Recent content by kiwitechgirl

Looking at this from an Antipodean perspective, it boggles me. I had an experience a few months ago where we were doing Carmen on an island in the middle of Sydney Harbour (yeah, another Opera Australia outdoor extravaganza!). We had an issue with a harp which meant we had to get a replacement...

I’m so grateful to be in Australia where things are starting to come back to life. Opera Australia is back performing with a whole lot of protocols in place - good article here - and a reduced audience capacity, along with Frozen, and Pippin has just finished a short-ish run too. I’m...

And we’ll be back at 50% in the New Year with the opera company and Frozen and Pippin are both opening soon (presumably also at reduced capacity).

It’s going to vary hugely depending on where you are and what local regulations are. I spent far, far too many hours of my life discussing pit nets when the theatre went through a renovation; there’s no legal requirement to have one here however our risk assessment determined that one was...

With great pleasure: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/trump-campaign-appears-to-mistakenly-book-car-park-outside-landscaping-firm-four-seasons-for-press-conference

Also, can I just add that the Four Seasons landscaping press conference is the absolute funniest thing I think I have ever seen.

Australia is celebrating along with the USA. I thought both Biden‘s and Harris‘ speeches on Saturday night were excellent - and I’m willing to bet that Dr. Fauci breathed a huge sigh of relief. There’s been a fair amount of speculation here today that our government, who have been very, very...

There are a couple of studies happening in Colorado around woodwind instruments, and the Royal Opera House orchestra in London is doing some work on it as well. My understanding is that you don’t get much out the end of the instrument - the fewer twists and turns in the instrument, the greater...

We did a family one (singing is in our DNA and one uncle decided we could take on Pentatonix Sound of Silence) - we found the trick was a complete reference track - we sourced a score, fed it into Sibelius and then exported reference tracks from that - each vocal line had a specific track with...

I’ve told so many people about it. Such a great documentary!

We tour scaled-down operas around the country annually and they take a 12-piece orchestra with them. We have cut-down versions of most of the most famous operas - Carmen, Madama Butterfly, La bohème, La Traviata, Magic Flute and others I can’t remember right now. It can be done. However I’m...

Carriageworks, Sydney’s major arts centre (outside of the opera house), has gone into voluntary administration, as of yesterday. It’s an old railway workshop which has been revamped into a multi-venue space which hosts all sorts of events. We use it for rehearsals from time to time; a lot of...

I’ve been stood down for three weeks now (and had two weeks with no shows prior to that but we were doing a lot of prep for what we knew was coming, basically putting everything into hibernation mode) but the company is paying us 50% of regular wage and we can top up to 80% with accrued leave...

SOH have metal detectors and X-ray bag scanners for patrons, but not for staff/artists. I do have to swipe my pass to get into the building though and when I do, my profile pops up on the computer monitors of the stage door staff. Those guys are amazing and remember a huge number of names and...

Depends where you are and what type of music you’re talking about! I’ve got sound level readings going back to about 1994, I think, and I suspect our hearing conservation policy, which is in the union agreement, has been in existence longer (I’d have to go back through and check to be sure)...