Issue 5 - The Serenade Files

— JANUARY – MARCH 2020

“The flame trees spread across the plains,
The burned out nation grieves.
We mourned and hoped for rain,
As fire swept through the leaves.”
Jennifer Trijo
| photo by Jennifer Trijo

Remarkable Rocks
“This photo was taken of the Remarkable
Rocks on the beautiful Kangaroo Island
in 2016. It’s so devastating to hear
about the vast destruction the fires
have caused, rapidly wiping out flora
and fauna, resulting in the loss of
human life. Some of the island’s native
inhabitants have been brought to the
brink of extinction. My heart cries for our
beautiful country and its wildlife.”
Pia Young, photographer

I’ve thought a lot about what I would love
this publication to become in the next
ten years, and I really want to build a
community of creatives around it. The artistic
community is deeply concerned about the
future of arts policy following the Federal
Government’s announcement to restructure
departments from February 2020; there
will no longer be a Department of Arts
and Communication. Nevertheless, I am
committed to giving Australian contributors
a platform for storytelling. I will continue to
highlight the work of the Aussie battlers in
the arts community, and proactively seek out
professional development opportunities for
my readers.
#5. Welcome
The prospect of new beginnings may allow
the imagination to run free, vividly creating
new possibilities, and directing us toward
bigger goals. This welcome is significant
in that we have ushered in a new decade
but the start to this year is bittersweet as
Australia endures its worst fire season ever.
It is heartbreaking to see the devastation
around the country and my heart goes out to
Aussie battlers everywhere. The generosity of
our fellow countrymen is heartwarming and
hope is on the horizon.
The ‘twenties’ present both uncertainty and
a sense of excitement for me. I recently
published Why I am not writing a list of
resolutions for 2020 on the blog as a selfcare
imperative. My aim is to narrow my
focus and diminish mental clutter.
Issue 5 is dedicated to those who create for
a living and the many ways in which these
creators have reached audiences with their
art. It features Hartstone-Kitney Production’s
Artistic Director Joanne Hartstone and Head
of Production and Tom Kitney, and filmmaker
and writer Indianna Bell as our Dolce artist.
Jakub Gaudasinski of Synthetica Digital Audio
reflects on his time as sound production tutor
for the Adelaide Youth Orchestra’s National
Music Camp, and James Murphy is back to
write his State of Mind column.
In other news, I’m elated to introduce a
team of new writers in this issue, and this
year I’ll be launching Crescendo, a new
category of articles dedicated to professional
development. I aim to build a library of
resources to help creatives to achieve their
goals in creative industries. Thank you for
supporting the arts and for being a valued
reader of my publication.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Trijo
Founder and Editor
WELCOME

Contents
JANUARY – MARCH
2020
5. Welcome
Accento
8. A new team of contributors
State of Mind
12. Cabaret is better than therapy,
says Frankly
Bravo
16. Fringe gets classy: meet the
power couple behind Hartstone-
Kitney Productions
Dolce
22. Indianna Bell’s stake in filmmaking
Synthetica
24. Reflections on National Music Camp
2020

Founder & Editor
Jennifer Trijo
Artist — Cover Artwork
Pia Young
Logo Designer
Jakub Gaudasinski
Graphic Designer
Jacek Gaudasinski
Contributors
James Murphy
Kristen Dang
Naomi Crosby
Quyen Tran
Tanner Muller
Contact us
PO Box 59
Greenacres
South Australia 5086
Instagram: @the_serenade_files
Facebook: @Jennifer.Trijo.TSF
The Serenade Files is published four
times a year by Jennifer Trijo and is
proudly based in South Australia. Views
expressed by authors are not necessarily
those of the publisher.
All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced without
the prior written permission of the
publisher.
Copyright © 2017 – 2019 Jennifer Trijo

ACCENTO
Introducing a team of
new contributors
Jennifer Trijo
It’s a new decade and the sixtieth
anniversary of the Adelaide Fringe
Festival therefore I am thrilled to
be contracting new voices for this
publication. This diverse group will assist
me in media coverage of the festival
during February and March through
reviews, interviews, and profile articles.
Each writer has a unique background
in the arts and media and I believe
they will bring valuable perspectives to
enlighten our readers.
Kristen Dang
Kristen is a writer, family doctor, and
mother who loves all things creative.
She writes a regular column for
Christian Today as part of Press Service
International, and has contributed to
medical journals as a writer, reviewer
and editorial team member. In 2019,
Kristen was a joint recipient of the
Basil Sellers Young Writers Award. She
also runs two blogs (lostnowfoundk,
lilyofthevalleysk), and enjoys making
music, digital artwork and dresses.
Kristen has a passion to see people
encouraged by the life-inspiring side of
the arts.
ACCENTO

