Special Australia

Palermo is a universal city, it must be lived with all its customs and traditions.
Its time passes slowly and in everyday life the Palermo people celebrate ancient rites, unaware of having inherited the genes of many civilizations.

While walking through its streets I thought of the history of Palermo, of its immense cultural, artistic and architectural heritage inherited from the numerous civilizations that have followed one another.
Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, French, Spaniards and finally the Bourbons.
Palermo, lady and mistress of the Mediterranean, towards which other peoples have looked, trying to imitate her. The great strength of Palermo is in the varied richness of its history and customs.
Palermo has lived for thousands of years in its Conca D'oro, protected by the limestone mountains and its wonderful gulf with crystal clear waters.

As a child I visited the cathedral with my parents and I was struck by the tombs of the sovereigns who during their reign helped make this beautiful land great. Step by step, as I walked along the central nave, I felt faith, history, art and all the culture of a great and royal city, that is Palermo, around me.

The red porphyry sarcophagus where the remains of Frederick II rests was my favourite.

A few metres away is Piazza Villena, better known as the Quattro Canti, then via Maqueda with the Cassaro on my right. Up to Piazza Verdi.
I remember the first time in Piazza Verdi when I was greeted by the imposing and elegant Teatro Massimo, temple of fine music. My father took me on a visit with him for the first time and asked me to look up to read the sentence engraved on the architrave of the porch:

“Art renews peoples and reveals their life. The delight is when the aim is not to prepare for the future”.

The beautiful memory of when I went to attend my first opera at the Massimo was also inevitable. The work was Giacomo Puccini's Turandot and I was twelve years old.
Today the renovated theatre and the elegant refurbished buildings, with a floral decoration of very fragrant plants, make Palermo even more beautiful and welcoming.
Endless city!

It was a day or so before Christmas when hell visited upon our home and the forests around Hill Top. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ and it was mother earth who had been scorned and who was scorched by the fires of hell.

All around the skies were black and red, no sun shone through the dense smoke that served as our canopy. Flames leapt and soared way above the tallest trees when we were forced to abandon our forest home a rush to seek safety several kilometres away in the local fire station. 

Even here our lives were in great peril as so little water remained to protect the 20 or so locals who sought safety from Lucifer here, praying to be saved from being boiled or baked alive. 

We were more than a little fortunate and a few days later we were allowed to view the remains of our forest – a forest now without leaves, a blackened armada of spears standing in mute death. Where once there had been a verdant forest, a canopy of gum leaves and a floor of brush, now the sun shone on a blackened earth and not a bird could be seen or heard.

Our home was miraculously saved by teams of firefighters who had stood as an army facing the flames with just their arms of hoses.

But just twenty metres or so away the garage and shed had been ripped apart, the steel and corrugated iron structures twisted and torn by the rampant fists of flames that respected nought but their own inferno. 

Nothing flammable remained. Nothing withstood this wildfire.

Yet our prayers to quench the flames were eventually answered when after more than a month of the fury of fire the heavens opened and for days the rains fell, washing the cinders, smoke and dust away. 

And now it is two months since those days of destruction. What do we see? A miracle has occurred. Emerging from tall blackened trunks and small brush are a myriad of fresh green shoots.

Life has returned where it seemed that nothing could ever live again. 

From the ground new shoots appear everywhere as seeds that were burst by the flames are nurtured in the sandy soil that welcomed the life force from the rains.

We wait now to hear the calls of the native birds and the rustle of animals re-populating this living cemetery.

Yes, life springs eternal from the inferno in the natural eucalypt forests of Australia. 

There are now hundreds, if not more, gelato bars around the world creating a plethora of colours, textures and taste sensations – of single scoop, double and triple, served in cones or paper cups and accompanied at your choice by fruit juices, milkshakes or unique creations of baristas.

In every town, there seems to now be at least one expert copyist and streams of gelato aficionados flow through the doors of these bars.

The bars all claim a unique feature that leads the passionate gelato fanatic to sample their wares.

One feature that is a potentially quantitative assessor of the quality of the gelato and its service is the world championship held in Italy. Undoubtedly, Italy is not just the home of Gelato but the prince of its creation, so tourists throng to the famous bars and pay their success fees for the newest gelato sensations.

But for the ultimate sensation, the gelato searcher seeks the world champion, and tonight we found one, the winner of the 2014 championships in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast of Italy. The winner from the multitude of Italian and international competitors was a gelato bar with the curious name of ‘Cow and the Moon’.

