Idea of North:
The highwire of harmony

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I think Terry said it best when he said, "There are three key aspects of putting on a good show: great compositions or arrangements, excellent musicianship and the ability to entertain. The Idea of North have all these at the highest level." Many other musicians agree. It is not exaggerating to say that many of us see Idea as a standard of excellence, perhaps never to reach, but to aspire to.
After seeing yet another of their superb Melbourne shows at Chapel off Chapel, I took the opportunity in late May to arrange an interview with alto Naomi Crellin.

PH: How did the band get together?

NC: I am the only non-original member. The four original members, including Meg [Corson], all attended the Canberra School of Music, where they formed a friendship. They happened to have the right set of voices for a vocal group (soprano, tenor, alto, bass). They started transcribing songs, sang to friends in the lounge room, started to record and do public performances. In 1998, they committed to the group full time and based themselves in Sydney.

PH: You have reached a high standard of excellence. What inspires you?

NC: Professionalism comes into it. At this stage we can’t afford not to improve, it gives us forward momentum, seeing and hearing groups that are further along than us, such as [American jazz vocal group] Take 6 for example. They are such consummate professionals, but they are ten or more years further down the path than us.

PH: What other musicians and composers have influenced you? Do you have role models?

NC: In terms of vocal groups, The Manhattan Transfer at first, and more recently The Real Group, a five-part group from Sweden who we have toured with. They are very much on top of the a cappella world without being ‘nerdy’, which is often how a cappella is viewed from the public’s point of view. Australian a cappella in general tends to be more folk and world music influenced, in contrast to the US, which has more of a pop music flavour. There's quite a popular beat box trend in a cappella at the moment – a lot of groups have a dedicated vocal percussionist, unlike our Andrew [Piper] who sings while percussing. Andrew’s percussion is more fluid and subtle – it's simply suited to the style we happen to be singing at the time. Obviously there are limitations if he’s holding down the bass part as well, but the result is a more organic sound that suits our style better than the full on vocal percussion.

PH: I do like his drum solos.

NC: They’re good because they don’t happen in every song!
We did consider going to five parts but four-part is working. Four is very pure. There are more opinions and influences to consider if you add more. Our base style is jazz, and many extended jazz chords require five or six notes to properly define them. The holes that are left in the extended harmonies are tricky – our challenge is to imply them. I’m reminded here of a quote from The Simpsons where Lisa is at a jazz club listening to a woman playing solo violin and the man next to her complains that “it sounds like she’s hitting a baby with a cat”, to which Lisa replies, “you have to listen to the notes she’s not playing”. The man retorts, “I can do that at home”.

PH: The a cappella movement is perhaps not very big in Australia. Do you feel that you have to educate Australians in what it is all about?

NC: To a certain extent, through gigs and workshops, yes, we do take on an educational role. It is an unfortunate product of history that most Australians think of a cappella as barbershop quartets or community choirs. There’s nothing at all wrong with either of those things; we all have background there (Nick was actually a member of Four To The Bar, the barbershop quartet who won the Nationals in 1997); it’s just not what we’re about now. It's hard to reach people used to thinking that way. To help overcome this, we now mainly refer to ourselves as a ‘vocal jazz group’, rather than an a cappella group.

PH: Do you do work in schools?

NC: We do more and more school workshops.

PH: Do you enjoy it?

As long as the kids want to be there it is enjoyable. We find that high school kids who are already doing some singing are usually very enthusiastic about us. It’s a great opportunity for us to give back to the community as well as inspire a new generation of singers to keep a cappella alive in Australia.

PH: Is there a market for workshops to the general public?

NC: We did our biggest public workshop in Melbourne last year which was a whole day workshop for vocalists and groups of all ages and standards. Setup and advertising for such workshops is more difficult than school work. In reality it often takes a group or an organisation to decide to invite us to do a workshop, but if they build it, we’ll come!

PH: What has been the response to the Gospel Project album?

NC: So interesting! Some people are not happy with us using a band on some of the tracks, while others said, “Thank goodness you added some instruments!" The purely gospel thing didn’t cause a problem because the title gave fair warning. Some in more traditional church circles said “It's a bit modern for me”. But we have such a wide audience and, as a result, such a wide variety of responses! The album sold well so I guess that is a good indicator of its popularity. The three Leunig prayers (set by Nick) and the song I wrote which was influenced by Aboriginal spirituality, really stretched the boundaries of traditional gospel music. The four of us are all very different in influence and taste, and this variety contributed to the album. It really has something for everybody. Our impression is that most people like most tracks. Kids really like The Unfortunate Tale of a Country Chicken but their parents say “Why did you ever put that on the album! Now when we are in the car they just want the same track over and over!”

PH: It seems that, although you tour Australia fairly frequently, your audiences are far from sick of you, in fact they are growing, For example, you would have played in Melbourne only three or four months apart at the same venue, and the second tour was even more packed than the first.

NC: Our recent trip to Melbourne wasn’t part of an official tour. We just had a weekend free and decided to go down there. The audience growth and vibe is increasing; it is gradual but it is definitely happening.
The choice of venue is extremely important to us. At Chapel off Chapel, for example, the vibe is created for you, It’s not like walking into a lecture theatre or some other temporary venue and having to create the mood. We do need an atmosphere compatible with our style.

PH: Have you done any pub gigs?

NC: Only when we haven't been able to avoid them. The extraneous noises in such venues are very distracting both to our pitching and to the audience. It always seems that people order coffees and blended ice drinks in ballads, which is very off-putting!

