Easter at the Piano Mill 2021

A sonic treasure hunt for music, art, and architecture, directed by Vanessa Tomlinson

Sunday 4 April 2021
3pm – 6.30pm

Easter at the Piano Mill was derailed by Covid-19 in 2020, but we were back bigger than ever in 2021 for the fifth anniversary of the Piano Mill, in partnership with Tenterfield Autumn Festival! 

Curated by artistic director Vanessa Tomlinson, Easter at the Piano Mill 2021 featured:

The Boundary Riders – cued by the tolling bells of the grader blades which hang inside the Piano Mill, the audience traversed in and out of the internal boundary fence at Harrigans Lane, travelling into different magical worlds through each entrance and exit. The sites included;

The Bus Stop –by Caleb Colledge, Rebecca Lloyd-Jones and Jodie Rottle
Hibiki – by Erik Griswold with assistance from Kayleigh Pincott
Bowmore – Hannah Reardon Smith multi-flutes
Under Suntory – Matthew Horsley
The Approach – Vanessa Tomlinson and Jan Baker-Finch
Aardbek – Brodie McAllister
Limeburners – the history of the piano mill compositions featuring design/photos by Greg Harm with talks by Michael Hannah, Louise Denson, Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson, Colin Noble, Alistair Noble, Lynette Lancini, and Steve Newcomb
Lagavulin – performances by all-star pianists from the Piano Mill including Louise Denson, Erik Griswold, Michael Hannan, Lynette Lancini, Colin Noble, Cara Tran 
Finale Sounding by Vanessa Tomlinson, featuring all performers from the Boundary Riders

The second-ever complete performance of Erik Griswold’s All’s grist that comes to the mill, the piece that launched the building!

To our wonderful audience, Boundary Riders, Bach Bar Team, and Piano Millers - thank you for another exuberant, uplifting, curious and often surprising Easter event, filled with rain, mist and an amazing sense of goodwill. Here are a few memories for you all from the amazing documentary team of Tangible Media.

2021 creatives:
Jan Baker-Finch, Caleb Colledge, Louise Denson*, Erik Griswold*, Michael Hannan*, Greg Harm*, Matthew Horsley, Juliana Kim, Lynette Lancini*, Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Brodie Macallister, Alistair Noble*, Colin Noble*, Kayleigh Pincott, Hannah Reardon-Smith, Jodie Rottle*, Callum Senjov, Tamarind Taylor, Cara Tran, Vanessa Tomlinson*, Yolande Vorster, Chris Ward, Kym Ward, Chris Wardle, Jasper Wolfe, Jocelyn Wolfe, Zoë Wolfe

*denotes Five Year Long Service Award playing in The Piano Mill

Ardbeg

Architects: Nic Martoo and Nick Gonsalves
Musician: Brodie McAllister
An international award-winning Emergency Shelter, Ardbeg moved to Harrigans Lane in 2017, and became a home for sonic adventuring.

Limeburners

Architect: Bruce Wolfe
Builder: Nutide Constructions
Stonemason: Lee Keeland
Composers: Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson, Louise Denson, Colin Noble, Michael Hannan, Alistair Noble, Lynette Lancini, and Steve Newcomb

Besides being a characterful Australian whisky, Limeburners is a place to gather. Echoing traditional farm buildings and made largely from materials from the site, Limeburners was the meeting and memorabilia room for our 2021 Easter program. Audience met composers who have created works for the Piano Mill over the five Easter events.

The Bus Stop

Musicians: Jodie Rottle, Caleb Colledge, and Rebecca Lloyd-Jones
Artwork: Biochrome by Renata Buziak made from plants collected from the property.

Christened Albus the Mill Bus, this venue has been part of past Easter at the Piano Mill performances, on the move. This Easter, Albus enjoyed a stationary post, activated by Jodie, Rebecca, and Caleb inside and out. What can you hear in the still moments while you wait? A stationary bus, a time to pause. The Bus Stop reveals the sounds near and distant that may have been lost in the chaos of motion. Which sounds come from within, and what can be observed from beyond?

Lagavulin

Architect: Bruce Wolfe
Builder: Nutide Construction
Stonemason: Lee Keeland
Featured pianists: Louise Denson, Stephen Emmerson, Erik Griswold, Michael Hannan, Lynette Lancini, Colin Noble, Cara Tran
Artwork: Biochrome by Renata Buziak made from plants collected from the property.

Lagavulin, besides being a Scottish whisky, is our small building focussed on intimate performance of music created as “chamber music”. In keeping with the intimacy of chamber music, the space accommodates a small audience, about 40 inside. Fittingly, Lagavulin roughly translates as 'hollow by the mill'. Easter at the Piano Mill 2021 featured pianists of the Mill in solo performances for the first time, a snapshot of their individual artistry.

Bowmore

Musician: Hannah Reardon-Smith
A Scottish whisky or an outcrop of mossy granite boulders, either way Bowmore induces a dreamy state. This is the site for Hannah Reardon-Smith's 'multispecies collaboration'.