Yes, we found the Cow and the Moon typically on a corner of a main road and side street in a cosmopolitan area. Yes, there were continuous streams of locals and tourists paying their fees for the pleasure of sampling the winning gelatos.

So, what was unusual about this experience. The Cow and the Moon is located on the corner of Enmore Road in Enmore, and inner suburb of Sydney – AUSTRALIA!!!  I just thought you would like to know.

The gelato was wonderful. Passionfruit sorbet blended alongside Cherrymania won my vote against the caramel, chocolate nut varieties. But I guess, I’ll go back

For me there is no better place to be on Australia Day than at Camp Cove, a beach that faces West near the South Head of Sydney Harbour. Yet, let’s go slowly, maybe an early lunch under an umbrella in the sun and then a walk around to South Head in the mid-summer sun of a wonderful city.

Some may argue and some may see other harbours of the world through rose-coloured glasses, but when reality is checked, the Sydneysider’s joy is to have the most beautiful harbour in the world.

And everyone can share living by the harbour, on the many public parks and beaches lining the harbour or even joining the throng of sailing boats and yachts that share the breeze on the water. Many find themselves on a Manly Ferry, crossing the harbour from the Opera House at Circular Quay to Manly where there is a magnificent surf beach.

But I catch the early bus from Circular Quay to Watson’s Bay while others take the somewhat more expensive water taxi from Circular Quay. You should arrive before noon for a good seat to sample the best fish of what the world can offer. On the beach behind the Watson’s Bay hotel (great beer), is the world-famous Doyle’s Restaurant.

If, like me, you are early, you can pick a table outside and sample the view up the harbour of the Opera House, Harbour bridge and cityscape. Select fresh fish, and maybe oysters, all local and from the fish market that morning. There is no need to select an exotic fish, caught thousands of miles away, snap frozen and flown in, the local fish, grilled or fried (beer batter) has no peer. Ask the waiter to select your white wine, or have a local beer.

After your fine Australia Day repast, mellowed and smiling, it is time to explore Australian history. Follow the walkway along the beach to the north and stroll towards Camp Cove. Walk to the southern end and note that, on the grassy knoll there is a small plinth to tell you that this is where the British landed when they ‘settled’ Australia on 26 January 1788. The local Aborigines must have been bemused by the foul smelling British arriving in a few boats and claiming the territory for England. It seems that it was just the first long distance boat race as both England and France were competing to ‘steal’ the land from the Aborigines who it now seems had been living there for up to 50,000 years.

They had seen the Chinese come and go in the 11th century, then the Portuguese and Dutch some six centuries later (though those adventurers failed to come around the east coast). Yes, Australia was occupied in 1788, not Terra Nullius as was later claimed, and it took over 200 years for ‘white man’ to accept some of the ‘natural’ rights of the original inhabitants. One can only surmise that the original ‘settlement’ by the British was not of major importance to the empire by the ‘grandeur’ of the memorial plinth and the fact that most of the first settlers were convicts sent to open up space in London’s gaols.

Nature, however, is truly grand and Camp Cove is the best harbour-side beach in Sydney, normally filled with a mix of families, groups of friends and beautiful young tanned bodies clothed in not much more than a thong. The water is crystal clear and the folks are friendly. You could do worse than join them enjoying the refreshing sea looking across to the city in the distance.

From the northern end of Camp Cove, you can follow the concrete path towards South Head at the entrance to the harbour. You may notice the hundreds of spiders ugly and magnificent, webs spun throughout the trees beside the path – if you don’t hurt them, they won’t retaliate. What you will notice after a few minutes’ walk is a fine small densely populated sandy beach (known as Lady Bay or Lady Jane), Sydney’s first and most famous ‘clothing optional’ beach.

There are park benches scattered along the path to South Head where you can sit and soak up the sun, watch the yacht and sailing boat races, and just dream of paradise – you are there. Life couldn’t be better – this is living by the harbour, a Sydneysider’s joy, on Australia Day.

(This article is reproduced under licence from Energitismo Limited for the Australia Blog)

stuart pianoforti a coda

Wayne Stuart is a proud Australian who has created the most outstanding revolution in grand piano design in generations.

He is the master designer and manufacturer of the Stuart Grand Piano that adds a dimension to the capability of the traditional name brands such as Steinway and Yamaha by expanding the normal octave range. Stuart & Sons is his moniker.

