Poems to Music Concert

The performers seemed be having as much fun as the audience at the Andrew Rumsey and friends ‘Poems to Music’ Concert in Canberra last night. Pianist, Andrew Rumsey, with Matt Withers (guitar), Ciaran Edwards-McKeown (guitar), James Larsen (cello) and Christopher Bottomley (piano) and others recited poems and performed short music works. The highlight was three at the keyboard for the encore.

The Wesley Music Centre had a family atmosphere, with free cake and coffee at interval. One problem with the venue is that the intimate performance room is a little too "live" (despite the report from KDVL Acoustic Consultants), with the sound of the audience turning pages to keep up with the many works annoyingly audible throughout the evening. Perhaps printed programs should be done away with and the program (and in this case the words of the poems) projected on the wall above the performers.