Music and Film / Channels, Creswick. At Tuggeranong Arts Centre, August 6-8. Reviewed by NICK HORN

“To create, to create, to create!” sang Creswick (formerly known as Liam Budge) in a perfectly balanced presentation of documentary film and music, celebrating the life, practice and philosophy of artists actively engaged with the creative process late in life, all with Canberra connections. Musicians led by Creswick provided sensitive accompaniment and performed his songs inspired by the theme of life-long creativity.

The film’s subjects are Vince Jones (jazz musician), Judith Clingan AM (composer, performer and music educator, present at this performance) Malcolm Cooke (ceramicist), Marily Cintra (visual artist known for public and community artwork) and Elizabeth Cameron Dalman AM (dancer and dance educator). All are over 70 years old, and speak movingly about art and its centrality to their experience.

Interviews are combined with sequences demonstrating, at satisfying length, the artists’ creative practice: a highlight is Dalman’s “grandmother tree” dance outdoors at her property near Lake George.

The film looks great, in crisp colour, with interesting framing and well-controlled editing that allow its images space to breathe, and the audience time to absorb the artists’ reflections. There are comic moments, too, with a social media clip showing a modern-day huckster taking us through the guaranteed steps towards artistic stardom. The texture is judiciously varied by archive footage, notably of a young Vince Jones in the first blush of success.

The special quality of Creswick’s production this evening was the synthesis between film and live music. And—my goodness!—this is as good a band as you could want to hear on a cold Thursday evening in Tuggeranong. Damien Slingsby (piano), Lachlan Coventry (guitar), Chris Pound (bass) and Nicholas McBride (drums) were guided expertly by Creswick (vocals, guitars, piano, rainstick).  In between semi-improvised soundscapes under the film—short licks lapping, the tide rising from time to time into a solid groove—the band came into its own with Creswick’s songs, jazz-infused but with folk/pop energy. Intriguingly, most were in triple time, with a cyclical feel sympathetic to the film’s theme of artistic renewal.

Under Creswick’s clear, controlled direction the ensemble played as a single entity, Slingsby displaying be-bop chops, Coventry taking a gorgeous solo on “You’ve led the path for me” and contributing percussive effects on guitar, Macbride’s drums featured in the jump rhythm composition “Is this the end or just the beginning?”, and Pound solid as a swinging tree by the side of Lake George on stand-up bass. Creswick’s intense, breathy vocals and full-body delivery were at the heart of it all, passionately driving the songs forward.

Film and music were at each other’s service in a production brilliantly conceived and executed by Creswick and his collaborators. Its success can be gauged by the fact that we all left the theatre uplifted by the courage and tenacity of the artists depicted, and by the continuing human power of art to persist in the modern world.

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