Wayne Stuart is an elegant man of uncertain years, greyed and bearded, as one would expect from a native of Van Dieman’s Land: he is a Taswegian from Tasmania. Wayne transported himself to the mainland and finally, well maybe, has located his life and business on a 13.5 acre farm just east of palindromic Tumut.

It is at one of the river exits of the giant Snowy Mountains scheme of southern New South Wales, and is served by the Tumut River. Whether it is coming into town from the west or leaving town to the east, looking forward or back, it is still Tumut, and it now has a new icon.

I had the fortune to meet Wayne in the company of one of his masterpieces at a concerto at the Peter Crisp Galleries about 90 minutes north of Tumut. We spent time chatting about small farms and good soil before I asked him for his tale. He started by telling me that he is a progeny of Gough Whitlam, that giant of a man and a revitaliser of Australian politics in the few short years he was Prime Minister in the mid 70’s.

Wayne was granted funding in 1976 to spend a year in Japan, enhancing his skill in the trade of grand pianos. Subsequently he had further international experience in Europe before adding his own spirit and artisanal expertise to the design of grand pianos in Australia, commencing manufacture of the Sturt Grand Piano over 20 years ago.

Wayne Stuart produces something unique in a grand piano, as well as adding a quizzical twist. On each Stuart grand piano is the name of the manufacturer, Stuart & Sons, followed by the rest of the brand name - ‘Terra Australis’.

He laments that the great composers for the piano were restricted by Steinway et al to an 88 digit ambitus (frequency range) losing the scope for a vast new array of composition. The obvious answer to this conundrum was achieved by Stuart through extending the range to 102 keys. This was achieved through collaboration with music wire makers to produce a super strong carbon steel wire.

My aim here is to share my feelings, not to give an engineering treatise. I wish simply to encourage the lover of piano music to seek out one of the 55 Stuart grands produced thus far and marvel at the sound quality and dynamic range of the instrument.

I asked Wayne what timber he used for the sound board. I am not sure that he gave a direct answer (but the answer is spruce), as he immediately enthused about the future of pianos from materials other than wood, about composite sound boards with spherical sound creation and the role of composites in the structure.

I reminisced about my many years in developing underwater sonar devices using just these sorts of materials, while still offering some defence for the ‘Stradivarian’ solution to sound creation from a stringed instrument. It seems that acceptance for such a radical change to creation of sound from a piano may be, as Wayne Stuart says, a generation away, but if anyone is going to leap that hurdle from this life or even the next, and bring sonar technology into the musical world, Stuart and Sons are highly likely to be at the forefront.

It will be an exciting afternoon later in November when Peter Crisp Galleries hosts a performance of Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto with two grand pianos, the Stuart in one corner of the hay shed and a much smaller Yamaha edition in the opposite, and the music filling the skies. We hope it is recorded or possibly you should fly from anywhere just to be there.

Sculpture by the sea 2016

For 20 years Bondi Sculpture by the Sea has graced the coastal walk, parks and beaches of South Bondi and Tamarama, a scenic area of great natural beauty but not architectural wonder.

Standing above the Bondi Icebergs Club, looking north over the ocean pool, gives the perfect panorama of Bondi, probably the world’s most famous beach. Yet this year, at the beginning of October, the beach was deserted and the great ‘sets’ rolled in to steal the sands.

Waves up to 10 metres crashed ‘out the back’ and the white sea filled the bay. The coastal walk was closed south of Bondi as the breakers washed over the path. At Tamarama the beach had been engulfed and several sculptures no longer stood. The metal works that were mounted securely on the rocks survived the surf, while being soaked with sea spray.

Sculpture by the Sea attracts about 100 entries from leading sculptors from around the world, predominantly from Australasia, eastern Asia and Europe. The free sculpture exhibition has revitalised Sydneysider’s interest in sculpture and the environment and has been a catalyst for a surge in sculptures in public parks throughout the city and suburbs.

This year celebrated the work of Inge Kim An who passed away at 100 years just a few months earlier. Two of her works ‘Link III’ and ‘Celestial Rings I’ were displayed overlooking the turbulent sea.

The works all have an inspirational element and most cannot be fully appreciated except by visiting the exhibition, and ‘walking the walk’ from the Icebergs to Tamarama. Let me reminisce about a few works that captured my attention.

The first sculpture as I walked past the Icebergs Club was ‘Traveling Bag’ by Yumin Jing from China standing remote on the rock shelf in the spray and waves just beyond. It is a very large stainless steel open bag with flowers and grass sprouting from the open top.

