Telegrams

T

Réunion, day 6

Moriarty on tour, Reunion Island, January 2012. 6 days of rehearsals with Christine Salem & her musicians, & little Zoe too, trying to grasp that maloya rythm. A nightly concert of Sophie & Christine Salem in the middle of the sugarcane fields above St-Pierre, Kabar Boissy. Dust and smoke and swaying bodies until three. Up in the Cilaos circus, between the cliffs of dark stone and...

Réunion (dancing with Zoe)

Moriarty’s with Christine Salem & her musicians, Ile de la Réunion, January 2012; today we’re playing with Zoe on the cigar-box guitar.

Réunion, day 1

January 22nd 2012, Ile de la Réunion, the « Saline » sessions: Moriarty rehearses for future concerts with Christine Salem & her musicians, Harry Vincent and David on the percussions… guitars, double-bass and harmonica meet kayamb, rouleur and picker percussions. there’s also a kabossi luth from Comores. And the voices of Rosemary and Christine Salem, in creole and english.

Brisbane

Queensland here we come! Our dear Tania welcomes us at the airport. On the way in, Brisbane’s skyscrapers glimmer in the sun; a storefront says « Jimmy Possum »… maybe a distant aboriginal cousin? Our home for tonight will be a mansion in the New Farm area, surrounded by fat tropical trees which exhale a sweetly suffocating animal smell. Down at the Powerhouse there’s no trace...

18 hours in Sydney

The Australian tour goes on… after a quick flight from Melbourne we’re in Sydney watching the monorail hiss overhead and with only two hours left before the soundcheck we scatter around the city, Surrey Hills and Bondi… then we reach the Hyde Park Barracks, former prison where the festival takes place – our dressing rooms are set inside the courtrooms where incoming...

Melbourne

Australian summer in Melbourne. Moriarty plays acoustic shows at PBS radio studios and Reading’s bookstore in St Kilda. January 2012.

Red desert

Roaming through the red desert… Moriarty’s australian tour, January 2012.

Werribee Parks

A gigantic picnic for 3000 people. a feast of french wines and pastries. Lush and mighty australian trees and flowers, lemon-scented gum trees, banya-banya prehistoric pines from Queensland. A cloister without the monks, a mansion with the australian flag flying at the top. Somewhere in one of the bedrooms, the lady who owned all that garden of Eden perished in the flames, a candle falling onto...

Alice Springs

Heat and sporadic rain. A gap through the McDonnell ranges. Aboriginal families roam across the dry bed of the Todd River, which flows only once every decade… Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia jan. 2012.

Songlines

Flying over the red desert. Trails and songlines from 30000 feet up. Melbourne to Alice Springs, Australia, January 2012.