conductor and professor – noticed how he'd tune in to the hum of the vacuum cleaner. Heeding the advice of her late father, Derek (a violinist himself, and a former leader of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra), she sang to her son from birth and encouraged him to explore the sounds around him. 'A car alarm would go off and she'd say, 'Oh, look at this! That's an E major chord',' he says. 'When you're a child, your imagination is as important as the real world, if not more so, and she was able to show me this world of sound that really lit me up.' When Collier brings his Djesse World Tour to Australia in December ('Djesse' being a play on his initials, JC), he'll be supported by local musician Nai Palm. As in many of his previous performances, he will play choirmaster, inviting every member of the audience to get involved. 'It's a multi-genre show,' he explains. 'It has some structured elements but also some chaotic elements. There'll be some acoustic moments and some very dance, jazz, folk, electronic and rock 'n' roll moments. I love being in an operation that's very defined and rhythmic, but I also love that feeling of not knowing what's going to happen next.' TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO JACOB COLLIER Worst habit? Going to bed at 7am and waking up at 2pm. My sleep schedule is completely upside down. Greatest fear? My own apathy. I worry about numbing out to the world in a time of so much change. The line that stayed with you? Quincy Jones used to say, 'Don't try to be cool – be warm.' Biggest regret? The sacrifices made by the people I love most, to allow me to do what I do. I'm very, very grateful to them. Favourite book? Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The artwork/song you wish was yours? September by Earth, Wind & Fire. Can you imagine having written that song? We blast it after every show so that everyone leaves on a high. If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? To an Earth, Wind & Fire concert in the 1970s. During his first tour of Australia in 2018, Collier used a video looping system and specially made harmoniser to perform a one-man concert. 'I was using all sorts of gizmos back then, but I've since traded a lot of those gadgets for people, which has been of great benefit to me,' he says. 'When I was a solo performer, I fell in love with the idea that, in the absence of bandmates, the audience becomes the band – and that's still an important part of the show because I love that communal feeling.' He doesn't hesitate when asked to name his biggest musical hero. 'My mum is number one, obviously,' he says. 'Of all the things I've done as a musician – starting with those multiscreen videos, then making albums and travelling all over the world – she's always lent her expertise and wisdom in a really lovely way. She even conducted the orchestra on my last album, Djesse Vol. 4. It was an amazing, full-circle moment to take the DNA of what I learned as a child and fold it into what I'm doing now.'
The Age
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
How ‘Gen Z's Mozart' almost dismissed Herbie Hancock's email as a joke
Understandably, Jacob Collier suspected one of his mates was pulling a prank. In 2013, when Collier was just 19, he uploaded a video to YouTube: a cover of Stevie Wonder's Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, which he recorded at his family's home in London. Within a couple of days, it notched up more than 100,000 views, so he made it available for purchase online. Soon after, Collier – who will embark on his first arena tour of Australia in December – received an email informing him that Herbie Hancock had bought five of his recordings. Then came a message purporting to be from the jazz legend himself: 'Wow, Jacob! Your stuff is amazing. Please keep expanding in your life, as well as your music. I believe that craft may be about melody, rhythm, harmony, the notes etc but music is about life. -Herbie Hancock.' 'My first instinct was, 'Which one of my homies is trying to pull the wool over my eyes?'' says Collier, gazing at the Melbourne skyline from a top-floor suite, complete with a grand piano, in the Park Hyatt hotel. 'I just thought, 'This is insane!' But it really was Herbie.' This was followed by another pinch-me moment when his video came to the attention of Quincy Jones, one of the world's most acclaimed music producers. 'Quincy just lost his mind,' recalled Adam Fell, the president of Jones' production company. 'He said, 'I don't care what you're doing right now, I don't care how busy you are – find this kid'.' Jones was so taken with Collier's version of Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing that he would play it, alongside Wonder's original recording, to whomever he was meeting. 'It didn't matter if it was Paul McCartney or Queen Rania,' Fell told the BBC. 'Quincy would show them that video and say, 'I've never seen anything like this! Have you?'' Loading Famously, when Jones tried to sign Collier, the young singer and his mother suggested they and Jones first get to know each other as friends. 'As a child, I created so much music in the solitary cocoon of my family's music room,' explains Collier, who is dressed in a typically flamboyant ensemble of yellow Crocs, red pants and multicoloured parachute jacket. 'I didn't have a team at the time; it was just me and my mum, and I wasn't sure what it would feel like to work with other people. The fact that Quincy and I built our working relationship on a foundation of friendship and human connection was so valuable.' When we meet, Collier, 30, is fresh from performing as a headline act in the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. He looks as though he's in his early 20s, yet he has the vocabulary and impeccable manners of a middle-aged English gentleman. Over the past dozen years, his work has racked up hundreds of millions of streams across TikTok, YouTube and Spotify. He's collaborated with everyone from Joni Mitchell and Coldplay to Alicia Keys, David Crosby and the rapper Stormzy. And he has already won seven Grammy Awards, making him the only British artist to claim at least one Grammy for each of his first five studio albums. It's little wonder he's been labelled a 'genius', a 'jazz messiah' and the 'Mozart of Gen Z' by critics. 