Woodford 2011-12

The weather-gods smiled on Woodford Festival patrons and organisers this year, and we had one of the most enjoyable festivals in quite a while. I was performing there with bansuri player Taro Terahara and also accompanying sitar player Saikat Bhattacharya in a couple of performances. Taro and I had 7 performances, mostly in the Folklorica stage but also including the special hilltop New Year's sunset and sunrise concerts. For those of you who don't know, Woodford Festival runs from Dec 27 to Jan 1 every year and has over 20 stages and music and entertainment of all varieties. I'll be uploading these and many more photos to my Facebook Australia 2011 album.

Tashi Lhunpo Monks

Taro and Shen with Yuriko (tanpura) in the first of our 5 concerts in Folklorica. Fantastic stage with the talented Siri on sound, making it so easy for musicians of all ethnic varieties.

One of my festival favourites: Hanggai - Mongolian rock music. Very entertaining, especially the lead singer with frontless studded leather jacket, talking enthusiastically in Mongolian between songs.

Taro was invited to join Tenzin Choegyal, Michael Askill (gongs) and Stuart Ransome (shakuhachi) for a beautiful morning meditation concert.

Fantastic Flamenco dancer with Gerard Mapstone (guitar). Some of the most musical Flamenco tapping I've seen.

Another festival favourite: Tuba Skinny - old-time New Orleans jazz

And the dream band: EarthSync Collective - ghatam, sarod/guitar, bass, samples/drones, Carnatic male vocal/morsing, Hindustani female vocal, violin, tabla. We had a lot of fun hanging out with the EarthSync folks, especially tabla player Chiranjit. I had to help Chiranjit out with an emergency tabla repair at the festival, so thanks to Australian Quarantine for helping seal our friendship.

After Taro and Saikat's solo sets on Dec 30 we joined together in a trio jugalbandi.

The crew for the New Year's Eve Sunrise Concert - Stuart Ransome (shakuhachi), Carla Thackrah (flute), James Coates (poetry), Michael Askill (gongs, samples), Jonny Ng (violin), Shen (tabla), Yuriko (tanpura), Taro (bansuri)

The last sunset of 2011

We enjoyed Die roten Punkte - intentionally bad comedy music in German industrial pop style. Unfortunately I couldn't see the whole set as I had my own set...

I accompanied both Saikat and Taro as part of the Sacred New Year programme in Folklorica stage on New Year's Eve night.

As the clock ticked over to 2012, some of the festival-goers were sitting in contemplation in Folklorica, while Trikaya performed "... in the Between - The Tibetan Book of the Dead"

The New Year's Dawn concert - Yuriko, Shen, Taro, Tenzin, Tashi Lhunpo Monks, Jonny Ng (violin)

First sunrise of 2012

Taro and I had a set immediately followed by Tenzin Choegyal, which gave us the perfect opportunity to play along together. This was New Year's Day, and our 4th show in 24 hours, but despite the brain-daze it was a beautiful set.

The Tashi Lhunpo Monks made this sand mandala during the festival.

And had a Dissolution ceremony at on the last evening.

The Farewell Ceremony in the Amphitheatre.

Tabla Tarrango and Tibet2Timbuk2 at Woodford

As you may have read in my previous post, Woodford Folk Festival was huge as usual. As well as playing with Tibet2Timbuk2 (our first time at the festival), this year I was honoured and excited to have my tabla school invited to perform. We performed under the name "Tabla Tarrango" which is also the name my first guru Debu Bhattacharya used for his tabla group performances. My two best tabla students, Tito Basu and Sanjey Sivaananthan, joined me to perform a number of compositions in jhaptaal (10 beats) and teentaal (16 beats). We were joined on harmonium by Joseph Nand and vocals by Sulagna Basu, in a style somewhat inspired by Pt Suresh Talwarkar's new style of tabla solo, incorporating vocal performance in between tabla compositions. The performance was well received and I'm hopeful it will become a yearly event for us. We'll put on an absolutely brilliant show in a few more years!

Tabla Tarrango at Woodford 2010
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Tibet2Timbuk2 at Chai Tent

Tibet2Timbuk2 at Bazaar Stage, where we had brilliant sound, thanks Bazaar sound crew!

