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CR: Can you tell us a little bit about Odysseus: Live?
JH: It’ s a huge project that works on two levels. I guess the bit everyone’ s talking about now is that we’ ve got a live show. Before that, we’ d done this as part of a teaching residency so students could be involved not just in a performance but in learning with, and doing things together with, hip-hop artist and poet Luka Lesson and his producer, who is Florida-based Jordan Thomas Mitchell.
I organised a residency for them with teachings across several different units of the conservatorium and also in the Arts Music unit on the big school campus. For the students, some of it was formal lectures around hip-hop music and contemporary culture and electronic music making, and some of it was more tutorial seminar workshop, just a chance to get to learn creative stuff. That sort of came first, before any of this putting the show together.
Then, after they’ d been teaching for a fortnight, we spent a couple weeks in the studio creating about half a dozen hip-hop tracks for the album that will go out with the Odysseus project and started to prepare for the live thing. The actual performance is a mixture of spoken word poetry – a reinterpretation of The Odyssey by Luka Lesson, but sort of orchestrated.
We’ ve got a full orchestra and choir of student volunteers here at the Con who just wanted to be involved and work on a project like this. They’ re the same musicians who have played on the album, pretty much. We’ re going to create a sort of filmic atmosphere for the poetic stuff, but in between the different reinterpretations of the poem, we perform some stonking brand new 2016 hip-hop tracks. All of the students who have played on the tracks play along on the stage as well.
It’ s designed to be cross-genre, innovative. There is a lot of this stuff happening out there in the professional world at the moment, with people from different genres and art areas working together. That’ s what I’ ve tried to bring to the Con as a different experience for the students but also for me. I’ m working on it as a composer, so all of the orchestrated stuff has been written by me. Quite often, the students have worked as my assistants. It’ s been great to collaborate with the students on that level. Then the electronic stuff is done by Jordan Thomas Mitchell, the producer. We’ ve collaborated to bring all that together as one sound.
What are some of the other, more practical, things the students have learnt about producing a musical? For them it’ s been interesting. They’ re used to working with a composer like me, who writes everything down on paper and comes into the room saying‘ play these notes’. But quite often Jordan, the producer, would use words to describe what he was after or just sort of sing it – especially on his tracks. Quite often, the students improvised or composed the music themselves for the tracks if that was better than what we had prepared or if we hadn’ t prepared anything. It’ s a much more organic music experience.
In classical music, we tend to have specific roles – the composer, the performer, the audience. In modern music-making that stuff all kind of gets mashed together again and it’ s much more collaborative and creative. That’ s probably the biggest thing they’ ve learnt. [ And they’ ve picked up ] other funny things, like how much time you spend when you make an album sitting around listening and talking, and how you have to play the same thing over and over for two hours until you get it just right. We would never rehearse like that normally in classical music.
This is an adaptation of The Odyssey. What relevant themes does it have for modern-day society? Luka, in his writing – and I must emphasise it’ s his writing and his thinking, because I don’ t want to speak on his behalf – sees a lot of parallels in this work to what’ s happening in modern times, especially in terms of modern wars and the resulting refugee situation, which is happening in the same part of the world as it does in The Odyssey.
What’ s been the overall student reaction to Odysseus: Live? How keen were they on the idea? [ They’ ve volunteered ] well over a thousand hours of work. Being part of the show is entirely voluntary. They’ re not getting any course credit for anything like that. It was simply,‘ OK look, these are the artists, these are the people involved, who wants to do it?’
They’ ve been super enthusiastic, generous with their time and into it. I’ ve just finished rehearsing, and now it’ s 5.20 in the afternoon. We started this morning at 8.00. Many of those kids have just played for nearly nine hours with only a couple of breaks. That just shows you the kind of dedication to making a professional-level show we’ re talking about.
How has the audience reaction been so far to Odysseus: Live? It’ s quite funny because when we were here recording in the early days, we felt like we were working on this small-scale, slightly weird project, which it is in many ways. [ A big part of what the Conservatorium does is about ] conserving historical or classical music.
We felt we were doing something quite weird, but we were visited by people like the music guy from Apple, who dropped in because he heard we were working on this project and he [ thought he ] would just spend a day in the studio watching. He was amazed, and another few industry guys [ came in ]. We had a visit from the head of education strategy at the Sydney Symphony, just wanting to know what was going on. Even when we were just starting to record, it was already causing a buzz. We released the trailer and stuff online, and there were several hundred people on the waiting list for tickets to [ the premiere ]. It sold out in a day. ■
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