John Shand Posts

September 24, 2017 / Features - Archive

Richard Petkovic didn’t set out to form a band, he set out to realise a vision. The term “broad church” is tossed around in politics, but Petkovic’s Sydney World Music Chamber Orchestra is the real thing, with Sufism, Buddhism, Christianity and more represented among Australians of some 10 ethnicities. The…

September 23, 2017 / Concert Reviews - Archive

Factory Theatre, August 31 9/10 One moment it was the popping, swooping song of some virtuosic bird, and then two such birds in perfect dialogue. It could ache with 10,000 years of human suffering, and explode with as many millennia of laughter and joy. David Krakauer is to clarinettists what…

September 17, 2017 / Features - Archive

What is the Monday Club, a group of improvisers with a penchant for using long, slow notes as musical building blocks, doing in the Sydney Sacred Music Festival? The answer lies both in the broader meaning of “sacred” and in the story of the group’s founder, Tony Gorman. A brilliant…