Tanner Muller
Tanner is a queer writer and editor who
largely focuses on storytelling, interviews
and creative industry reviews. His work
has been published in Glam Adelaide,
Verse Magazine, Kill Your Stereo, and
YEWTH. He also performs spoken word
and has been featured during Adelaide
Fringe and Feast Festival. Having
recently completed his Honours degree
in Creative Writing, Tanner is currently
navigating the local industry. When he’s
not selling second-hand items at his
retail job, you can find him typing a new
story, or speaking his words at an open
mic.
Quyen Tran
Journalist and writer Quyen Tran prefers
nothing more than to immerse herself in
cultural experiences. Passionate about
art and culture, she has been actively
promoting spaces, events and quirky
interests in Australia and overseas since
2015. Next to writing, she relishes in
visiting intimate places offering good
grub and funny anecdotes with locals
and strangers. Quyen’s work can be
found with the Taiwan Tourism Bureau,
Insider Guides and Kyoto Journal.
ACCENTO

has written for film and publications
as a Flinders University student in
the capacity of academic work and
public communication of nutrition and
wellbeing.
Adelaide Fringe Festival will run
from 14 February – 15 March. Visit
https://adelaidefringe.com.au/
fringetix for more information.
Naomi Crosby
Naomi Crosby is an Australian actress,
singer, public speaker, and freelance
writer who holds a Bachelor of Nutrition
and Dietetics. Born in Edinburgh, she
holds true to her dual heritage from the
world’s largest fringe festivals. Naomi
has gained experience in children’s
entertainment through touring with The
Skeleton Crew, and presenting for Peppa
Pig, Sesame Street, and performing
various Disney characters. Naomi has
also worked as a host and singer for
various local enterprises and innovators
including the award-winning Post Dining.
As a dietitian, Naomi promotes wellbeing
and creativity as @nomcrosby. She
ACCENTO

ACCENTO

STATE OF MIND
Cabaret is better than
therapy, says Frankly
James Murphy
When quirky Adelaide songstress
Nicole O’Rielley aka Frankly enrolled in
an elective cabaret course at university,
she did not anticipate that the topic
would not only shape the voice she
uses on stage while seated behind a
keyboard, but also, occasionally, the one
she evokes to quell her social anxiety
when seated with friends around a table
at the bar.
Adelaide fans have become acquainted
with Frankly’s searingly honest voice
through her previous three Fringe
shows which have alternated between
bare-chested honesty and oddball
ridiculousness. Through her fourth
original cabaret work, Frankly’s
Wordrobe, the 2019 Adelaide Fringe
Emerging Artist award recipient says
she has arrived at a voice that manages
to blend the light and shade, and she is
ready to take this one the road.
For the wordy but socially anxious
O’Rielley, discovering cabaret (while
studying a BA majoring in performing
arts and creative writing at the
University of South Australia) was a
revelation, not just artistically, but also
as a therapeutic outlet, as she explains.
“Honestly it’s been more beneficial than
therapy; it’s great.”
“I think probably the best thing about
doing it was I used to have really bad
social anxiety; I couldn’t talk to people,
I’d just get all clammed up and be
horrific socially.”
“I guess the process of doing cabaret,
where I was sharing very vulnerable
feelings and embarrassing stories to
make people laugh, [afforded me]
that really genuine connection with my
audience. And those moments of silence
in the room, that you can tell people
are completely engaged and receiving
positive feedback, had this really good
effect on my emotional wellbeing
because it led my brain to process that
I’m literally getting paid to be myself, so
why should I hold back in my everyday
life?”
STATE OF MIND