PH: You have a very professional approach to developing the group. What is your long-term strategy as a band?

NC: Ultimately we would like to have control over where we go and what we do. In Australia we are achieving this, but at the moment we mostly travel overseas only when we get an invitation; it’s just so time-consuming to organise and as we are our own small business we all have a fair bit of administration to do on top of the music.
We are doing more overseas touring but we never go for very long, which suits us, especially since people have started having babies. Our goal is to do short frequent overseas tours for more money. We are doing more work in Asia, as it is closer and more a cappella focussed – the general public there love singing groups more than anywhere else in the world, I think. They treat us as world-famous! When we perform in Korea we do so at 2000-seat auditoriums and there are often autograph lines that stretch out of the door... very different to Australia!

PH: One very engaging feature of the group in performances I've seen is your very strong on- and off-stage contact with the audience. Not only were you entertaining onstage, but you mingled with the foyer crowd afterwards and talked to fans for a long time. Is this kind of contact important to the band?

NC: Onstage or off-stage, we enjoy the stimulating contact with people. At the end of the day we are doing it for the audience. We do find that the smaller the gig, the more you get to connect.

PH: Does the band take on certain roles or personas on stage?

NC: Yes, but they reflect to some extent our actual personalities! Andrew is the straight man who later surprises you. Nick [Begbie] does have a tendency to rabbit on. I then play the school marm and try to keep him in check. Sally [Cameron] can play the diva soloist to the hilt.

PH: As you mentioned before, you use a lot of extended harmonies. As a group, do you have excercises that you use to help with pitching and so on, or is it simply the result of lots of time working together?

NC: Both. About 80% of the time we are simply working on material in a very detailed way. Each phrase is really an exercise in itself. We might typically spend half an hour on four bars, two parts at a time – that really exposes problematic issues that might be harder to spot with the whole group singing. We also do chromatic exercises, using twelve-tone techniques to generate really complex harmonies. We also practice scales and modes, missing various notes from various parts – that's great for developing rhythmic accuracy.

PH: Your rhythmic moves often seem to be as challenging as your harmonies, but your ensemble hangs together none the less.

NC: There's often a leg tapping somewhere on stage. Nick is always tapping.

PH: Since Trish [Delaney Brown] took leave to have a baby, her replacement Sally has integrated into the band extraordinarily well. It must have been an enormous challenge not only for her, but also for the ensemble of the band. Was it a hard decision, whether to pick up a maternity-leave member?

NC: It wasn’t a difficult decision – when Trish announced her pregnancy, we always knew that this was going to be a professional thing, there was always going to have to be someone to step in.

PH: I imagine it would be a much-sought-after gig!

NC: Not really, actually. We thought, “Who would want to do this - the salary isn’t exactly movie star level – most of the people who do what we do are already doing it. There was not a huge pool of people putting their hand up for it. After two days of auditions we chose Sally for a few reasons. One of the main ones was that she and I had sung together for ten years in Adelaide before I joined TION, and as a result we blended really well, which is so important in our job. We knew we could never replace Trish's unique voice, but Sally's voice is fitting in really well and she’s done an amazing job learning over 40 of our charts in just a few months.

PH: What are your upcoming tour plans?

NC: At the end of the week we are off to Europe to do a vocal festival in Finland and one in Germany, with a side visit to Sweden on the way home. It will be great to be in Finland, to be above the Arctic Circle in summer! Later in Australia we will be touring for three months to promote our live concert DVD.

We did a lot of the editing ourselves, with help from a wonderful team of professionals. We’re very proud of it; it's our biggest ‘baby’ to date.

The Idea of North are currently touring the nation. You can catch the Melbourne launch of their new DVD "Live at the Powerhouse" on July 29th at Chapel off Chapel, Prahran - see www.idea.com.au for more details.

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Walk me through your takeover

... from front page

...again...

Meanwhile in the UK, EMI’s board has recommended the acceptance of a takeover bid by private equity entity Terra Firma.

Pay to play, or sign away

Payola continues in the US. Following a campaign by New York state’s Attorney General Eliot Spitzer the feds have jumped on the bandwagon. The FCC have done a deal where the major US broadcasters will cop a fine of US$12.5 million but admit nothing. (I guess $12.5 million buys you a lot of silence – ironic for a broadcaster!). The deal also includes the development of an industry-wide code of practice and time slots for independent labels in the broadcasters’ programming. Since the deal was struck, monster US network Clear Channel has offered independent artists airplay if they sign away royalties! New dogs, old tricks….

Still, Spitzer’s efforts in NY have so far netted US$36 million. No sign of any activity on this front in Oz. In fact no one except us seems to be asking the question.

Vale Farrington

Melbourne musos were saddened recently by the death of Denis Farrington. Farrington arguably employed more musicians and over a longer period than anyone ever in the history of the universe. The funeral packed out St. Kilda’s famous Sacred Heart church and was followed by a wake in St. Kilda, attended by a large crowd of musos from many different parts of the music scene. An excellent band played but there was, appropriately, no bass.

Music, Jobs, for all.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has snared EMI in his move to unencrypted downloads. The non-DRM files will be more expensive but have, allegedly, better sound quality. Given that anti-piracy software was the big attractor for the major labels to join iTunes in the first place it will be interesting to see how long it will be until they all follow EMI’s lead. Has the iTunes long tail become the Big Dog?

Smoking bans destroys known universe

Well, not quite. Smoking is now banned in Victorian pubs. The sky has not fallen and there is no reported loss of gigs yet!

I'm sure that gives us all something to smile about!

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