Four Play Comes to Canberra
On the 17th of May, The Street Theatre will showcase the internationally popular, FourPlay.
The four identify themselves as, “indie rock band that just happen to be a string quartet.”.
Composed of four players, Lana Goodbridge on violin and vocals, Shenzo Gregorio on viola and vocals, and the brothers Peter and Tim Hollo on viola and vocals and cello and vocals respectively. I had the chance to talk to one of the members who lives locally, Tim Hollo, about the 20th anniversary of the band, playing in Canberra as well as his environmental work.
Q: What’s it like performing In Canberra as opposed to other places? And what is the live music scene like in Canberra?
A: There’s the luxury of playing to a really engaged audience, its an interesting space. Not that many venues, not as flourishing a music scene as you’d see elsewhere. Vibrant, but very small its pretty much impossible to make a career from just playing at pubs.
Q: Why did you decide to create Green Music Australia?
A: I want to reduce the environmental impact, and facilitate changes and to reduce environmental impact. I want to facilitate and organise, so that venues and studios have solar lighting, low waste packaging, paper instead of plastic. The environment movement is not making the kind of practical change that it needs to be achieving.
Q: How has the music scene changed in 20 years?
A: The most visible is plastic water bottles jug of water and its astonishing the amount of throw away plastic. At gigs 20 years ago, the performers would get a jug of water with glasses. Now you get multiples of tiny disposable bottles of water, which is so much more wasteful.
In the past there were a lot, more regional opportunities you could drive around in 2 3 weeks.
These days there is much more flight, so people flying to Sydney, then to Brisbane, then back to Sydney and then out again. There are better ways of touring, there was a broad range of opportunities folk festivals pubs, pub gigs closed down, because it cost too much and pokies took over a lot of that business. That meant that there were fewer gigs, and a lot of people stepped out of the industry.
Q: What would you say was your favourite memory of your career thus far?
A: Very recently with Neil Gaiman at Carnegie Hall. It was a magical feeling, you can see why this place is so famous. It was really quite a special experience, its quite large but feels intimate like you can reach out and touch your audience.
And I’ve always loved folk festivals, for the great community feeling.
Q: Where do you see FourPlay in the future?
A: One of the things about FourPlay is the relationship between vision and ambition. We love playing together and we get quite creative together, so we just keep doing what we’re doing. There are some interesting opportunities to work on environmental side of the industry. I’m driven by a great fear of the current ecological crisis.
We need to face up to the larger issue, and I’d like to phase out plastic water bottles in the industry, have more LED stage lights, solar panels on studios and venues and switch to recycled card packaging, which is both lighter, cheaper and prettier.
FourPlay will be performing at the Street Theatre on the 17th of May.
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