Postcards

This year’s Brisbane Music Festival (BMF) is a journey in three parts – its season extending from 23 to 25 August, 25 to 27 October, and finally 13 to 15 December, packing in more than 10 world premiere pieces and a similar number of Australian premieres, featuring Brisbane-based and international artists, some making their Queensland debuts. The first musical tranche opened on 10 August with a sold-out audience for a world premiere of Postcards by composer Connor D’Netto, featuring mezzo-soprano, Lotte Betts-Dean, guitar by Libby Myers, and piano by Alex Raineri (who is also the festival’s Artistic Director).

The composer was on hand to entreat us to the theme infusing all the Postcards’ pieces – images of ‘home’ and what that means to different people. Influenced by the necessity of the jobbing musician’s time away from Brisbane, living in London and tours of Europe, the pieces are musical missives, evoking the tension of travel, and the longing for belonging.

‘Seen from Above’ (2020) – a world premiere – featured piano and electric guitar. Alex was busy on keys playing parts in tandem, overlapped by the guitar’s plucky reverb. The discordant time signatures created a tension in a tug-of-war vision of a drone-like flight in fast motion through suburban skies. ‘Glenro’ (2019) – a more introspective piano solo – was based on a feeling of homesickness for Brisbane. The addition of familiar sound effects of backyard birdsong and windchimes worked to evoke Sunday afternoon mixed emotions of longing possibilities and haunted letdown. Next, ‘Memories of Different Homes’ (2021) – a guitar solo written specifically for Libby – created a collage of intersecting memories from both the composer and the guitarist having lived in London and Europe at different times. The new world premiere piece tying the programme together was ‘Postcards’ (2024) – with Alex and Libby joined by Lotte Betts-Dean’s wonderful voice adding melodious singing parts with words commissioned by the festival by five different authors adding humour and warmth: ‘Earth Mother – My Spirit’ by Aunty Delmae Barton (the troupe had previewed their piece with Delmae’s son, musician William Barton, on Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island); ‘A non-exhaustive list of places to cry in London’ by Megan Steller; ‘Girt by gossiping streets’ by Mathew Klotz; ‘My body as home (a history)’ by Han Reardon-Smith; and ‘A collection of places’ by Kezia Yap, which ended with the words delicately disappearing into the ether. In the festival’s intimate FourthWall Arts venue, it was a delight to be able to hear Lotte’s ethereal tones at such close range.

Letters or postcards home can be bittersweet, especially when they are of the cris de coeur kind. And so a fitting bonus track was supplied by Libby, with her arrangement of John Jacob Niles’s early 20th century folk tune, Go Away from My Window. This was the perfect way to extend the programme’s themes and provide a closing denouement, Lotte’s voice perfectly expressing the song’s simultaneous yearning for love and independence. This gem piece was written by Niles when he was just a teenager. It reminds me of how young the BMF composers and performers are, and of the importance of the safe space that the festival provides for experimentation and collaboration. I’m looking forward to what’s coming up next!

Beth Keehn

Discover the BMF 2024 programme: brismusicfestival.com

Images (from top): Postcards, Photographer: Reuben Fenemore; Lotte Betts-Dean, Photographer: Benjamin Ealovega; Connor D’Netto, Photographer: Ray Roberts & Libby Myers, Photographer: Vivid Visual.