Nicole O’Reilley is Frankly | photo by Daniel Sutherland
“It’s made me a
lot more open and
communicative. If I
can get on stage and
tell people everything
about me, I can live
my life and make
friends, interact.”
O’Reilley’s alter-ego,
Frankly, doesn’t just
make appearances
during festival
season anymore,
she says; often she
pops up whenever
times get tense or
uncomfortable.
“If I feel like I’m in a
situation where there’s
lots of people looking
at me and I feel myself
getting anxious, it’s
sort of like ‘oh well
Frankly can take over
this conversation’. I
feel like I can naturally
work in my show
presence in everyday
life to get myself
through.”
Festival February and
Mad March, though, is
when there is a flurry
of Frankly; she has
created a new work
each year for the last
STATE OF MIND

four years, with last year’s Big Smoke
Fauna winning her the Adelaide Fringe
emerging artist award. This recognition,
she explains, gave her faith that she is
on the right path.
“It was exciting receiving that award
and it helped me deal with some of the
doubts I have about myself; I have
shocking Imposter syndrome and spend
a lot of time thinking ‘I’m not worthy’, so
it was reassuring.”
“I think regardless of how well I get my
peers rocking up to my shows, I think
having that validation from the Fringe
Festival, that they saw my work and
believe I’m growing and improving was a
bit of a confidence boost. I needed that
because I was feeling disheartened at
times.”
While the hustle of Fringe can be
draining, Adelaide’s summer of madness,
O’Reilley says, is her time of year.
“I’m weirdly good in a crisis and I
feel that Fringe is the same; it’s a
lot of work, obviously and a lot of
energy output and you need be on for
people and engaging and charismatic.
Obviously, the workload as an
independent performer is really high, but
I usually get through it shockingly well.”
to give but getting through it is usually
quite good.”
For O’Reilley, the summer sun also helps
to raise her mood, she says.
“Usually there is that rhythm where
summer brings out my zest for life in all
areas of my life. In winter, I’m pretty low
energy; I get the winter blues pretty bad
so usually I’m just sleeping. I’m usually
a pretty moody person as it is, so if it’s
really cold for months on end, I’m quite
intolerable.”
Putting yourself out there as completely
as she does with Frankly, though,
inevitably does have emotional
repercussions, but O’Reilley has a
favourite tactic to help her get through
the season.
“I’m a big fan of the car park cry in the
car just to have that release just to keep
going because there’s no time to stop
really.”
Frankly’s Wordrobe plays the Gilles
Room at the Astor Hotel from the 20
February to the 13 of March 2020.
“I think because there’s so much
mayhem going on and it’s so manic that
you either sink or swim and I usually
feel like a couple of weeks afterwards
that I’m crushed and having nothing left
STATE OF MIND

BRAVO
Fringe gets classy:
meet the power couple
behind Hartstone-Kitney
Productions
Jennifer Trijo
Established in 2017, Hartstone-Kitney
Productions (HPK) has quickly become a
mainstay of the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
Artistic Director and Producer Joanne
Hartstone and Head of Production Tom
Kitney are the prolific creatives at
the helm of this multi-award winning
production house. They each have an
impressive portfolio to their credit, and
they’ve returned stronger than ever for
this year’s festival.
How did the both of you meet?
We first met through a mutual friend
at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe. Tom was
designing the original fringe production
of Trainspotting: Live and I had stopped
over for a few fringe days as part of a
European tour with my brother. That’s
when Tom and I learnt ‘of’ each other,
but it wasn’t until Edinburgh Fringe 2017
that our trajectories really collided.
In 2017, I was presenting The Girl
Who Jumped Off The Hollywood Sign in
Edinburgh, after winning the inaugural
Made In Adelaide award in Adelaide
Fringe earlier that year and completing
a hugely successful Hollywood Fringe
season. Tom had designed several fringe
shows – including Ben Hart: Belief, Choir
of Man and The Magnets. We had met up
a couple of times in London before the
madness of the fringe began, so there
BRAVO

