Stuart Dempster, Tuning the Air & the Simpsons

Taylor, one of the musicians in Tuning the Air, prepared this 'Tuning the Air meets the Simpsons' send up. It can only be fully appreciated by those of you who know members of the team.

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Had the remarkable opportunity to hear Stuart Dempster perform tonight. The performance marked the 07-07-07 convergence as well as the observance of Tanabata ("Seven Evenings"), a Japanese/Chinese star festival. It also happened to be the birthday of both Dennis Rea (his 50th) and Stuart Dempster.

The photos above are from intermissions. (Though these are musicians who would very likely welcome random shutter noise in their performances.) At one point during a piece called Dronabata (all pieces took their names from a pun made from 'Tanabata') Dempster was in the middle aisle in the midst of the audience, whirling like a dervish, except that he was playing a long thin didgeridoo which spun around and around over the heads of the audience.

I went to see this show partly to see Dempster who plays on a favorite album: Deep Listening. The other reason was to scope out the venue. Tuning the Air has been approached by Steve Peters, a composer and the director of the entity that is hosting these performances. This wouldn't work as a permanent home for Tuning the Air, but it would certainly make a great occasional venue for the team to play in, not to mention sub-projects like the Solaris Project.