A few steps further on the path the visitor is accosted by a network collage of colourful plastic rubbish collected by the Ian Swift, the artist and arranged to cover the rock face beside the walk. He named it ‘Detritus Parasitus’.

Later on, in the park, we encountered an even more grotesque approach to ‘rubbish’ – a large earthmover sits, its dumper filled with plastic rubbish and drink cans. Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy named this work ‘After Party’.

The other works that grabbed my attention were also in the park protected from the sea. There was a gaudy pink stylistic brain that on closer inspection is a divan that had to be seen to be believed.

I was enthralled by ‘The Message’, a stonehenge style arrangement of ones and zeroes (1,1,0,0,1,0,1,0,1,0), crafted in pre-rusted steel. Only the starting digit was not told to the desperate decipherers by Marcus Tatton.

Another intellectual challenge was ‘Infrastructure 5’, two ends of a ship of predominantly small redwood blocks, the ship split open and sinking beneath the grassy knoll – in the prow what appears to be a renaissance or medieval town and a modern city sits in the poop. Interpretation was a complex challenge.

Finally, near the exit from the park is another touch of the quizzical titled ‘Ooroo’ (Australian for ‘Goodbye’), by Richard Tipping comprising two large roadside warning signs, the first a ‘kangaroo’ sign with the kangaroo cut out and the word Ooroo (meaning I guess that the ‘roo’ has gone, while the second sign, a little in advance of the first, comprises the cut out kangaroo. OOROO!!!

Sculpture by the Sea is another reason to extend your visits to Sydney, the most beautiful city in the world. Come back in spring next year and maybe the surf will be up again.

Australia Faces of Mercy

The inspiration for the creation of the Faces of Mercy and its performances in Sydney and Rome was a key sentence in the homily by Pope Francis after his selection as Pope.

"The message of Jesus is mercy. For me, and I say this with humility, it is the Lord's strongest message." This year of 2016 became the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy that has just drawn to a close. At the time of the announcement by the Pope, the Australian Ambassador to the Holy See, John McCarthy, decided it was an opportunity to make an historic contribution:

I was struck by the fact that jubilee years have been occasions in the history of the Church and the Holy See where major works of art are commissioned and completed. Why not a composite of music, art and poetry?

Whether the outcome is a triptych artistic composition, a cantata or an opera, it is an outstanding integration of the three elements of the highest form of musical artistry, musical composition, poetry (or libretto) and imagery (or scenography).

These three elements bring Italy and Australia together through the lives of the contributors. John McCarthy as the then Ambassador, brought three artists into the ‘room’. George Palmer, a compatriot of John’s during their time at the bar, (George was a Supreme Court Judge), is a highly regarded composer of religious and operatic music in Australia. Kevin Brophy, Australian poet has resided in Italy and studied the teachings of St Francis.

Principessa Nike Arrighi Borghese is a celebrated artist whose life has blended childhood and education in Australia followed by a career in theatre in UK, France and Italy and then a life filled by artistic creation and care of the Borghese family palace in Artena, south of Rome. To meld the works of these artists into a wonderful performance, Michael Campbell was invited to direct and produce the performance.

The premier was held in the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney in October and the core team transported the performance to Domus Australia for the performance in the chapel of St Peter Chanel on 17 November. For those of us who witnessed both performances, there was a great juxtaposition of style arising from the chapels, each having been renovated relatively recently and of being of similar proportions and light, suited to about 150 guests.

In addition, the quality of the two choirs, that of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney and the Ensemble Labirynthus Vocum of the Vatican were mirror images of choral excellence. The orchestras sensed the mood of the composition and reflected this in their sensitive interpretation. In Rome, Kevin Brophy recited his poetry and that of Pope Francesco with clarity and feeling. The other highlight of the performance was the glorious voice of Amelia Farrugia, maybe even better in Rome.

The work follows the triptych painting by Nike Borghese that portrays the horror of desperate displaced persons and environmental destruction in the two outer panels, coming to the joy of mercy in the central panel with the light of heaven shining on St Peter’s and Pope Francis welcoming the saved.

This has been a fine contribution to the end of the Year of Mercy and we wonder whether more people will be able to experience this work performed live subsequent to the Year of Mercy. In the meantime, we have the recording made at the premier in Sydney, and out memories of the evening performance and celebrations in the Vatican, Domus Australia.