Before Time Could Change Us
When my good friend Lyndon Terracini invited me to compose a song cycle for his wonderful Queensland Biennial Festival of Music, I had no hesitation in asking Dorothy Porter to write the songs with me. The author of such classic verse novels as "The Monkey's Mask" and "Wild Surmise", Dot is one of the great wordsmiths of our time, able to compress complex ideas and emotions into a few very well-chosen words.
My initial idea had been to write a cycle of twelve songs about love, each associated with a sign of the zodiac; Dot just kept them coming, and finally we had sixteen. In fact a seventeenth exists already, and may well prove to be the first of our next cycle. And the singer? Well, what can I say about Katie Noonan, except that a finer musician/vocalist would be hard to find anywhere. She sings these songs with passion and commitment, accompanied by the best band I could hope for: Scott Tinkler, trumpet, Simon Barker, drums and Philip Rex, bass. I play piano, understandably. As usual, the design has been wonderfully realized by Jeff Wassmann. The album was recorded by Robin Gray, with whom I have worked for twenty years. Also I had the advantage of my own beautiful piano, a Boesendorfer, which is unrivalled as a recording instrument by any that I have encountered over the years.