'Whatever he does blows my mind.' 'He's so in demand,' said Coldplay's Chris Martin, who is now a friend of the Collier family. 'We all recognised, 'Oh, this guy can make us sound better'.' Jones, who died last year, declared that 'whatever he does blows my mind'. Film composer Hans Zimmer raved that much of Collier's work 'is on the edge of the impossible', while Hancock went as far as to rank Collier's harmonic talents above his own. 'I thought I was good with harmonies,' he said, 'but he was all over my stuff – and past that.' But what is it that makes Collier's music so special? As Jones once explained, Western music has used the same 12 notes of the chromatic scale for several hundred years. But Collier likes to operate in the spaces in between, with an array of 'micro-notes' and 'quarter tones' that, incredibly, he can distinguish by ear. He also plays dozens of instruments. His cover of Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, made entirely by himself, is a good example. On that track alone, he plays the guitar, mandolin, double bass, keyboard, piano, djembe drums, box drums, cowbell, egg shakers and a tambourine; he also recorded several different vocal elements – some of which sound peculiar in isolation – before stitching them together to form a beautifully layered whole. (His videos frequently use a split screen format to showcase each aspect.) 'I'd stay up until the early hours of the morning after spending a whole day at school,' Collier says. 'I was doing things harmonically and rhythmically that I'd never heard before. It was such an exciting time; I felt like I was building my own little cathedral out of matchsticks.' When Collier was a toddler, his mother, Suzie – an acclaimed violinist, conductor and professor – noticed how he'd tune in to the hum of the vacuum cleaner. Heeding the advice of her late father, Derek (a violinist himself, and a former leader of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra), she sang to her son from birth and encouraged him to explore the sounds around him. 'A car alarm would go off and she'd say, 'Oh, look at this! That's an E major chord',' he says. 'When you're a child, your imagination is as important as the real world, if not more so, and she was able to show me this world of sound that really lit me up.' When Collier brings his Djesse World Tour to Australia in December ('Djesse' being a play on his initials, JC), he'll be supported by local musician Nai Palm. As in many of his previous performances, he will play choirmaster, inviting every member of the audience to get involved. 'It's a multi-genre show,' he explains. 'It has some structured elements but also some chaotic elements. There'll be some acoustic moments and some very dance, jazz, folk, electronic and rock 'n' roll moments. I love being in an operation that's very defined and rhythmic, but I also love that feeling of not knowing what's going to happen next.' TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO JACOB COLLIER Worst habit? Going to bed at 7am and waking up at 2pm. My sleep schedule is completely upside down. Greatest fear? My own apathy. I worry about numbing out to the world in a time of so much change. The line that stayed with you? Quincy Jones used to say, 'Don't try to be cool – be warm.' Biggest regret? The sacrifices made by the people I love most, to allow me to do what I do. I'm very, very grateful to them. Favourite book? Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The artwork/song you wish was yours? September by Earth, Wind & Fire. Can you imagine having written that song? We blast it after every show so that everyone leaves on a high. If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? To an Earth, Wind & Fire concert in the 1970s. During his first tour of Australia in 2018, Collier used a video looping system and specially made harmoniser to perform a one-man concert. 'I was using all sorts of gizmos back then, but I've since traded a lot of those gadgets for people, which has been of great benefit to me,' he says. 'When I was a solo performer, I fell in love with the idea that, in the absence of bandmates, the audience becomes the band – and that's still an important part of the show because I love that communal feeling.' He doesn't hesitate when asked to name his biggest musical hero. 'My mum is number one, obviously,' he says. 'Of all the things I've done as a musician – starting with those multiscreen videos, then making albums and travelling all over the world – she's always lent her expertise and wisdom in a really lovely way. She even conducted the orchestra on my last album, Djesse Vol. 4. It was an amazing, full-circle moment to take the DNA of what I learned as a child and fold it into what I'm doing now.'
ABC News
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Win tickets to An Evening with Vika & Linda
They've toured the globe, released multiple chart-topping albums, and have performed with the likes of Paul Kelly, Kasey Chambers, and John Farnham. Vika & Linda will return to Adelaide Cabaret Festival for an intimate concert that showcases their lives, their love, and extraordinary beauty of their voices blended together. As an exclusive offer for ABC Adelaide eNews subscribers, we have a double pass up for grabs to see An Evening with Vika & Linda live on stage. Win a double pass to see An Evening with Vika & Linda Saturday 14 June, 3pm Saturday 14 June, 3pm Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre Winners will be drawn and notified on Friday 13 June. How to win: Email your name, phone number and suburb to ABC-Adelaide@ answering the following question: Which is your favourite ABC Radio Adelaide show? Terms & conditions
ABC News
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Ticket Update: Sonya & Jules Live In Cabaret
After the first release booked out in record time, additional seats for Sonya & Jules Live in Cabaret will open for bookings from 12noon today Wednesday 28 May. There are only a handful left, so it's likely these will go very quickly! To book, go to the 'Sonya & Jules Live in Cabaret' booking page on the Adelaide Cabaret Festival website.
