Oops

So, being the idiot I am, I managed to completely delete my Top 5 Films post.

Really unhappy.

Cue: a deep funk.

I will eventually get around to re-writing my Top 5 Films and completing the 7 x 5 project.

Stay tuned...

Top 5 Musicals

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(in no particular order)

Chicago - John Kander / Fred Ebb

So sexy, hilarious and just overall so wonderful. I don't mind the film but fell totally in love with Chicago when I saw it performed in Sydney earlier in the year. Sharon Millerchip as Roxie was just amazingly fabulous and deserved every ounce of the Helpmann Award she won for the role. It was wonderful to enjoy her performance so much, especially considering I really only went to see it so I could see Caroline O'Connor perform (I love her!)... and I went to one of the five performances she had to pull out of due to an ankle injury. I have the timing of a ninja.

A Chorus Line - Marvin Hamlisch / Edward Kleban

This musical has some wonderful songs in it, At the Ballet is gorgeous and Nothing is both amusing and moving... and of course there is the show-stopping What I Did For Love. What I like about this musical is how real it is. The stories all come from real people who audition for chorus lines, and I love that there is no real plot to it... it's all about characters.

The Lion King - Elton John / Tim Rice

How can you not enjoy this musical? The tribal sounds, the fantaaaaastic costumes and staging, the heartwrenching songs Shadowland and He Lives in You, that phenomenal stampede scene... Seeing this musical in 2004 was such a wonderful experience. I only wish I could see it again without having to travel to New York or London.

Next to Normal - Tom Kitt / Brian Yorkey

I have only ever listened to this musical... it's only very new (opened this year on Broadway, in fact) but the music and the plot are very interesting and I would absolutely love to see it staged. Some of it is rather so-so, but there are also some very wonderful moments.

RENT - Johnathan Larson

I'm not really a huge fan of RENT anymore, but it was formative in my appreciation of musical theatre. I did a musicology viva voce on four songs from the musical for music in Year 10 (2004) and then discovered the film version on DVD, which I bought on a whim. I fell in love with it and it made me want to see investigate more musicals, and it all went from there. I still haven't seen this musical staged (mainly due to my own disorganisation, I've had an ample amount of opportunities).

West Side Story - Leonard Bernstein / Stephen Sondheim

This musical is such a classic. In both the sense of it being a classic musical and a classical musical... one of the few musicals that opera companies have managed to perform. The music by Bernstein is just amazing. This is the only musical I can think of where I like the instrumental score almost as much if not more than the vocal score.

Wicked - Stephen Schwartz

I got into Wicked in a rather big way when I first started listening to the music from it in 2006. I've been rather on-and-off with it ever since, and am still waiting for an opportunity to see it performed live, even though it is currently playing in Sydney. I really don't like a lot of the songs, but some are very good. I also adore the novel the musical is based on (Wicked by Gregory Maguire)... and am not sure how the adaptation of this into a cheery everything-is-fine-in-the-end musical will work... I'll have to see it to make a proper judgement, I think.

The Wild Party - Michael John LaChiusa

I love the cast recording of this musical, it gets a high rotation playing at my work haha. Toni Colette is fabulous as the feisty Queenie! The music in this is just great... it's such an alcohol-soaked, dark, jazz affair. I'd love to direct or musically direct this musical one day, but it would require a lot of work!

BARE - Damon Intrabartolo / Jon Hartmere, Jr.

To be honest, this musical was initially forced upon me. I decided to help my friend with a proposal he was putting together for a production of this to be staged in October of this year. I put myself down as musical director before even hearing a note of the musical, and then was given a copy of the soundtrack and a rather deliciously illegal under-the-coat video recording of the original off-Broadway production. The music might be very straightforward and the plot might be overly dramatic and saturated with teen angst, but there are some wonderful moments in the musical. I think our greatest mistake in our proposing this musical was that we pitched it as 'it's a musical about gay boys who fall in love and one kills himself and there's a lot of sex and stuff, it's funny as well'. What we really should have emphasised (and if I were directing it, this is the approach I would take) is the undercurrent of the church in the traditional sense vs. modern age spirituality and the implications this has in our everyday lives and the Zeitgeist of a particular period of time. When you look at it in this way, this musical has a lot to say about this and the treatment and view of homosexuals within, what is essentially, a society which has transcended traditional religious adherence, but is still not atheistic or secular in its values. And I think that's pretty significant.

