Live Review: Paul Kelly - Conversations With Ghosts

In tonight's specially commissioned performance titled Conversations With Ghosts, folk, pop, orchestra and poetry joined forces to summon up some spirits. The collaboration was driven by Paul Kelly and conductor James Ledger, tourists in each other's musical territory from time to time. As Kelly described it, “I've had time to explore some dissonance and new sounds and ideas and James has become reacquainted with the basic chords C, F and G.” The idea was to create a song cycle (a hoity toity version of a concept album) that took classic poems and gave them new flight via Kelly and a mini orchestra's delivery courtesy of a few Australian National Academy Of Music musicians. He called the orchestra “the flora and fauna in the new ecosystem” the group had created for these ghostly creatures and nominated Genevieve Lacey's recorder in particular as a key, non-lyrical 'voice' for those from beyond.

Most striking over the short but intense set was the importance of the rhythm of a lyric as well, as Kelly masterfully gave just enough presence (and space) in his delivery to let key phrases, words and syllables ring out among the harp, synth, strings and other un-pop sonic delights. The long and detailed verses were given room to be so (like Kenneth Slessor's Five Bells), while the more economical and simple, like Judith Wright's Woman To Man were left to breathe and ring out. Where grandness was needed, however, Kelly was also able to stand to the challenge (his delivery of WB Yeats' Sailing To Byzantium finally lifted it out of the HSC shackles it's lived in for this writer for years and brought it home to a more magnificent place). The ending, a Kelly original, I'm Not Afraid Of The Dark Anymore, showed how simple pop and ornate poetry can gracefully live side by side.