Sarah Blasko performs with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at the Adelaide Festival Centre. Picture: Regi Varghese/The Australian Source: The Australian
IT'S crazy times for Sarah Blasko.
As she prepared for her I Awake national tour with orchestras, she and musical partner Nick Wales were creating the soundtrack to Rafael Bonachela's new work Emergence, one of three new pieces for his latest Sydney Dance Company program, De Novo.
Yet the prodigiously talented artist maintains her customary cool, the picture of grace under pressure, even as she recovers from a throat issue.
Sarah Blasko will stream her Sydney Opera House performance tonight from 9pm.
''It has all just coincided in a weird way, putting out an album and now the dance. It has been an interesting period working on this music and now organising the tour,'' she says.
Sarah Blasko will stream her Sydney Opera House performance via Youtube channel youtube.com/liveatthehouse. Picture: Regi Varghese/The Australian
''But when I was working on Hamlet I was writing an album at the same time. You're trying to be creative and pulled everywhere. And it's been great.''
Follow Kathy McCabe's live review of the concert over twitter
Blasko and her generation of female singer-songwriters are seemingly determined to have it all.
Her resume also includes producer, having seized the reins for I Awake.
Her contemporaries are equally over-achieving.
Clare Bowditch acts and writes and mentors, Missy Higgins and Jessica Mauboy have delivered respected film performances, Kate Miller-Heidke is in demand for theatre and opera and many of their peers curate festivals or helm workshops.
All have musical side projects or collaborations, whether vocal or composition.
Blasko says all the creative activity is inspired by opportunity, rather than a financial imperative in this era of a shifting music economy.
''I just find it refreshing to do. These opportunities are good because you can bring out other things you like. I feel I have a few different voices, different colours,'' she says.
They were demonstrated with a sonic boom on I Awake.
The power of Blasko's songs gets a turbo boost in sections, courtesy of the contribution of the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, recorded in Sofia.
She produced the bulk of the record in Sweden.
''I wasn't terrified,'' Blasko says of the Bulgarian sessions.
''More than anything, we had to be super-organised and pretty clear about what we wanted.
''We had an interpreter - the conductor spoke some English - and it becomes more about the nuances where you need to connect.
''A lot involved Nick because he had done the arrangements, so he had to take centre stage and it was about me sitting back and listening.''
The I Awake tour is her endeavour to bring the studio recordings to ''full life'' on the stage with an orchestra.
The demand to be ''super-organised'' when scheduling gigs with orchestras will apply on February 17 and 18, at the Sydney Opera House.
''We left it quite late, just eight months out from the tour,'' she says, apologetically.
''I wanted to present the album as close to the recordings as possible; I don't know if I will ever be able to do it again with an orchestra.''
Her route to scoring a dance production was a little more circuitous.
The logistics were degrees of separation.
Wales worked with Bonachela and made introductions.
The creative conversation appears equally symbiotic as the idea of her contributing vocals developed into another collaboration between Blasko and Wales.
With Bonachela's vision as their muse for the music.
Blasko is renowned for her movement on stage while lost in the performance of her songs.
''Maybe years ago I started thinking I would really love to do some music for dance,'' she says.
''When I saw the film Pina, by Wim Wenders, that was the most moved I have ever felt by dance.
''And then a few things like that kept happening.''
Like her peers, Blasko relishes these satisfying departures from her more solitary day job as a songwriter.
''I like being a bit of a cog in the wheel,'' she says.
''It's one of the main reasons I would do a project like this, because I find it refreshing that it pulls you out of being the singer-songwriter. And people are often surprised by things, like how broad your tastes can be.''
Working on Emergence for SDC's De Novo season will inevitably inform her next solo work.
Blasko gets more brave with each of her creative choices so the Opera House shows are sure to be imbued with a sense of occasion.
''I want to turn people's expectations on their heads,'' she says.
''When people think of playing with an orchestra, they think it may be quite a gentle experience.''