EXTRA SPECIAL EVEN-MORE-HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(these musicals sit somewhere between my standard honourable mentions and my Top 5... they deserve to be given extra special mention - and are listed here in no particular order)

Company - Stephen Sondheim

I love Sondheim. I love his musicals so very, very much. And Company is one such musical. It has no linear plot and is rather abstract in its approach, but the music is just marvellous. So unbelievably catchy. Particular highlights include The Ladies Who Lunch, Sorry-Grateful, Another Hundred People, the very popular Being Alive, and my own favourite, Getting Married Today. I love that this musical is about very real things... there's no fantasy bullshit or need for extensive suspension of disbelief, it's a raw look at how our relationships more often than not don't work out. This is another musical I would kill, maim or steal to be able to direct or musically direct... a tricky one though in regards to vocal ability and staging, might be one to do after I've had a go at something easier to begin with.

Songs for a New World - Jason Robert Brown

Much like Company, Songs for a New World has no real plot, yet unlike Company, it doesn't have characters either. Essentially, Songs is a musical theatre song cycle. Nearly all of the songs are totally beautiful... the opening, The New World, is wonderful and there is of course the very popular I'm Not Afraid of Anything and Stars and the Moon but my own personal favourite is On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1942.

TOP 5 MUSICALS

5. Titanic - Maury Yeston

This is a highly underrated musical. It seems strange to stage a musical production about such a tragic disastrous actual event in history, but at the same time it seems like the perfect treatment for the story. The musical focuses more on the class systems used and the relationships between the three different classes. It serves as a social commentary on social status, and ultimately comments that when everything goes to shit no matter how much money you have, what your occupation is, what gender you are or who you know... you are just as screwed as the person beside you. "It will be every man for himself all right! / The weak thrown in with all the strong! / First class, and third and second / Will mean nothing! / And sheer humanity alone will prevail / One single class / Brute, harsh and crass / That's what will come of the world that set sail." Or, perhaps, you should be, in an ideal world... The music in this musical is really cleverly written. It emulates the Zeitgeist in classical and popular composition in England at the time and there are very evident influences of Vaughan Williams, Gilbert and Sullivan and Ivor Novello. I've auditioned for two musicals this year with Barrett's Song from Titanic and would love the opportunity to perform it properly one day... it's a great one to belt out.

4. The Hatpin - Peter Rutherford / James Millar

This musical is not very well known at all. It's a very new Australian musical that was produced at the Seymour Centre in Sydney in early 2008 starring Melle Stewart and Caroline O'Connor. The musical is set in Sydney and follows the tale of Amber Murray (Stewart), a homeless woman with a baby out on her luck. She gives the baby to a well-to-do couple to look after for her and pays them a weekly sum of money as part of this arrangement, which she earns from a job she is given by the kind and strong Harriet Piper (O'Connor). However, nothing seems to be going to plan, as whenever Amber comes to visit her baby, Horace, the couple who took him in always have an excuse for why she cannot see him. They eventually move without any warning whatsoever, and Amber loses hope of ever seeing her son again. Her worst fears are eventually confirmed when it is uncovered the couple routinely take in children to care for them and murder them by putting a hatpin through their ear deep into their heads, bury the bodies in their backyard and continue to receive payments for the children they are meant to be caring for. Disturbingly, this is actually a true story. Aside from the very dramatic story, the music is wonderfully fitting and has some very touching and dramatic moments. It's yet another musical I'd love to have a hand in bringing to life either by directing or musically directing.

3. Sunday in the Park with George - Stephen Sondheim

This musical is the most intelligent, thoughtful musical and is very worthy of academic study. It looks at the role of 'the artist' within our society... how he (or she) functions, and relates what they see in the world around them to their work. The way they can be driven mad by what they do to exist. The other wonderful aspect of this musical is the way the characters look to both the future and the past... it's a comment on how we may very well be living in the moment, but we are part of such a larger spectrum of time and space. We belong to something so large and have so much responsibility for our past, present and future. And, again, the music is gorgeous... as I've come to expect of the fabulous Stephen Sondheim. Beautiful songs like Finishing the Hat, Colour and Light, Beautiful, We Do Not Belong Together, Children and Art and the fabulous Lesson #8 and Move On. From beginning to end this musical is an exquisite work of art, and every moment is so very valuable, you feel that blinking will get in the way.

2. Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - Stephen Sondheim

Referred to in one critical essay I've read as a gruesical, Sondheim's Sweeney Todd has haunted and chilled both musical theatre halls and opera houses for decades. The gothic operetta attends the tale of Benjamin Barker, a barber who is sent to Australia on false charges and returns with a murderous revenge as Sweeney Todd. He decides after fate deals him a poor hand once again that he will turn his revenge on everyone who comes into his tonsorial parlour, where his accomplice and devoted admirer Nellie Lovett turns the corpses into pies which she then sells in her shop. Sondheim's score is terrifying, using very ferverent moving motifs in very low, dark registers, peircing and shrill sounds like a factory whistle, bizarre and dischordant lines and harmonies and some exceptionally difficult notes out of the standard register of a specific voice type. I had never really heard or seen much of Sweeney Todd until the Tim Burton film adaptation was released, and I decided before I went to see it I had to see the original and know it so I can appreciate the adaptation and from there I fell in love. The film was fantastic for a film, but is nothing on the original musical. I'm currently part of a production of Sweeney Todd with the Sydney University Musical Theatre Ensemble (MUSE) playing the role of Beadle Bamford. Having the opportunity to perform in a musical I hold so very close to my heart means the world to me, and I am so, so excited for the production to get up and running as we come closer to the performance dates (17-20th March, 2010 - Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney).

1. Into the Woods - Stephen Sondheim

The first time I ever heard anything of this musical was when I went home to my parents' house the year after I finished school and visited my high school to see their musical, which happened to be Into the Woods. I went with odd expectations... I wasn't sure what to expect as the performing arts department in the school was flourishing at an exponential rate when I graduated. I was amazed... it was so touching and funny and artistically beautiful. I immediately rushed out and bought the original broadway production on DVD and I have been a devoted fan ever since. What irks me most about this musical, or rather the people who see this musical, is the very common reaction of 'It really should have finished at interval... the second half was just odd and morbid.' Well, der! The entire point of this musical is consequence, and the second act is one big chain of consequences. The second act has more of a point than the first! It is a tragic but very touching fable about learning to love what you have and who you are. Trying to be anything that you aren't is not going to end with a 'happily ever after'. I would love so very much to direct, musically direct or be in the cast of a production of this musical... I worry though, that if ever I was a part of a production I would take it on board far too much and it wouldn't only become a part of me... but it would totally consume me. In the most wonderful way. I dare to not be overwhelmed while watching this musical, Children Will Listen is one of the most gorgeous and heartbreaking songs ever written.

Top 5 Pieces of Music

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(in no particular order)

City Life - Steve Reich

This was the piece that made me fall in love with Reich. It made me view minimalism in a new way, and appreciate it all the more. I love the 'speech melodies'. Check it out, the first movement, is great if you wanted to... well... check it out...

I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky - John Adams

I'll be the first to admit that as a whole this opera/musical is rather shit. However, the opening 'I was looking at the ceiling...' is addictive, and there are some truly gorgeous and inspired moments... '¿Donde Estàs?', 'Dewain's Song of Liberation and Surprise' and '¡Este País! (This Country)' to name a few.

De Staat - Louis Andriessen

This, along with City Life, were two of the pieces that really stuck with me when I studied Music in Modern Times at the Conservatorium. I love the political persuasion of the piece and the way the grinding and dissonant brass keeps evolving and turns into a brilliant chorus in Ancient Greek in consonant minimalism.

Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten

A new addition to the repertoire I listen to a lot. I heard amazing things about the Opera Australia production earlier in the year and decided I needed to see it. When I managed to get a ticket, I was stunned. This is a phenomenal work of art and so, so touching. It's the first opera I've ever been able to fall in love with.

The Infinite Heartbeat - Stuart Greenbaum

A simple, short (only 5 minutes long) minimalist piece (can you tell that I thoroughly enjoy minimalist music?) by Australian composer Stuart Greenbaum, but so amazingly moving. I weep nearly every time I hear it. The solo pianissimo pizzicato which opens and closes the piece, the subtle key changes introduced by the unending piano accompaniment... it's the nuances in this piece are what makes it so beautiful and so intimate.

Lux Aeterna - Martin Lauridsen

I was first introduced to this piece in 2007 when I sang the third movement, O Nata Lux, with the Sydney University Music Society and a touring choir from Harvard University. This is such a beautiful piece to be a part of in performance. Every time I have performed it in the years since, I think back to when I moved to Sydney away from my family and friends and had this piece to rehearse and perform to keep me company.

Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel - György Ligeti

I love this piece purely because it is so insane. Ligeti's music has always attracted me in an indescribable way, and this is the only work of his where I've been able to pinpoint a reason for loving it... its sheer insanity and humour. I played this piece to my Year 1 class when I was prac teaching last month and it made one girl cry because it was so foreign to her young ears... she didn't know how to deal emotionally with the sounds she was hearing.

Oblivion - Astor Piazzolla

The most intimate and sexually fulfilling of all pieces of music. Written for violin, violoncello and piano, the tango sounds as though the instruments are making tender and passionate love. I cannot help but be overcome when listening to this piece. Ute Lemper, one of my favourite singers, has written lyrics for it and Katie Noonan (yep, she's back...) performed it with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (them again too) in their most recent collaboration, Luminous, which was accompanied by photos from one of my favourite artists/photographers, Bill Henson. The experience was truly magical.

Summa for Choir - Arvo Pärt

I stumbled upon the music of Arvo Pärt by complete accident, picking up a $10 'Best of Arvo Pärt' CD in a dump-bin from a now-defunct CD store on Glebe Point Rd on the offchance of discovering something new and wonderful. Oh, how I did. His Summa has been arranged for many different ensembles, including string orchestra and is a gorgeous example of his own compositional style, 'tintinnabuli', where two voices co-exist, one moving in arpeggios on a tonic chord while the other moves diatonically in a step-motion. Just amazing. Other works of Pärt which should really be here as well include Cantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten as well as his Fratres, also arranged for many different ensembles including violin and piano as well as string orchestra and tuned/untuned percussion.

Cloudburst - Eric Whitacre

A highly complex choral work accompanied by piano and both tuned/untuned percussion and involving body percussion to emulate the coming, being and departing of a storm. Sung in Spanish, the lush and unexpected chords are beautiful and Whitacre's signature tonal clusters along with an aleatoric section make this piece both a unique experience for performer and responder alike. I was supposed to be singing this in the Canberra Inter-Varsity Choral Festival in January next year until I had to pull out due to commitments to work and Sweeney Todd, which is very sad (but Sweeney Todd will be amazing, so it's okay!)

TOP 5 PIECES OF MUSIC

5. Song for Athene - John Tavener

Performed, and brought into significant international attention as a result, at the funeral of Diana Princess of Wales, this piece fluctuates between tonic minor and tonic major, reflecting both the light and dark feelings one experiences when a person close to their hearts dies. The piece for a capella choir is held consistent through a low drone from the beginning of the piece as it builds gradually through repetition and an increase of intensity to a liberating climax, celebrating the freedom of the deceased's soul into a better place. This builds to the dramatic, textural and dynamic climactic point of the entire piece, and then falls abruptly away into pianissimo where we here that familiar drone quietly and one of the initial Hallelujah sections is repeated so quietly it's almost impossible to hear and in a major key. It's as though the deceased person is still with us, one hand on our shoulder assuring as that everything is okay, but they are only there quietly. I love this piece purely for it's beauty. It really has no great personal significance for me, particularly as I am an atheist, but if I do have a religion, it is music.

4. Symphony No. 2 - Philip Glass

Pure minimalism in its most obvious form... Philip Glass. If you've been observant, indeed if you've read anything more than a few sentences on this post, you'll notice that I am quite a big fan of minimalism, particularly American minimalism. In fact, 4 of my top 5 pieces of music are minimalist, and the odd one out (number 2 on the list) has many minimalist influences. This symphony is a wonderful example of Glass' work, his repetitive fifths and chords, straight and consistent rhythms, varying emphases. The opening movement of the symphony holds particular significance for me. In Year 11 Drama we were split into groups and required to create group devised performances on the topic of 'warfare' each in the style of a different practitioner which was assigned to us. My group did an excellent piece in the style of Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, but it was another group which had some very close friends in it who did their piece about the Holocaust in the style of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty that grabbed me. I was obsessed with it and the style of theatre... how wonderful to not only have an excuse, but to be required to figuratively smack an audience across the face and abuse them. The piece of theatre was phenomenal... nearly everyone who ever saw it cried and was terrified by it. My friends asked me for my assistance in presenting the performance and I assisted them with some sound design and ran all their audio/visuals. Part of this performance was the opening of this symphony... those repeating arpeggios and intervals and that haunting oboe melody over the swelling chords in the strings. To this music, the actors performed a sick and disturbing choreographed movement sequence displaying the relationships they had with other prisoners in the camp and their hopes for escape. One particular tableaux in the piece consisted of all actors reaching as high as they could towards a central point on stage... this mirrored a photograph the group found in their research of actual prisoners of war in a gas chamber, all reaching towards the one single vent in the ceiling in their final moments, desperate to escape from the gas surrounding them. At the conclusion of this movement piece, each of the actors lined up and performed an eerie swaying movement, before settling and being shot one by one, before the slide '...we must never forget.' flashed up on the screen behind them. This performance both haunts and excites me to this very day. It was spectacular and I find myself pulling out the DVD every now and again to experience it yet again. It was in doing this assignment, and helping this other group, that I knew I wanted my life to never be bereft of life-altering performance and theatre. I plan to teach drama (as well as music) when I graduate and go out into the 'real world' and I think that this performance was the main reason that I want to do that.

