Post by isaacs on Aug 9, 2006 14:39:57 GMT 10
MEDIA RELEASE
Larissa Burak and Mark Isaacs create a new sound in the Lounge
A unique collaboration of two aficionados of robust passionate music, Russian style
Who says Christmas parties only ever produce embarrassing moments? Last year’s Musica Viva festive season event inspired the collaboration of two classically trained but very diverse musical talents, Mark Isaacs and Larissa Burak.
“You could say we were thrown together at the Christmas party. They arranged for artists to play and I saw Larissa perform. After the formal entertainment, people were getting up and jamming. I told Larissa I loved what she was doing and suggested she sing and I play. Justo [Diaz, Café Carnivale music director] said we should perform together and that’s where it began,” Isaacs said.
“There’s an incredible passion, focus and commitment in Larissa’s music but it’s also exotic. I think our common ground is our love of the robust.”
Burak and Isaacs are now working on the material for their Café Carnivale concert at the Sound Lounge on August 17, an evening of Russian music that also features Anatoli Torjinski and Leonid Beshlei. She will sing and play the bandura accompanied by Isaacs on piano. Their music is worlds apart but they have much in common, from their classical training to their deep musical family roots.
Burak, an exceptional soprano and bandura player, comes from a family of visual artists and musicians in the Ukraine. She became one of the nation’s leading musicians, performing in festivals in Ukraine and Western Europe including Latvia, Estonia, Germany and France. She is also the laureate of the 1993 all Ukrainian bandura festival and became internationally renowned when she performed at the 1994 All World’s Violins Festival in France, organised by Yehudi Menuhin.
Isaacs comes from a long line of distinguished musicians that includes his uncles, the legendary British jazz guitarist Ike Isaacs and the London-based violinist, soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player Kelly Isaacs. His father is an accomplished jazz guitarist and songwriter who had one of his songs recorded and released by Petula Clark and his mother is trained as a classical pianist and sings jazz.
In his own career, Isaacs has already achieved national and international acclaim, both as a jazz musician and as a composer/pianist in classical music. He has won many accolades, including an Australia Council for the Arts Music Fellowship, the inaugural Miriam Hyde Composer-Pianist Award and a prize in the first Tokyo International Competition for Chamber Music Composition.
He has made his mark as a composer, creating 75 major original compositions, among them works for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Melbourne and Adelaide symphony orchestras, James Morrison and the Australia Ensemble, the latter performing one of his pieces at their Carnegie Hall recital in 1988. In 1994 Isaacs played the solo part in the premiere of his own piano concerto in St Petersburg Philharmonic Hall with the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, appearing within hours in a major jazz festival in the same city.
Isaac’s compositions include music for film and television. He has recorded several albums, among them Encounters, Visions, Keeping the Standards, The Element, a 4-CD set of improvised solo piano music, and his jazz CD Closer. This year he recorded a CD at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles of original jazz quintet compositions with Australian guitarist James Muller and legendary American drummer Vinnie Colaiuta.
He has toured extensively in Europe, Asia, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific but nowhere more than Russia where he has been invited back six times.
“I’ve always been very drawn to Russian music. I hope my music is robust as well as passionate and they’re the qualities I hear in music of that region. Russian music is also very muscular, almost barbaric but also lyrical and quite sweet, like Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Russian music seems to want to occupy the whole spectrum of music, just like jazz,” Isaacs said.
The Sound Lounge concert will be an exciting exploration with no preconceived destination.
“In our first rehearsal we focused on the lyrical, working on the assumption I would bring my jazz improvisation to these Ukrainian lullabies which Larissa would sing and play on the bandura,” Isaacs said.
“But there was this unspoken feeling we shouldn’t just do that and that we could get more robust. In Russian music, the lyrical and the robust are equally strong. Part of our journey is how we balance those two sides of the coin. At the moment it’s a journey and the audience will join us at the right point, the performance.”
When: Thursday, 17 August at 8.30 pm
Where: The Sound Lounge (Seymour Centre)
Tickets: $20/ $17 concession / $15 (members) / $8 (kids under 12)
Bookings: Musica Viva Box Office 1800 688 482 or www.cafecarnivale.com.au
MEDIA ENQUIRIES: MUSICA VIVA (02) 8394 6666.
