On the opening night of the 2013 Brisbane Festival, a Queensland premiere brings the audience in the QPAC Concert Hall to its feet. Created by the iconic Paul Kelly, Conversations with Ghosts is a song cycle which weaves powerful poetry into an enchanting modern composition.
This reflection on time, mortality, friendship and love is based on the words of WB Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Norman MacCaig, Judith Wright, Les Murray, Kenneth Slessor and Lord Alfred Tennyson. But as Kelly brings these famous words to life through a combination of song and spoken word, every piece becomes an Australian story.
Ten musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) accompany the poems on instruments ranging from harp to clarinet. At times melodic and haunting, at other dissonant and eerie, these pieces were co-composed with Kelly by ANAM’s 2011 resident composer, James Ledger, who also conducts. Talented guest musician Genevieve Lacey is the final piece of the puzzle. Her work on an array of recorders adds extra textures to the evocative soundscape.
Simple yet often dramatic lighting design creates an ethereal atmosphere to complement the music.
The cycle moves through various moods while maintaining a coherent theme and feel. Starting with the slow burn of The Lake at Innisfree by Yeats, the journey takes us through stories of loss and ghosts of the past.
Kenneth Slessor’s Five Bells was the first poem Kelly put to music, and is the perfect mid-point of the cycle. The musicians create a complex soundscape, at once evoking the bustle of Sydney harbor and the turbulence of loss. Striking a bell at its crescendo, the performers draw the audience into the poem’s emotional depths.
These works are interspersed with complementary pieces using Kelly’s own lyrics, blending beautifully into a mesmerising whole. Of these songs the standout piece is the encore, I’m Not Afraid of the Dark Anymore – Innisfree Reprise. With the other musicians forming a chorus behind Kelly’s swelling vocals, this is an uplifting way to finish a moving and at times melancholy song cycle.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
Conversations with Ghosts
Composed by Paul Kelly and James Ledger
Performed by Australian National Academy of Music, featuring Paul Kelly, James Ledger and Genevieve Lacey
Concert Hall, QPAC
7 September
Brisbane Festival 2013
7 – 28 September