3. Ice Man - Stuart Greenbaum

The first time I heard this piece was when one of the movements, The Dream, was played in a student HSC music concert in high school. Part of the Music 2 Syllabus is the compulsory component, 'Music of the Last 25 Years: Australian Focus' where all students must perform a piece written in the last twenty five years, preferably an Australian composition. Often this means students procure very obscure pieces from bizarre places. One of these pieces was The Dream. When it was performed at my school, nobody seemed to know where the music came from so every time a Music 2 piano student wanted to play it for their HSC they couldn't because nobody knew where the piece came from or who the composer was... but everybody loved it so much. Then, when I was in year 12 doing my HSC, even though I was majoring in voice, I decided that I loved this piece so much that I too wanted to play it (I've done my 8th Grade AMEB in piano as well) so I sought out a copy and began to learn it. I was helping a fellow music student from another school with his Music 1 performances and one of the pieces he was accompanying another student for (The Infinite Heartbeat) sounded almost familiar... and then he performed another piece, Affinity, which was the closing movement of Ice Man, and instantly I knew I had found the piece from which The Dream came from. It was such a serendipitous moment of realisation I had to keep myself from bursting out into a fit of laughter. Ice Man has stayed with my ever since, and I managed to track down a copy of the score from the Conservatorium library and have ever since been teaching myself the entire half-hour work. It is so beautiful. Iove its gorgeous use of the sustain pedal, the way the notes fade and the overtones meld into each other to create this disparate mood of emptiness. Greenbaum, an American-born Australian composer who is currently Senior Lecturer in Music and Head of Composition Studies at the University of Melbourne, wrote the piece about fellow Australian James Scott who was trapped in the Himalayan snow for 43 days. The piece reflects the emptiness and loneliness he felt and is hauntingly beautiful. I'd love to perfect this piece and one day perform it in recital... but that's just one of my many dreams. For now I need to work on being able to play it on an actual acoustic piano instead of the digital piano I have at home which doesn't do sustained notes or overtones very well.

2. Carmina Burana - Carl Orff

This piece in itself is prolific enough to not need a description. It was the first classical piece I ever saw in performance when the Sydney University Music Society (SUMS) performed it in the University of Sydney Great Hall in 2004. I was in Year 10 and my music teacher was in the choir and had insisted we all came and saw it. I was hooked. I went and bought the Naxos recording the next week and listened to it over and over. It was this performance I saw that set me on the path of classical music as a career path. I didn't realise it was possible to still work in amateur choirs once school had finished. The year after I graduated, despite not being successful with my application for the Conservatorium, I still moved to Sydney and joined SUMS. Everything came full circle when earlier this year I performed Carmina Burana with SUMS... it was an affirmation of my decision to follow the path of music and performance for the rest of my life. This piece stands as almost the contract of the commitment that I made to myself to do this. Aside from this, it's just an awesome piece with some excellent moments (obviously the opening and closing movements, O Fortuna are highlights that immediately spring to mind) but the gorgeous baritone solos and soprano solos are also what make this piece so special to me. It might seem a tad clichéd to have this piece on my list, especially at number 2, but hopefully this story gives you some insight as to why it's so special to me.