"Perched on the wet wood log of a fallen eucalypt that is suspended between three granite boulders and another tree, I am hidden from view by the moss, ferns, and rise of the rock. I start the tracks—recorded yesterday—on three phones, two borrowed, playing through three waterproof Bluetooth speakers concealed amongst leaves, stones, branches: decoy Hannahs. Whistling, fluting, the occasional birdcall, and a different quality of wind start to emerge from three directions around me. The wet of the log I am sitting on has long ago soaked through several layers of leggings and thermal underwear and I notice a leech explore the edge of a nearby leaf and toss it further away; I’m not too interested in a closer collaboration with that particular critter at this moment. I hear the clink of the chain around the gate 100 metres away as this group of listening participants make their way down the slope, and I begin to play."
- Hannah Reardon-Smith 

Hibiki

Musician: Erik Griswold
Featured artwork: Biochrome banner by Renata Buziak

Hibiki, meaning "resonance" or "echo" in Japanese, aptly names our bathhouse as well as a Japanese blended whisky. With a view over granite outcrops and tall eucalypts, Hibiki's cedar hot tub not only provides a welcome therapy for the body, but also adapts well as a place for music making. This year, Hibiki became the jewel box stage for toy piano performance. Precariously perched on an impromptu stage atop the hot tub, Erik Griswold sat at his toy piano and gave a miniature recital spanning several decades of music. The program featured John Cage’s “Suite for toy piano” (the first “classical” piece composed for the instrument), Michael Hannan’s “Pilgrimage” and his own “The little toy piano book.” In another set, Louise Denson also rendered jazz tunes for the toy piano's little keys, accompanied by Kayleigh Pincott's vocals. Sweet and soothing ... Hibiki style.

The Approach

Musician: Vanessa Tomlinson
Eurythmy: Jan Baker-Finch
Costume Design: Sharka Bosakova

The arch of a fallen tree beckons. Defy it and you’ll find your players, Impudence and Irony. No whisky here. But be beguiled by their approach … then return to the fold. Two bodies approach from the forest, mostly playing distracted thoughts, one plays on melodica, the other gestures. Sometimes they pause to listen, creating sonic windows, checking what else in the forest is listening in. As they approach the sound changes. Intensifies. Their attire rattles, shakes, crunches. They come to rest on tree stumps. Two new forest entities, Impudence and Irony.

Suntory

Boundary Riders: Brodie McAllister, Jodie Rottle, Rebecca Lloyd- Jones, Caleb Colledge, Hannah Reardon-Smith, Matthew Horsley, Erik Griswold, Jan Baker-Finch, Vanessa Tomlinson, and Chris Stover
Featured Artwork: Cyanotype by Renata Buziak on cotton fabric created from piano parts and plants of The Piano Mill

4:45pm. The chimes sound once again. Slowly trickles of sound fill the valley as musicians emerge, meander, tootle. Destination Suntory.
Suntory stage hugs the slope of a natural amphitheatre with a backdrop of eucalypts and distant mountains. A great place to enjoy the namesake Japanese whisky as the sun sets on chilly, misty days like this. Suntory is the largest stage on the property. The audience is diverted by players en route; the eye is drawn to Baker-Finch deftly stalking the stone wall of Lagavulin. Tomlinson on Tam Tam brings a sonic focus to our destination.The players assemble on the stage, one by one picking up the tune of the Uilleann pipes: The Sporting Days of Easter brings us to the end of Part 1.

The Piano Mill

Mill pianists: Michael Hannon, Colin Noble, Louise Denson, Lynette Lancini, Steve Newcomb, Alistair Noble, and Vanessa Tomlinson

The Piano Mill is a multi-award-winning mega-instrument designed by Bruce Wolfe and built by Nutide Constructions to be ready for its first 'performance' at Easter at the Piano Mill, 2016. Erik Griswold composed All’s Grist that comes to the Mill to launch the Mill on Sunday March 27, 2016. The 50 minute piece responds to various influences such as architecture, the natural environment and Australia's colonial history, and the individual character of each piano. Its second performance on Easter Sunday April 4 2021 marks the end of this phase of the Mill's performing career. New things are afoot! We love the images of the Mill and its other worldliness: observers, listeners, players, the forest, the lifting mist, the glow, the setting sun.

In Between

Musician: Matt Horsley
The journey from Bowmore, stop 5, to Hibiki, stop 6, takes us via Suntory (a Japanese stopover with an Irish twist).
Suntory stage sits in the cradle of a natural amphitheatre. We'll come back to it in the program finale, but for now, our ears lead us to the call of the whistle and pipes of Matt Horsley.

"Sitting under the Suntory stage with a single tin whistle, I am reminded immediately of the pleasures of playing such a portable and cheap instrument. Having one with you at all times, rattling around in a backpack or glovebox, awaiting those moments when you find yourself in an unexpected quiet nook with a few minutes up your sleeve. I play like I would in those moments - not exactly practising, certainly not performing. Just gently occupying myself. If the listener is to engage they must indulge in an act of voyeurism. In the end, I unpack the uilleann pipes for a brief tune, The Sporting Days of Easter. It has a touch of vaudeville to it that seems to suit the unlikely ensemble I am playing with. Safely ensconced onstage, I find myself gradually returning to the (un)natural exhibitionism of the performer".
- Matt Horsley

Bach Bar

Designers: Chris Wardle, Chris Ward, Yolande Vorster, Callum Senjov, and Tamarind Taylor

The 2021 Bach Bar is a temporal space that interrogates the association of intimacy and memory in the physical realm. In the wake of 2020 this installation explores the dichotomy between the desire for physical gathering and the need for physical distancing. The bar was created by curating a collection of found objects, chosen for their historical tendency to be foci for gathering: a family piano, bar stools, a circular table, a ledge, a fireplace. To emphasise their special character the objects were painted a deep Royal Blue; referencing the chromatic fascination of the recently-discovered resident Bowerbirds. Sweeping planes of pink tape are woven into the existing built fabric, establishing physical connections between the Blue gathering objects and defining the territory of the Bar. The Pink is experienced differently from far away as a solid object glowing in the landscape, and from close by as hundreds of strips rustling in the breeze and shimmering as the dull sunlight glistens on the condensed fog clinging to the strands.