A month late, but here’s the final lot of my photos from Sydney Festival.
First up is Festival First Night, featuring Grace Jones, Santogold (before she became Santigold) and Busy P DJing plus loads more i didn’t see. It’s always one of the highlights of the festival; it’s free and takes over the city with thousands of Sydneysiders.
Then we have Bon Iver. He played 5 sold out shows and i was lucky enough to photograph one, then go back on his final show to see it as a regular punter.
During the final song he had the entire City Recital Hall audience singing the refrain "what might have been lost" until it built up to a raucous crescendo. The best live show i’ve seen in ages. Time Out loved it too.
After shooting Grace Jones at Festival First Night i was lucky enough to go back for another shot at her side show at Enmore Theatre. What a woman – 60 years old and looking and sounding amazing and still as loopy as ever.
Unfortunately i didn’t see the full Reggie Watts show but i was treated to a little performance for the cameras. He does this amazing thing of live sampling his own voice to build a song, which is often entirely improvised.
Here he is performing in Hyde Park.
Sydney Festival has more videos of Reggie performing impromptu sets on the streets of Sydney.
Then we have Pivot and Metronomy for the Pop Frenzy party at the Becks Bar. You can see video of the whole sets at Moshcam.
And finally it’s Marawa Ibrahim performing at La Clique in the Famous Spiegeltent.
You can see all the photos in the Sydney Festival 2009 gallery.
I love that hula shot. How they hell does she do it?!?
Marawa is funny! I have taken lots and lots of photos of her when she was still in Melbourne
http://photos.timchuma.com/GSCircusPieClassic2007/photo209.html
I also went to the National Academy of Circus Arts (NICA) end of year show with the third year students last year to see some of the new talent coming through.
Bon and Fleet Foxes were the best gigs of the year so far imho.