ENTERTAINMENT ATHERTON IN THE GARDEN
CONTINUED FROM P40 the instrument. It really represents the true sound of the instrument, the performance of the player and the voice. What makes acoustic music so different? What does it offer an audience? Mostly it creates an authentic and intimate vibe. It makes you connect to the intricate sounds and feelings that the instruments project. It’s simple and powerful. Tell me about recording this album Strings Attached – what did you set out to achieve? This album was inspired by the true nature of simplicity. The vision was to capture the authentic sound of the instruments and voice in the most natural way. Just as it’s been played at home or by the fire with friends. All the tracks were recorded in one take beginning to end with a few overdub solo sections. Seven with no click track (metronome), just raw and as real as it gets. The main goal to achieve was to make the listener feel like we are actually in the same space together. Like I’m playing in your living room or in the passenger seat of the car. What were the challenges? One challenge was to perform the songs and music perfectly beginning to end. Don’t tell anyone, but we had to start again a few times. The other big challenge was to be absolutely happy with all the little imperfections I heard throughout the takes. In a more produced’ studio environment you usually clean and edit a lot of it out but I chose to leave it as real and authentic as it sounds and recorded in the moment. Tell me about the live performance for the album launch – who will be playing? I’ll be singing and playing oud and guitars. In my band I’ll have Avishai Barnatan (Israel) playing the ney (Arabic flute) and Turkish clarinet, Yossi Haile (Ethiopia) on bass and Jamie Patugalan on drums. I will have some of my best friends and music colleagues Amir Paiss, Murray Kyle, and Si Mullumby as well as a few other surprises such as Yoav Machiach on percussion. What should we expect on the night? The night will contain intimate solo pieces as well as a full band sound with some of Byron’s finest musicians and guests. I will be featuring music from the new album Strings Attached, some of my old favourite songs and some new unreleased music that I’ll perform for the first time. A very dynamic concert with great balance between songs and instrumental pieces that takes the audience through deep emotions and great joy. Byron is Shai’s first concert in the 2017 Australia tour of Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Saturday at the Byron Theatre at the Community Centre from 8pm. Tickets at byroncentre.com.au.
CIRCUS OZ PRESENT MODEL CITIZENS 12 & 13 MAY FOR NORPA AT LISMORE CITY HALL
BREAD AND CIRCUS CIRCUS OZ and NORPA are donating 100 tickets to the company’s upcoming show to floodaffected families and individuals via Lismore Helping Hands community group. The internationally acclaimed company’s brandnew show Model Citizens is currently touring nationally and will be performed at NORPA at Lismore City Hall on Friday 12 and Saturday 13 May. Circus Oz is the first show NORPA has been able to present since the flood inundated the entire bottom floor of Lismore City Hall causing extensive damage to the box office, administration office, kitchen and dance studio. Lismore Helping Hands community group, with the help of other local agencies, will distribute the free tickets to flood-affected families and individuals. Like every Circus Oz show, Model Citizens is another impressive offering from Australia’s premier human circus. Stunningly lit and driven by a sensational live-music soundtrack, Model Citizens seamlessly blends the risk and beauty of breathtaking physical improbability with no shortage of theatricality, choreography and, of course, absurdity! The action unfolds within the cleverly designed model kit world that challenges perspective, scale and normality. Oversized everyday objects become an intriguing new playground of possibilities for the all-human ensemble, offering a new life as unexpected circus equipment. Imagine scaling a 6m safety pin, backflipping off a giant vertical clothes peg, getting tangled in an oversized cotton reel, or flying high in an enormous pair of aerial undies‌ Audiences will be taken on a visually and emotionally charged journey by the multitalented Circus Oz ensemble, exploring what it really means to be a model citizen in today’s model kit society.
This month’s feature for Comedy in the Garden at the Byron Bay Brewery is international comedian Jonathan Atherton. Jonathan Atherton is without a doubt one of the most gifted comedians you are likely to see. He has travelled all over the world, and speaks an astonishing seven or eight languages, but knows the greetings in about 40 more. His father was the editor-in-chief of the Courier Mail, and later he lived abroad, exposing a young and attentive Jonathan to JONATHAN ATHERTON his lifelong inspiration: culture. The guy is like a sponge for language, DELIVERS RAPID-PACED but he’s no mimic; he understands COMEDY AT BYRON BAY language because he understands BREWERY COMEDY IN THE people in a very real way. Jonathan GARDEN ON FRIDAY can talk. A lot. It’s like being under a philosophical avalanche that just keeps coming and coming. It’s more than three weeks since Cyclone Everything is involved. He talks about the Debbie struck the northern rivers and universe, politics, sex, men, women, and even although local support for the flood-affected the nature of the human heart. For Atherton, has been selfless and generous, for many the stage is the therapist’s couch, and in an there is still a long way to go in the process hour of dialogue he unravels. It’s mystifying to of recovery and rebuilding, so this Thursday, behold. He’s an impressive improviser. And he Art Piece Gallery is holding a Flood Relief likes to keep it ‘real’. ‘When I am onstage, I bare my soul. We all have that side,’ he says. ‘I think it benefit which you are all invited to attend. makes people really comfortable, that they have The Gallery will offer works by most of a dark side or an angry line. There’s a fine line the gallery’s artists at a 20–30 per cent between rape and seduction; I like that fine line. discount with all gallery commission going Sometimes it goes all terribly wrong. We tend to to flood-affected people in Lismore and live in a tent of denial about our dark side, and Murwillumbah. Contributing artists, by the I think that part of the job of the comedian is way, are not expected to forfeit their share to shed light.’ Jonathan Atherton appears at the of sales. They are setting a donation target Byron Bay Brewery for Comedy in the Garden of $5,000 over three days. Donations will go on Friday. He appears with Paul McMahon to Northern Rivers Artist Flood Relief, Tweed as MC and the hysterical guru for the lost and Flood Relief, and Mullumbimby District and listless, Sergio Ben Bulls*** as support. 8pm. Free! To reserve a table call 6639 6100. Neighbourhood Centre.
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Friday 12 May, 7.30pm. Saturday 13 May, 1pm & 7.30pm. NORPA at Lismore City Hall. $25–55. Bookings: norpa.org.au or 1300 066 772
RIVER SONG Dangerously Poetic Press presents a free cultural afternoon of poetry and music on Sunday, 2–3.30pm, at the Tweed Regional Gallery, 2 Mistral Rd (cnr Tweed Valley Way), Murwillumbah. It will feature local poets reading from their latest anthology, Always the River, Poetry about Change from Byron Bay and Beyond, accompanied by the lush harmonies of The Songbirds, a seven-part women’s choir from Byron Shire. Come early to peruse the gallery and enjoy the cafe.
North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
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The Byron Shire Echo May 3, 2017 41