Look out for duoBliss! in 2026. Fingers crossed, you can see us perform at the National Celtic Folk Festival in Port Arlington 5–8 June and the Sydney Fringe Festival in September!
I began working with chanteuse, actress, musical curator and raconteur, Nadia Piave, after studying postgraduate music performance with her at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the mid-1990s. At the time I had a grand performance idea of intersecting projected images, recorded music, poetry recitation and live music into a performance, and Nadia was up for it. She had just completed a Master of Music majoring in “mad songs” of the English baroque; she describes herself as a bit of a firecracker. I think she is the perfect accompaniment to the
harp. Our first program we called “Bliss”, and to keep it simple we became duoBliss! The exclamation mark is Nadia—she is addicted to them.
In 2003 we performed at the Gymea Baptist Church, Turramurra Uniting Church, St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney and St Matthew’s Anglican Church, Windsor, in NSW. Our collaborative artists featured in the audio visual component were: Chris Jones (composer/guitarist), Wendy Buchanan (actor) who recited The Surfer by Judith Wright, Seamus Makim (film maker), Lyn Woodger Grant (artist), Bob Rowntree and Geoff Cresswell (photographers). We soon realised my dream performance—projectors, screens, audio equipment—was too complicated to manage, so we cut it back to just the live acoustic music. In 2004 the scaled back “Bliss” was performed for the Peninsula Music Club, Warriewood, the Murray Art Museum, Albury, the Viva la Gong Festival, Wollongong, as guest artists of Music Illawarra, NSW, as well as performances in Ballarat and Shepparton, Victoria. Joined by recorder player, Matthew Ridley we performed Classical and Celtic music for the Macarthur Music Club, in Cobbity, NSW.
Our next musical adventure was poetic, titled “and their song melts with the moonlight . . .”, and inspired by the symbolist movement. We performed it at Nieder Weisel, the National Trust registered historic mansion, in Ballarat during the 2006 Begonia Festival, and at the SheppARTon Festival in Shepparton, Victoria.
In 2011, duoBliss! presented “Son et Lumiere”, featuring the works of the composers known as Les Six, at the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival, we were joined by Andrew Woodhouse (organ), Barbara Hornung (viola), Gotthard Killian (flute and ‘cello) and Patrick McCabe (guitar). Later that year duoBliss! collaborated with students of the Australian National Academy of Music, at the South Melbourne Town Hall, to perform Claude Debussy’s sensual Trios Chanson de Bilitis.
The idea for our folk-art program GREEN sprouted when Australian artist, Lyn Woodger Grant, offered to photograph us in her Roseville garden. It was one photo of the shoot that planted the seed to bring GREEN to life. We collected songs that explore the shades, tones and complexities of green in their titles, lyrics or themes. Reimagining evergreens such as Greensleeves, Robert Burns’s Green Grow the Rashes, Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, Jimmy MacCarthy’s Ride On, and The Fagans’ Greenswell, alongside traditional folk songs from the green isles.
GREEN premiered in 2022 at the Yandoit Cultural Concert Series, and at Tempo Rubato for The Melbourne Fringe Festival. In 2023, supported by the Sustaining Creative Workers Program—Regional Arts Victoria, H Squared Studios recorded GREEN, live at the Ballarat Trades Hall, further performances followed at the Barwon Heads Fine Music Society, and in the historic Lauriston Chapel as part of the Langley Estate Concert Series in Bendigo.
duoBliss!’s GREEN program is our musical contribution to being green, sustainable and ecologically conscious, as we aim to continue sustaining the creative ecosystem, especially in the regional arts arena.