FARRAGO

Welcome to Canon in She, a column that celebrates the beautiful music of composers who identify as women. In this edition, we have a violist who wrote for a variety of instruments, a resourceful African American pianist who wrote a Christmas cantata, and an Australian pianist who writes lyrical and quirky music for various instruments.

In my dream, I stand at the triple crossroads. Oily yellow light spills down onto the bitumen, barely illuminating the roads’ beginnings. To the eastern fork, I see the klongs of Bangkok, hear an echo over the long-tail boats: “this way to your past”. To the western way, the Australian countryside stretches infinitely, drowning in heavy rainfall: “this way to your future”. To the northern road, a Janus-voice of twin-speaking conjurers, beckoning me to choose their shadowed path: “our ways are unknown”.

Pre-COVID-19-lockdown-reality, I meant to go see Billy Elliot the Musical, based on the 2005 film of the same name. Not-so-surprisingly, I didn’t end up going. Instead I read about it, watched the movie, I even signed up for free at-home ballet lessons – this one wasn’t really followed through – and I got to reflect on the subtleties of the plot and the songs in the musical’s soundtrack.

These recipes are paraphrased from 17th-century Dutch chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont. Luckily, he is remembered for discovering gases such as carbon dioxide, not for conjuring mice and scorpions.

If you have Netflix, which I assume the majority of you do because what else is there to do during a lockdown and pandemic, you’ve probably seen an ad or the trailer for the new Joe Mantello & Ryan Murphy film “The Boys in the Band”. This modernised adaptation tells the story of a group of homosexual men in the 1960s and how a birthday party in a small New York apartment can become the epicentre of self truths and confessions of old loves. It becomes the intersection of the diverse narratives and personalities of homosexual men everywhere.

During iso, I’ve bounced aimlessly through Wikipedia long enough to land on an article titled the ‘List of Discredited Substances.’ It includes the Philosopher’s Stone, a universal solvent, and even a unicorn’s horn. With each entry, is an explanation of how the substance was discredited, usually through various experiments (We apparently know unicorn horns don’t […]

The art upon gallery walls speak of deep histories, people immortalised in paint, lingering in their own mythologies. My feet always take me to the eighteenth-century European section, desiring to stand before illustrious portraiture of affluent women in creamy gowns, or poised families before pastoral landscapes, their homestead grandiose in the distance—beautiful, amorous, unified.

He lives in a small, round, earthen cottage deep in the quiet parts of the world. Each day mint is picked for tea at sunrise and he waits for his bread to leaven for a late breakfast. At noon he hikes to the top of Pullberry Hill and takes in the ridges and the autumn […]

Female Bonobo “Let’s make love, not war.” Hey lover, listen, I bet you’ve got a lot of stress. When your body’s filled with negativity it can make you lash out. But check this, we figured out a way to stop all the hate, conflict and wars. Sex solves a lot of problems, man. Most, actually. […]

Welcome to Canon in She, a column that celebrates women who compose music. This time, I am dedicating the entire column to Deborah Cheetham.