was certainly an established friendship
going into the festival.
But as we weren’t working together,
it wasn’t until after tech week – after
all our collective shows were up and
running – that our friendship developed
into something more. Tom took me to
see all his shows, and he saw ‘Hollywood
Sign’ at least three times and I think
he was relieved that he didn’t have to
pretend to like it! We had a huge group
of mutual friends and there was a lot
of mutual respect – both personally
and professionally. Typically, most of
our friends knew there was something
between us before we did. We hung out
in London after fringe until I left the
country and we’ve been best friends ever
snce.
Why did you both decide to combine
your talents and create a production
company?
The decision to collaborate was a
natural progression, really. Tom’s only
constructive criticism of ‘Hollywood
Sign’ was of the production design –
specifically (and obviously) the lights.
Being an (already) award-nominated
Lighting Designer, he knew he could
make the show look like I had originally
envisioned. I had a season coming up
in New York, and Tom redesigned the
show for me to present Off-Broadway.
We realised how complimentary our
skills were, and together we could build
something quite exciting.
However, it wasn’t until Tom came to
Adelaide for the first time in 2018 that
we realised the true potential of our
partnership. Admittedly, each of us was
getting along quite far without the other
in this industry, but we felt we could
achieve so much more together.
We made a new show That Daring
Australian Girl together (with Director
Nicholas Collett) and the process
of creation was a dream. The show
exceeded our expectations, was very
well received and gave us another ‘hit’
production to tour. We also built a popup
theatre together and I continued to
introduce shows to Adelaide audiences
(2018 included We Live By The Sea and
Orpheus). Tom left Australia knowing
he was coming back to recreate our
Off-Broadway design of The Girl Who
Jumped Off The Hollywood Sign in the
2018 Cabaret Festival and the seeds for
Hartstone-Kitney Productions were well
and truly sewn.
You are the powerhouse duo behind
a multi-award winning company.
What do you think makes your
collaboration so effective?
We certainly have complementary skills
and talents at a similar level within
the global arts industry. We also now
have a shared vision and goal that
we collectively work towards – and
that we both develop and enhance as
time goes on. Tom and I have similar
artistic values, a congruent eye for

quality, and have
naturally developed
a shortcut of
communication
between us. We
certainly take a lot
of risks together
– personally,
financially and
artistically – but
then again our
whole international
relationship has
been rather risky
so it isn’t surprising
that we continue
to make educated
gambles. I think
the risk makes us
deeply loyal to each
other.
How do you go
about balancing
your personal and
professional life?
This is a hard
question to answer
for many reasons.
As most artists
know finding this
work/life balance
is challenging to
begin with, let
alone balancing
two workaholic
artists in the one
BRAVO

house working on the same projects.
Performance deadlines are strict
mistresses, and housework will always
come second to rehearsals. We are
still finding our “balance” with this,
as we rarely pass an evening without
discussing work. However, as work is our
shared passion, we define it as more of a
lifestyle than a work/life balance issue.
Tom says the only answer to this is
[having] dogs. Our Labradors Molly
(7) and Winnie (1) are not allowed in
the theatre, so we get to escape the
pressure of our work with our furmascots
at home.
Your tagline ‘Fringe Gets Classy’ has
created a buzz and for the past few
years you’ve curated the diverse
programme at Noel Lothian Hall.
What do you look for in the acts you
select?
It is really exciting that ’Fringe Gets
Classy’ is creating a buzz. Its origins
come from a description of HKP’s 2019
Adelaide Botanic Garden fringe activation
design: an enchanted rose garden,
complete with antique furniture and
chandeliers. Our artistic ‘happening’
would be “where fringe gets classy”, and
it really was as described, heightened
by a seriously good season of shows in
our pop-up ‘black box’ style theatre in
the Noel Lothian Hall. We pushed a lot
of boundaries, got a lot of notice and
developed a reputation, or as I like to
think of it, an expectation.
A lot has happened since last year. After
extensive consultation with Adelaide
Botanic Garden management and our
hospitality partners Blanco Horner
Hospitality, we acknowledged a need to
label our work beyond the name of our
location. After all HKP are a completely
independent theatre company that only
rent the Noel Lothian Hall for a couple
of months a year, and when we aren’t
using it the walls are white! Everyone
agreed that a re-brand of ‘The Noel’ was
appropriate to grow our activation.
In 2020, we will have three venues
in our ‘Fringe Gets Classy’ activation:
the Black Box Theatre (located in the
Noel Lothian Hall) with 14 outstanding
shows from Australia and around the
world; the Open Air Theatre, nestled in
the Rose Garden and housing the 2019
Best Theatre award winning Eurydice,
and her brother show Orpheus; and our
third venue is The Bus Stop, a voyage
point for a theatrical journey created by
Canadian immersive theatre experts Talk
Is Free Theatre.
Each of our shows had to fit with our
curation criteria: 1. High quality of
production (or perspective quality for
world premiere’s, based on the artist’s
previous work); 2. Interest to our
audiences (Will people want to see it?);
3. Relevance (Why this show? Why
now?); and 4. It has to be a perfect fit
for the venue (or we create one for it)!
BRAVO

