Audio art show to tie in textures

THE final evening of the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s Pliable Planes fibre and textiles exhibition will be marked with a different sort of spatial weaving.

Later this month, harpist Jacinta Dennett and pianist Donna Coleman will perform 10 pieces under the name of Pleione II to tie in with the exhibition’s works.

Called Woven Sound, Dennett said the program carries a joint theme of home and emigration.

“I listened to a performance Donna was giving in the US and on the program was Somewhere Over the Rainbow and we’d been talking for a long time about putting on a piano-harp duo performance,” she said.

“We were toying around with repertoire. I happened to find a piece by [Robert] Boscha who happened to die in Australia and was Napoleon’s harpist.

“He’d run off with composer Henry Bishop’s wife. Her name was Anna Bishop. She became famous for singing the song from her husband’s opera Home Sweet Home.

“The piece by Bocsha is Home Sweet Home. In that piece is the line ‘there’s no place like home,’ so I thought here’s a really great concert based on these two pieces.”

The show will feature works like Duo brillant by Robert Bochsa and Keith Jarret’s version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow as well as a premiere one of three pieces written by Australian composer Eve Duncan.

Coleman holds dual American-Australian citizenship and emigrated to Victoria in 1992.

She said many of the songs selected for the show’s theme have a personal connection for her, especially that of Percy Grainger.

“We have this rich America-Australia connection. Percy emigrated and he settled in the United States and became a US citizen,” she said.

“I sort of did the opposite. I came to Australia and became a citizen here, and I think that’s one of the reasons why I love Percy Grainger’s music so much.

“It has a really strong resonance for me with home. He composed a piece called Lullaby from a larger stet of pieces called Tribute to Foster.

“One of my favourite pieces to play that to me has a very strong connection to home is Camptown Races by Stephen Foster. Lullaby is based upon that.”

Woven Sound will take place at the Art Gallery’s Oddie Gallery from 6pm on Saturday, 29 April.

Tickets are $15 for students, $30 for gallery members, $35 concession and $40 general and can be booked at the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s website.