Paul Kelly Leads THIRTEEN WAYS TO LOOK AT BIRDS at Sydney Coliseum Theatre

Australian music legend Paul Kelly brings together an eclectic group of musicians in Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds to create a unique marriage of electronics, acoustic instruments and the human voice to celebrate winged creatures from the barn owl to the nightingale, from the thornbill to the falcon, from the magpie to the swan.

Paul Kelly said "Birds have fascinated poets for centuries, not just for their song and flight but as symbols: of hope, freedom, love, communication, peace, luck good and bad, and migration. And what better way to honour them than by sending songs out into the air?"

Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds is a concert performance composed by Paul Kelly and James Ledger. The 2019 ARIA Award winning album of the same name brings together musicians from broad-ranging backgrounds to perform bird inspired poems, written by John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson, Judith Wright, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gwen Harwood, A D Hope and others.

Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds features Seraphim Trio with Anna Goldsworthy on piano, Helen Ayres on violin and Tim Nankervis on cello, along with composer James Ledger and singer-songwriters Paul Kelly and Alice Keath.

Paul Kelly said "Anna Goldsworthy approached me two years ago about the possibility of doing a show with her trio Seraphim. We started tossing poems, old and new, back and forth and James Ledger and I set to work.

We recruited Alice Keath for her distinctive singing and instrumental skills on banjo, auto-harp, glockenspiel, percussion and synthesizer. James fired up his electric guitar with effects pedals and at our first workshop in July 2018 we sensed a hybrid winged beast emerging from the pages of our poets via our muscles, brains, hearts and mouths."

"We've aimed to create an evocative sound-scape, each poem its own world, delicate and intimate at times, colossal and grinding at others, with all states in between, all the while celebrating winged creatures from the barn owl to the nightingale, from the thornbill to the falcon, from the magpie to the swan."

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