Artistic Director Vanessa Tomlinson and executive producers Bruce and Jocelyn Wolfe’s reverence for nature was well and truly reflected in the thoughtful design and content of this year’s Easter at the Piano Mill program Made of Wood.
In support of the timber theme, the players all wore shades of brown and gold and it goes without saying the instruments involved were made from maple, spruce, rosewood and mahogany.
The event could be described as a musical trail in Willson’s Downfall – an elevated remote area near the New South Wales and Queensland border. A mapped pathway led to an afternoon of staged and pop-up outdoor performances.
On display in Lime Burnings was Renata Buziak and Glen Barry’s artwork inspired by the surround of forested escarpment. Later, Barry also played didgeridoo and led a heartfelt Welcome to Country.
To draw attention to this studio at the 450-acre property’s entrance, Tomlinson and fellow percussionist Nozomi Omote stood on the roof serenading visitors on tuned percussion made from milled pieces of Eucalyptus Obliqua otherwise known as messmate.
The next item Le Parfum de Eucalyptus (d’apres Paul Wenz) written for The Mill by composers Colin Noble and Alistair Noble channelled Australia’s colonial past and emerging industrial purpose. Alistair Noble explained the origins of the title. Apparently, Wenz, a French-Australian writer based in NSW farmland, wrote to his friend Andre Gide, ‘I keep wondering if my French doesn’t smell terribly of eucalyptus.’
The work’s interplay of tonal contrasts evoking the grinding, pounding and clack of levers created through live piano, harmonium and pre-recorded mechanical sources was vivid and cleverly set the tone for the afternoon’s listening experience. The strike of the bell from the ‘grader blade carillon’ invested the Mill with cathedral-like authority.
Harrigan Lane Collective’s unusual outdoor experience doesn’t just open the ears to natural sound but also stimulates the eyes. Tramping through the bush to the dam, another al fresco concert setting, and suddenly coming across guitarist Libby Myers sitting on a granite boulder, an iconic fixture of the region, or the surprise of seeing the free-spirited dancer, Jan Baker-Finch, a movement artist, in a skeletal skirt of wood, her moves embellishing Vanessa Tomlinson’s artful percussion jolts the senses. Further down the track, Nozomi Omote’s easefully directed marimba was a surprise.
Warblers and eastern whip birds’ cries contributed plenty of song in Tomlinson and Griswold’s lovingly curated happenings. Sometimes the roving audience was confused by what was real or not because recorded bird, insect calls or rainfall were so often a dimension in a composition.
One of the charms of this sonic showcase, now commemorating its tenth anniversary, is how bush sounds integrate with the performances and to an increasingly sensitised audience the entire property becomes a listening spree.
This was especially true of the antiphonal Dreamscape situated around the dam. This featured Robert Davidson (doublebass), Shenzo Grigorio (violin), Erik Griswold (keyboard), and in a boat drifting across the water Helen Svoboda sang a selection of high-pitched miniature songs based on a fairy’s bizarre dreams.
Her voice glided above the watery skin counterpointed by the riff of a frog. In this outdoor theatre Genevieve Fry’s recorder collided beautifully with the visual and aural stimulation of the haptic and deliberate.
Reaching an open grassy sloped area dotted by tea-plate sized mushrooms the audience was only too aware of the natural setting. When the crowd turned away from the fun and improvising informality of the Party Band and sat on sawn off logs to listen to ABC Broadcaster Stephen Adams interview jazz pianist Louise Denson on Imaginary Radio, the damp grass was alive with leeches.
In Lagavulin, Alex Raineri performed two pieces on the 1912 Steinway. The first was Connor d’Netto’s subdued Glenro for piano and tape. Undulate by Natalie Nicholas was spurred by an opinionated bass line and stirring minimalism communicated through Raineri’s typical extroversion and flair. Peta-Leigh Wilson’s entertaining improvisation on a Nirvana song was fluid, blessed by deluxe harmony and propelled by a bold creative whimsy.
The finale of this entertaining and extraordinary afternoon turned again to the venue’s centrepiece The Mill and the crowd gathered around this construction fashioned from wood found on the property.
While some rescue dogs and horses, the Wolfes have rehomed beaten up pianos with tinny voices and warped frames and placed them on two floors inside The Mill. These keyboard oldies with mixed impairments must be challenging to write for.
Mill Life by Denson, which premiered here in 2018, was given another airing. Its appeal lay in its bruising rhythm, a mechanical pound and grind in cinematic mimicry of the working mills’ factory floors.
All’s grist that comes to the mill revealed how Griswold writes for this building -as if it is an instrument- to magical effect. The Nancarrow with its sound mass of multiple keys and speeds played simultaneously was mesmerising.
In The Hive the concentrated hum, a buzzed continuum hails from a team of pianists articulating a gradually changing arpeggiated motive. The effect is eerie and the vibrational shimmer and glow directed at the Mill made the façade seem to breathe like a living being in the fading light.
Treating the Mill like a music-maker with its own voice was also admirably realised through Frankie Dyson-Reilly’s sonic representation of ‘firefly synchrony’ a strange manifestation when the blinking light of individual fly’s merge into a bioluminescent mass.
Easter at the Piano Mill: Made of Wood
Harrigan’s Lane Collective, 323 Harrigans Lane, Willson’s Downfall
Date: Sunday 20 April 2025
Information: www.harriganslanecollective.com.au
Images: Jan Baker-Finch and Helen Svoboda (supplied) | The Mill @ Harrigan’s Lane Collective (supplied)
Words: Gillian Wills
Gillian Wills is a graduate and honorary associate of The Royal Academy of Music for distinguished services to the music profession. She is an author and arts journalist who writes for Australian Arts Review, Limelight and InReview. Her debut novel Big Music, Hawkeye Publishing, was released 1 October 2024, featured as a notable book in The Australian Weekend Review.