Woodford Folk Festival 2010-11

After a gap of three years, I was back at Woodford this year, thanks to the participation of Tibet2Timbuk2 as well as my tabla group Tabla Tarrango. I'll report on my shows in the next post, and here just post a bunch of photos of other stuff I enjoyed at the festival. If you don't know, Woodford Folk Festival is the biggest festival in Australia and one of the biggest in the world, running over 6 days from Dec 27 to Jan 1 with 23 stages and a whole lot going on. This year we had a lot of rain in the leadup to the festival, so it was very muddy and gumboots were just about mandatory. Given that the alternative is intense heat, the rain wasn't so bad, and we even had a couple of fine days. On with the highlights...

On the first four nights, Dva (Linsey Pollak - reeds; Tunji Beier - South Indian percussion) were joined by 6-8 friends for improvised sessions on the Folklorica stage, which has one of the best sound systems and engineers in the festival. This photo is from the first session which had a Middle Eastern flavour, though for me the best jam session was on the last night, featuring Dya Singh, Dheeraj Shrestha and Tenzin Choegyal.

Butoh dance performance by Yumiko Nii, entitled "Pillow". She did lots with that pillow.

Some street scenes

The Hare Krishnas brought their big Jagannath mobile temple and got the crowd to pull them around the festival.

Vinod Prasanna (bansuri) and Glen Kniebeiss (tabla)

Noriko Tadano (tsugaru shamisen)

We jumped on the Mystery Bus which actually consisted of 3 phases. The first two phases were a bit of interactive comedy entertainment until we finally got on the bus and got a very enjoyable song from A French Butler Called Smith.

Rasa Duende - Bobby Singh (tabla), Adrian McNeil (sarod), Damian Wright (flamenco guitar)

We took in a bit of circus, and actually one comedy/juggling segment was our absolute top highlight; we laughed so hard. Wish I'd gotten that guy's name...

On New Year's Eve there were lots of choices but the best lineup for us was at the big Amphtiheatre stage, a show leading up to midnight called The Big Bang. Here our good friends Spankinhide jam with Ali Baba and Ben Walsh from The Bird on drums.


After The Big Bang, Spankinhide headed over to the Chai Tent for the first African drum jam of the year.

On the final evening, Jan 1, there's the Fire Event Closing Ceremony, which begins with a local indigenous person starting a fire from scratch...



 

After the Fire Event, we headed to the Chai Tent where Yeshe had a set with some special guest musicians.
L to R: Tunji Beier, Josie Kurukulie, Elliott Orr, Yeshe, Laura Targett, Avishai, Cye, Peter Hunt, Tenzin Choegyal

Taro Tour Part 4 - Woodford

Last year Taro & I played at Woodford Folk Festival, including the amazing New Year's Dawn concert, and the organisers were so happy that they invited us back this year. (Thanks Pat & Sim!) This year's Woodford was the wettest I've ever seen. It rained for most of every day except the second day. The hilltop events (New Year's Eve and Dawn) were cancelled, and a lot of people including myself skipped the Closing Ceremony. But everyone was there to enjoy themselves and a great time was had by all.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of Taro & my "proper" concerts, just a couple of jam sessions... In all we played 13 concerts - 5 classical sets in Folklorica (our paid gigs), 1 set accompanying singer Menaka Visvanathan, and 7 "chalkboard" shows in the Chai tent, including an improvised collaboration with Butoh dancer Yumiko Nii, an EthnoSuperLounge session (pictured below), and a very exciting tabla duet with Perth-based tabla player Vicky Ramakrishnan.

We also had the honour of performing in the Folklorica up to New Year's midnight. This included the "3 minutes silence" from 11.30pm, a pet project of Festival director Bill Hauritz. Taro was really looking forward to being part of this, and his performance was perfectly timed - according to the clock given to us by the stage manager! Unfortunately that clock was exactly 3 minutes slow, and Taro played right through the festival's 3 minutes' silence!!! Kind of embarrassing, quite disappointing at first, but it's a funny story. :-)

An impromptu jam session in the Gypsy Caravan - including Francis Gilfedder (morsing), Taro, and Aiba (violin)

EthnoSuperLounge in the Chai Tent - Asim Gorashi, his wife Manal, myself, Taro Terahara, Faros (darbuka), Peter Hunt (trumpet), Caleb Trott (sax), Tony (vocals)

How rainy was Woodford?

Very wet, but fun...

My favourite band of the festival - Mukti. Kind of like Shakti, but with more western classical influences, Mukti features guitar, cello, vibraphone/percussion and tabla. Tabla player Vicky Ramakrishnan and myself also gave a tabla duet performance in the chai tent.

Tashi Lhunpo Monks were featured performers in the festival

A spontaneous collaboration between Tenzin Choegyal and shakuhachi player Riley Lee on the final day