You’ve curated twenty shows for
Adelaide Fringe 2020. What can
audiences look forward to this year?
This year is all about pushing
boundaries.
‘Fringe Gets Classy’ includes some of
the best solo-shows on the international
fringe circuit: Josephine, Dietrich:
Natural Duty, I’ll Tell You This For
Nothing, Femme, and a limited revival of
The Girl Who Jumped Off The Hollywood
Sign.
We are showcasing Australian musicians
with Gobsmacked! by Nikki Aitken and
Jamie Burgess, Spooners for Crooners
by Planet Clare, Joni Mitchell’s Daughter
by Delia Olam, and The Real Housewives
Choir. We are also presenting Writer / 20
세기작가 by Theatre Hooam, an awardwinning
Korean theatre company making
their Australian premiere, and reinforcing
our relationship with Holden Street
Theatres by co-presenting Casey Jay
Andrews in The Wild Unfeeling World.
‘Fringe Gets Classy’ is also pushing
the boundaries of genre and location.
A Special Day is turning our Black Box
Theatre into a chalkboard universe,
Orpheus and Eurydice are recreating
ancient myths under the stars, and the
‘Canada Capsule’ (a trio of immersive
shows by Talk Is Free Theatre) literally
transports audiences to a secret location,
including one show that is performed on
the moving bus!
HKP are again collaborating with The
Flanagan Collective and Gobbledigook
Theatre to create The Gods, The Gods,
The Gods, converting the Black Box into
a 360 degree gig-theatre experience
fusing original music, poetry, storytelling
and an immersive lighting design by
Tom.
We have also challenged ourselves to
realise one of our favourite plays and
are excited to present the all-South-
Australian production of Enterprise
by American satirist, Brian Parks.
Tom is designing, I’m one of four
South Australian actors, and we are
co- directing. It is fast, funny, clever,
very self aware, and a safe bet for the
discerning fringe-goer.
And we have have improvised Unplotted
Potter by Adelaide improvisation
specialists Scriptease because it’s
awesome.
What are some of the challenges
that you’ve faced while working
in the entertainment industry?
How have you overcome these
challenges?
It is very hard to tour shows
internationally, let alone as independent
artists with no guaranteed subsidy
or sponsorship. Limited resources
(physically and financially) results
in a lot of creative problem solving
and artistic compromise. [You ask
yourself] ‘How do you put a show on a

plane?’, ‘How do you build the ‘H’ of the
Hollywood Sign in the East Village?’, and
‘How do you set up an entire show in 15
minutes from scratch?’
For now, that has to be part of our
artistry – to see what we can create
with limited budgets and limited time
in places we don’t call home. Shows
are never perfect but we often get very
close, and now we can tour together so
we always have the others’ back during
the inevitable challenges. Together, Tom
and I have come up with some pretty
interesting solutions.
Perhaps this is why we are so confident
in our Adelaide Fringe activations.
Here we have the home advantage
[with] more reusable resources, more
supporters, greater production values,
and we get to invite the world to our
doorstep to perform.
We still have to set up the shows in 15
minutes though.
be asked to collaborate, or curate, or
participate. It is a hard slog for everyone
in ‘the biz’, with rare exception, so be
kind to your colleagues.
Thank you so much for your insight
and ‘chookas’ for your 2020
Adelaide Fringe Season.
Is there any advice you could give
to people who hope to work in
production or artistic direction?
If you have ambitions to curate festivals
or create theatre, know that you can
not do it alone. The ‘live’ arts are all
about working with others, even if you
are driving the project or operating
equipment. If you are able to work as
a harmonious team, you will advance
in your practice, no matter your craft.
Then, as work begets work, you will

Indianna Bell’s stake in
film
Jennifer Trijo
Adelaide has produced successful
filmmakers like Scott Hicks and Rolf de
Heer but there is a new generation of
talent that is worthy of note.
South Australian filmmaker Indianna
Hope Bell has begun to make her
mark on the short-film festival circuit
with several accolades under her belt,
and recognition by prominent arts
organisations such as Carclew.
awards for Safe Space and Call Connect
respectively.
Bell and Allen have been mentored by
experienced fimmakers Nash Edgerson
and Spencer Susser of Blue-Tongue Films
during Tropfest and, as a result of this
masterclass, produced the film Crossed.
The Stakeout Films duo are currently
working on a new film with plans to
partake in notable film festivals.
Follow Indianna on Instagram @
indianna_bell and visit https://
www.stakeoutfilms.com/ for more
information.
With a physical likeness to starlet
Scarlet Johansson, one would think her
aspirations would be on screen, however,
Bell’s expertise is behind the camera as
a producer, screenwriter, and director.
Bell is one of the founders of Stakeout
Films along with Josiah Allen and John
Chataway. Bell and Allen, both Flinders
University alumni, took out the Carclew
Young Filmmaker of the Year award in
2019.
Together they have created short films
Safe Space, Call Connect, Crossed,
Filmies, and Small Town P.D. and they
continue to build their portfolio, with
their sights set on even bigger projects.
Stakeout Films has been recognised
at the South Australian Screen Awards
and the Austin Film Festival taking out
DOLCE