Larissa Burak and Mark Isaacs create a new sound in the Lounge
A unique collaboration of two aficionados of robust passionate music, Russian style
Who says Christmas parties only ever produce embarrassing moments? Last year’s Musica Viva festive season event inspired the collaboration of two classically trained but very diverse musical talents, Mark Isaacs and Larissa Burak.
“You could say we were thrown together at the Christmas party. They arranged for artists to play and I saw Larissa perform. After the formal entertainment, people were getting up and jamming. I told Larissa I loved what she was doing and suggested she sing and I play. Justo [Diaz, Café Carnivale music director] said we should perform together and that’s where it began,” Isaacs said.
“There’s an incredible passion, focus and commitment in Larissa’s music but it’s also exotic. I think our common ground is our love of the robust.”
Burak and Isaacs are now working on the material for their Café Carnivale concert at the Sound Lounge on August 17, an evening of Russian music that also features Anatoli Torjinski and Leonid Beshlei. She will sing and play the bandura accompanied by Isaacs on piano. Their music is worlds apart but they have much in common, from their classical training to their deep musical family roots.
Burak, an exceptional soprano and bandura player, comes from a family of visual artists and musicians in the Ukraine. She became one of the nation’s leading musicians, performing in festivals in Ukraine and Western Europe including Latvia, Estonia, Germany and France. She is also the laureate of the 1993 all Ukrainian bandura festival and became internationally renowned when she performed at the 1994 All World’s Violins Festival in France, organised by Yehudi Menuhin.
Isaacs comes from a long line of distinguished musicians that includes his uncles, the legendary British jazz guitarist Ike Isaacs and the London-based violinist, soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player Kelly Isaacs. His father is an accomplished jazz guitarist and songwriter who had one of his songs recorded and released by Petula Clark and his mother is trained as a classical pianist and sings jazz.
In his own career, Isaacs has already achieved national and international acclaim, both as a jazz musician and as a composer/pianist in classical music. He has won many accolades, including an Australia Council for the Arts Music Fellowship, the inaugural Miriam Hyde Composer-Pianist Award and a prize in the first Tokyo International Competition for Chamber Music Composition.
He has made his mark as a composer, creating 75 major original compositions, among them works for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Melbourne and Adelaide symphony orchestras, James Morrison and the Australia Ensemble, the latter performing one of his pieces at their Carnegie Hall recital in 1988. In 1994 Isaacs played the solo part in the premiere of his own piano concerto in St Petersburg Philharmonic Hall with the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, appearing within hours in a major jazz festival in the same city.
Isaac’s compositions include music for film and television. He has recorded several albums, among them Encounters, Visions, Keeping the Standards, The Element, a 4-CD set of improvised solo piano music, and his jazz CD Closer. This year he recorded a CD at Capitol Studios, Los Angeles of original jazz quintet compositions with Australian guitarist James Muller and legendary American drummer Vinnie Colaiuta.
He has toured extensively in Europe, Asia, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific but nowhere more than Russia where he has been invited back six times.
“I’ve always been very drawn to Russian music. I hope my music is robust as well as passionate and they’re the qualities I hear in music of that region. Russian music is also very muscular, almost barbaric but also lyrical and quite sweet, like Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Russian music seems to want to occupy the whole spectrum of music, just like jazz,” Isaacs said.
The Sound Lounge concert will be an exciting exploration with no preconceived destination.
“In our first rehearsal we focused on the lyrical, working on the assumption I would bring my jazz improvisation to these Ukrainian lullabies which Larissa would sing and play on the bandura,” Isaacs said.
“But there was this unspoken feeling we shouldn’t just do that and that we could get more robust. In Russian music, the lyrical and the robust are equally strong. Part of our journey is how we balance those two sides of the coin. At the moment it’s a journey and the audience will join us at the right point, the performance.”
When: Thursday, 17 August at 8.30 pm
Where: The Sound Lounge (Seymour Centre)
Tickets: $20/ $17 concession / $15 (members) / $8 (kids under 12)
Bookings: Musica Viva Box Office 1800 688 482 or www.cafecarnivale.com.au
MEDIA ENQUIRIES: MUSICA VIVA (02) 8394 6666.