1. Symphony No. 3 'Symphony of Sorrowful Song' - Henryk Gòrecki

The most-sold classical piece of all time, in terms of recordings. There is a reason for this... and that is that this piece is just the most heartwrenchingly beautiful work of art. If you've never heard this piece before, you need to find a recording of it (I suggest the Naxos recording with soprano Zofia Kilanowicz and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra - it's my favourite), sit in the dark or near-dark with a glass of red wine, close your eyes and listen. I found this piece in a very backward way. One day when I was listening to Triple J doing mindless work I heard the song Cotton Wool by Lamb and decided I really liked it. I then looked it up online and downloaded it and found that every site I read talked about a Lamb song called Gorecki so I downloaded it too and fell completely in love (you might remember it was number 1 on my Top 5 Songs post). I read all about this song in the liner notes of the Lamb CD I rushed out and bought immediately, and saw that Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow wrote the song about a shared experience they had had when they heard Gòrecki's Third Symphony for the first time, so I picked up the aforementioned recording of this piece. I listened to it without stopping on my discman in the car on the way to the South Coast that afternoon and wept. I had never heard anything more beautiful in my whole life. Such despair, so beautiful this torturous agony in this music. A intensely slow, gradual build of sound to a climax of soaring soprano notes over luscious strings. To read the story behind the composition of this piece then furthered my intense appreciation for it. The text used in the first movement is a 15th Century Polish lament of Mary, mother of Jesus,the second movement a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during World War II and the third movement a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son, killed in the Silesian uprisings. I can't say too much more than you need to experience this piece yourself to understand why it sits here at the number one spot on this list. It runs for about an hour, and if you haven't heard it before (or even all the way through) you owe it to yourself to first read up on the story behind the composition (a good place to start is the piece's Wikipedia entry) and then listen to the piece from beginning to end with no interruptions. You will be a changed person for the experience.

Top 5 Albums

N.B. This one was a tricky one... couldn't help but add a list of honourable mentions to my Top 5. It may be a commonplace thing for the next few lists as well... picking 5 was tricky!

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(in no particular order)

Birth of the Cool - Miles Davis

Classic jazz from my favourite jazz musician of all time. The perfect album for cocktails on a Saturday evening.

Eyes Open - Snow Patrol

This album got me through a time in my life when I was sorely missing someone very special who was far away.

Kid A - Radiohead

This album is only a new favourite of mine, but I love the impersonal, terrifying, yet emotional feel of it.

Le fil - Camille

This concept album is amazing. The album consists almost entirely of vocal sounds. A drone on middle B links the songs together, creating a 'string' of sound (Le fil translates literally as 'the wire').

I Am a Bird Now - Antony and the Johnsons

The ethereal voice of Antony Hegarty and his gorgeous, honest words make this compelling album a heart-wrenching plea for a release from a world which isn't big enough to contain such a beautiful and unique person.

Volta - Björk

Industrial, warm, gentle, rough, loud, soft, foreign, real, contemporary... totally unique and totally Björk. The most amazing combination of conflicting ideas that just... works. The first Björk album I ever heard, which totally sold me to her sound.

Echolalia - Something for Kate

The first Something for Kate album that I bought for myself after being given their album The Official Fiction for Christmas. It made me want more, it began my epic crush on Paul Dempsey and Clint Hyndman (and Stephanie Ashworth, I suppose she has to be included) and I feel in love with Monsters, which, in my opinion, is one of the best Australian songs ever written.

TOP 5 ALBUMS

5. Simple Things - Zero 7

This trip hop album is the perfect soundtrack for a chilled out summer afternoon. Served perfectly with cocktails, paddle pool and fresh seasonal fruit. I am by no means a summer boy at all, but this album makes the whole thing all the more endearing to me. Whenever I listen to this album I am immediately transported back to living in Forest Lodge with my wonderful friends... cleaning the kitchen, returning from a shopping trip and packing away the shopping while nibbling on blue brie and crackers, endless glasses of white wine and champagne while getting ready to walk up the street to our favourite cocktail bar. It takes me to a place where I am totally relaxed and happy. They were wonderful days, and I cannot wait to relive some of them when I move back to the south side of the Harbour Bridge at the tail end of the year.