DOLCE

Reflections on National
Music Camp 2020
Jakub Gaudasinski
Alright. Here’s a scenario. You
have less than two weeks, twelve
days to be exact, to record twelve
orchestral concerts, three of them
while simultaneously running a PA
system, and concurrently delivering a
course in orchestral audio production
and commercial audio engineering. I’m
writing this post hoc, so it appears that
I have indeed done just that and have
likewise survived, and I’m not sure what
units to use, but suffice to say that the
work compression ratio per unit time
was rather high. Logistically, artistically
and intellectually it was the most difficult
job I have done to date. But hold on,
let’s back up a little.
This was my first job for the year,
working as a Sound Production tutor at
this year’s Australian Youth Orchestra’s
National Music Camp held annually here
in Adelaide; a strangely action-packed,
utterly exhausting but altogether
challenging and very much rewarding
beginning to 2020.
I have accepted this mission, much like
any job anywhere else, knowing the
broad strokes of the job and knowing
that the details can only be ascertained
on the job itself. To be fair, only four
of the twelve concerts were orchestral
of the symphonic kind, but even those
carried two symphony and one chamber
orchestras, and most of the others were
sizeable too.
At this point it would be remiss of me
to pretend that I did all of this alone,
since as I’ve mentioned this was to be
a course in Sound Production, and my
two students, while initially relatively
inexperienced, were soon to be sorting
out microphones, installing cables,
configuring recording sessions, and
mixing chamber ensembles.
I do not necessarily see myself as a
teacher, and admittedly, in preparation
for the facilitation of this course, I did
open the books again to refresh my own
knowledge on what I knew I would have
to teach. Apparently, you only really
know something if you can explain it to
someone else, though my issue here is
with the word “teach” in and of itself,
since that wasn’t what I aimed to do.
I could grant myself the premise that I
can explain certain concepts relatively
well, but the greatest teachers in my
life (and there were a few) have not
taught as such, but rather they led by
example, and I have found this to be the
most powerful and compelling way of
not necessarily teaching, but giving my
students a stake in what we are doing,
so that knowing more about it becomes
something that is necessary, something
that is useful and therefore desirable.
In a very real way, I don’t want to teach
SYNTHETICA

the parameters of abstract problem
“x”. Instead, I want to put myself and
my students in a real problem situation
which gives us the parameters, and
where knowing how to solve for “x”
becomes a convenient and practical way
of apprehending said situation.
I have picked two bright, self-starting
young applicants (nay, individuals), and
on the afternoon of our first meeting
at the camp grounds I have introduced
myself to them, and then them to the
crazy plan before us. Twelve concerts
over three stages, two of them with PA
systems, and a fortnight to cover enough
mathematics, physics, and electronics
to make a semester of undergraduate
rocket science look comparable. Well,
maybe that last one is a stretch, but the
order was nonetheless tall, and I love a
challenge.
So, “lead by example”, I thought, and I’d
like to think I did just that. Throughout
the two weeks we have devised many
plans, carried and installed a lot of
equipment across the campus, invented
ways of reconfiguring the stages at our
disposal to accommodate the musicians,
listened to countless hours of rehearsals,
all to the tune of a constant stream of
questions going both ways. Indeed, my
students would ask me questions all the
time, sometimes about power supplies
and digital transport lines, sometimes
about non-linear editing or logarithmic
measurement, and I would do the same,
playing my usual devil’s advocate, giving
them a stake in, and responsibility for,
the recording projects before us.
And then, just like that, our two weeks
were up, and suddenly it dawned on
me that the concerts were recorded,
that I was very, very tired, and that a
hope grew inside me that the two of
my students carried away with them
not necessarily every one of my crazy
mathematical explanations on stacks
of graph paper, but a love for the craft
that is audio engineering, and perhaps
engineering in general with a love for
solving problems, I suppose.
SYNTHETICA

the Serenade Files
— JANUARY – MARCH 2020