In something of a musical coup, local violinist Cedar Newman has persuaded renowned Australian pianist Simon Tedeschi to join her for a one-night-only concert with the BlueScope Youth Orchestra to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières at Wollongong Town Hall on August 17.
Tedeschi has long outgrown the prodigy label that was something of a burden, and graduated to a less-pressured position as a distinguished mid-career artist. He recognised Wombarra resident Cedar’s talent immediately and loved that she was interested in performing challenging works from his favourite period – the early 20th century – by composers who don’t get enough airplay.
“These days concert promoters want to play it safe. We are living in conservative times. But in Wollongong, Cedar and I are performing a repertoire that is not standard, not the potboilers.
“The amazing sonata by Bloch requires a lot of practice, which is quite humbling,” he says, stroking his cat Nana while speaking from his Sydney home via Zoom.
The two musicians hit it off well enough to plan a further collaboration in Sydney performing jazz together in August.
These days, Tedeschi does not travel as much internationally, although his diary is booked into next year. He is collaborating more and doing less solo work “which suits me as I love chamber music”. He has also diversified into writing, with an intriguing, hard-to-categorise book called Fugitive, a personal collection of sometimes esoteric meditations on music, and everyday observations that range from the sacred to the profane (including a delighted discovery that Mozart kept a fart diary). The process of writing is the exact opposite of performing, “but at least you can hit the delete key. And having always been a very quick learner when it comes to playing, writing has taught me patience”.
In Meeting Mozart, a show he co-wrote, he has found new pleasure introducing very young children to classical music, dressing up as the composer in an outrageous wig and silk frock coat – a flamboyantly extrovert persona that belies his naturally introverted nature.
In 2017, he married three-time Archibald finalist Loribelle Spirovski and says that her company made Covid lockdown bearable. He used the time to catch up on reading and concentrate on repertoire he had neglected. “I know how hard it was on the performance community but, for me, it was a wonderful sabbatical.”
He is extremely attuned to the energy that audiences bring to a performance.
“I can tell, the instant I walk out on stage, what the vibe is and I adjust to that frequency as I register the hall, the acoustics and all the other variables that come into play, like the age of the audience, whether or not there is an interval, the coughing. I often connect with one person and play as if just for them.
“The toughest thing was playing a gig with the SSO at Sydney Town Hall post lockdown to a thousand people in masks. I need to see people’s faces.”
No doubt Wollongong will greet him with a warm smile.
The Music for Medicine Fundraising Concert for Doctors Without Borders is on Thursday, 17 August , 6.30pm at Wollongong Town Hall. Tickets $20-$40, book via wollongongtownhall.com
