Riverside Theatres presents
GOTHIC
by Andrée Greenwell
A multidisciplinary concert presentation of European, American and Australian gothic – from ancient to contemporary times.
Its narratives play out in an elegant contemporary song cycle presentation, framed by three large ‘floating’ gothic windows, designed by co-producer, Neil Simpson. Across these, stunning motion graphics by London-based artist Michaela French, merge Australian and European landscapes, together with historic and contemporary imagery. Andrée Greenwell firmly places the score at the centre of the performance, while the diverse artistic elements combine in this essentialist production format, to reveal ‘a poetic of the gothic’. This in contrast to hyper-real expressions of the gothic in contemporary screen culture.
Greenwell’s score is for two vocalists, string quartet, and electric guitar/electronics/sound design, across which she inventively merges folk, postminimalist, post-punk and contemporary classical styles. She collaborates on a cinematic/electro sound design with music producer and electric guitarist, David Trumpmanis who has prodced for artists including Sarah Blasko, The Church and with composer Mark Bradshaw for Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake and Bright Star. Andrée has scored Annabel Lee and The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, alongside new
songs to lyrics by Australian writers: The Birds (Hilary Bell) after Du Maurier’s short story; a Totentanz (Felicity Plunkett) inspired by the German medieval frescoes; Orpheus Song (Alison Croggon); Death at the Beach Motel (Hugo Race, founding member of The Bad Seeds with Nick Cave) about the heroin overdose of Australian painter Brett Whitely; and Maryanne Lynch has worked with Andrée on Chosen, concerning the detainment of Austrian Kirsten Fritzl by her grandfather, with her mother and siblings.
Additionally, covers of songs that express ideas of ‘gothic’ across history dynamically juxtapose Greenwell’s originals: Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, the German medieval hymn Maria durch ein’ dornwald ging, Schubert’s Erlking, the Cure’s A Forest, Rod Temperton’s Thriller, famously recorded by Michael Jackson, and Angelo Badalamenti’s theme Falling from the television series Twin Peaks. All this is linked, and at times undercut, by the sound design, including an inventive integration of the Joplin tornado Missouri, captured on iPad in 2012. A rich music theatre journey of word, image and music, takes place across the concert presentation.
Date & Time
Friday 9 November at 7:30pm