Megan Alice Clune’s musical movement Alaska Orchestra re-imagined Brian Eno’s celebrated album Ambient 1: Music for Airports to sold-out gigs and rave reviews at Vivid Live in 2018, marking its 40th anniversary.
She returns to the Sydney Opera House stage this Saturday night alongside Heather Shannon and Mara Schwerdtfeger with a brand new take on the game-changer that was, ironically, inspired by Eno’s deeply uninspiring, interminable wait for a long-delayed flight at Germany’s apparently super-boring Cologne Bonn Airport.
While on the subject of cranky, Rolling Stone reviewer Michael Bloom infamously said of the soon-to-be-mega-hit: “There’s a good deal of high craftsmanship here, but to find it, you’ve got to thwart the music’s intent by concentrating.”
Which goes to show you can’t please everyone. But Eno, the curator of the inaugural Vivid Live, sure has pleased a lot of folks along the years.
That includes Clune, Shannon and Schwerdtfeger. They’ll be backlit on the night by trippy backing visuals from renowned Sydney artist Carla Zimbler, with the resulting blissed out electro-acoustic gig the perfect way to ease into the weekend.
You can stream it from home live at 8pm on Saturday via the Opera House's digital platform From Our Hose to Yours, or catch up any time afterwards.
This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.
