Sounds Alive!
CeLL: On the NFSA Lawns
An interactive mechanised music factory in a 6 metre shipping container
Friday 9 - Sunday 18 May
Street Party
Installation & MIDI-instruments by Nick Wishart and Miles van Dorssen.
CeLL was a MIDI-controlled pneumatic
orchestra created by
Sydney-based machine
artist Miles van Dorssen
and composer Nick
Wishart. More an industrial
strength ‘music-box’, it
makes full use of the
voluminous acoustic boom of a 6m shipping container.
Inspired by mobile street
orchestras, CeLL operates
as a self-generating
symphony, with its own
pulsing personality,
oscillating between
mechanized factory and
shantytown one-man band
- minus the one man.
For more information go to
www.cell.org.au
CeLL’s festival-long
Canberra debut was
launched by a street-party,
with guest musicians
playing MIDI-guitars,
drumkits and horns.
The NFSA lawns were given
over to family picnics,
dancing and CeLLular
grooving of an entirely
(un)serious nature.
Felix: The Cabaret
Felix the Cat in naughty cabaret mode
With new music by Elena Kats-Chernin, keyboards, Clarity clarinet quartet, David Pereira, feline cello, and mystery guests.
10:30pm, Friday 9 May, Arc
$25, $15 conc. Not recommended for children under 16.
Could that cat possibly
be Australia’s ‘Felix’?
Only partly, but we’d like
to claim him as our own.
Pat Sullivan (1887-1933)
was an Australian artist
and entrepreneur who
settled in New York in
1915. There he created
the cartoon character
which rapidly evolved
into an international star and household name. In
the 1920s, at the height of
his fame, Felix appeared
in over 100 films. After
Pat’s death in 1933, Felix’s
supremacy was subsumed by that Disney mouse, Mickey. In the 1950s, Felix was revived by Sullivan’s
assistant Otto Messmer.
Now Felix as rounder,
friendlier, less edgy and
arguably less interesting.
Our late night cabaret
put the fizz back into
Felix as Elena traversed
a litter of feline ditties,
from the notorious Cat’s
Duet by Rossini to a new
song by Martin Wesley-
Smith. Leading cellist
David Pereira and up-and coming
soprano sensation
Rebecca Collins dueled for the attention of our
composer-turned-cabaretivory-tickler.
And, from WEDNESDAY 14 FRIDAY 16 MAY, the NFSA
screened G-rated Felix
sessions for school groups,
arranged by the Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF).
Past events