4. Medúlla – Björk

What an experience this album is. Similar to Le fil, the album was made with only a few non-vocal sounds on a select few tracks. The vocal sounds from both Björk and a wide array of collaborators contributing beatboxing, choral arrangements and throat singing blend into a wonderful soundscape of otherworldliness. Being a singer and chorister, I have a particular fascination with this album and the many varied ways in which the voice is used on it. I love that the album makes reference to and uses vocal techniques from ancient times through to different styles of contemporary vocal performance such as jazz, classical, pop, rock, dance, electronica, musical theatre and melts them all together with influences from vocal techniques and styles from different cultures into a beautiful mess of sound.

3. Blackbird - Katie Noonan

Anyone who knows me, or anyone who read my Top 5 Songs seven.by.five post will not be at all surprised to find a Katie Noonan album on this list. I adore her, especially when she performs jazz repertoire... so what better album than Katie Noonan along with some of the most fantastical living jazz musicians (Lewis Nash, Joe Lovano, John Schofield and Sam Keevers) performing arrangements of the inspired songs of Paul McCartney and John Lennon for jazz quintet! The interpretations of these songs are original and fresh, and add so much to original songs penned by McCartney and Lennon. Truly the most amazing moments on the album are Norwegian Wood, with a stunning solo from Joe Lovano on saxophone and the phenomenal Eleanor Rigby, in itself a masterpiece but performed here as an 'up-tempo fierce jazz waltz thing' it takes on a new life. The first time I met Katie was after her concert with the Australian Chamber Orchestra as part of their Sublime concert series in March 2008 at City Recital Hall in Angel Place. The last thing I said to her as I left was, 'Please, please record some more jazz.' This was her next release... coincidence? I like to think not...

2. Beautiful Sharks - Something for Kate

My favourite album from my favourite band. I was introduced to Something for Kate through their album The Official Fiction, which I got for Christmas the year it was released and really adored the sound it brought with it. A few weeks later I stumbled across a cheap copy of their most popular album, Echolalia and I began to fall in love with them. My friend bought me a copy of their one and only DVD, A Diversion, which had video clips and footage from live recorded gigs from their Echolalia album and the album previous to it, Beautiful Sharks. When I heard a couple of songs I rushed out and bought a copy of the album and my crush turned into a deep and fulfilling romance. I was in love. The album flutters between lush and gorgeous songs like Anchorman, The Astronaut and Whatever You Want through to songs that buzz with energy like Electricity and my own personal favourite Hallways. And who could let the beautiful, heartbreaking and empowering Back to You go by? Part of the reason this album is so special to me is because I fell in love with it while I was living at home, before I came out to my parents. The heartbreaking songs, the songs full of rage... they all served a purpose in healing my troubled soul. While this was a difficult period of my life, wrought with teenage angst, it was a formative one... and a time I hold very close to my heart. It was so strange to be so close but so distant from my parents and I felt as through I was on the precipice of some massive plunge into a scary, unknown place. This album was my closest friend on some very sad and lonely nights, and when I listen to it now I am reminded of how lucky I am that that plunge ended up not being so scary, and that after a year or so I could leave that angst and worry behind me to feel comforted and safe and loved by my wonderful parents.

1. Before Time Could Change Us - Paul Grabowsky, Katie Noonan and Dorothy Porter

This album is the perfect marriage of the talents of three of my favourite artists. Paul Grabowsky, my favourite Australian composer and one of my favourite jazz pianists, Katie Noonan, my favourite of favourites of... well, life... my all, my everything, and the late Dorothy Porter, my favourite Australian poet. Before Time Could Change Us is a gorgeous song cycle that began its life as a series of 16 poems written by Porter for Grabowsky to use as song cycle 'traversing that first flash of love, the tumult of an affair and the wistful and sometimes painful memories of something that was not meant to be.' The poems were given life by Grabowsky, each in a different style of jazz (standard, ballad, freestyle, etc.) and then pushed over the edge into another world by the indescribable talent of Katie Noonan. I have wept to these songs, I have been elated because of these songs... but what I love most about these songs is that I have lived them. I can identify with the sentiment of every single song in this cycle. Not only have I lived them, but I have sung them. Singing makes me what I am, and purchasing the score of the song cycle was such a fantastic decision. Not only have I been able to understand these songs from an aural perspective, but I've been able to sing them and take them deep inside my soul. Being able to sing these songs has meant that the experience of having them has been broadened and I have been able to make them my own songs. But of course, nothing compares to listening to Katie Noonan perform them... she truly is just so beautiful. I dare each and every one of you to listen to If Snakes Could Fly and not be completely taken aback by it. It is the most exquisite song you will ever hear.