COMPOSER’S NOTES
Interview with Michael Askill (Friday 27 March 1998), from the Program
When did you first start using music in a theatrical context?
It was a show I did with Synergy called Matsun, which used Japanese influences and instruments. We played with a shakuhachi player and a koto player who also sang. Graeme and Janet came to see it, and afterwards we got together and talked about doing a show, which eventually became Synergy with Synergy
When you started performing in Synergy with Synergy, did you imagine that it would be the start of a new direction for your work?
I had wanted for a long time to get involved in something else, but I didn t really imagine then that I would come this far with Sydney Dance Company. With Synergy with Synergy, we just gave Graeme the music – a selection of seven different works – and then he worked with it. Then Graeme and Janet came back one day a few years later to ask if I wanted to do Free Radicals. Synergy with Synergy had been such a large, expensive production, so for Free Radicals Graeme said, “let’s make it more of a chamber piece and much more flexible”. That’s how the collaboration continued.
How did you first feel about being thrown into the middle of the action in Free Radicals, as opposed to being confined to an orchestra pit or rostrum?
It was a bit daunting because of the extreme nature of the transition, not knowing what to do next, not having some line to follow. But after the initial shock it became evident that the interactivity between musicians and dancers would really work and had a lot of potential.