If doing something more than once creates a tradition, then it's now traditional that Nora and I convene a composers and performers dinner at the Red Squirrel in Coogee when we come to Sydney. These dinners began two years ago, have occasionally carried on in our absence, and reconvened with us in tow a few days ago. The reason for choosing the Red Squirrel, beyond the fact that it's a fabulous restaurant, is that it belongs to Michelle Loye and her husband, composer Daniel Blinkhorn. Daniel was an associate artist with us at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida in 2004, and worked with us on iOrpheus in Brisbane in 2007. He's both a colleague and a friend. This week's incarnation of the dinner included composers Martin Wesley-Smith, Warren Burt, Catherine Schieve, Elena Kats-Chernin, and Peter Sculthorpe (pictured), along with soprano Rowena Cowley, reviewer and editor Jill Sykes, arts administrators Dick Letts and Len Amadio, and writer Jane de Couvreur. Quite a cosmopolitan group. It was a time to catch up, renew old friendships, and generally network in ways that groups of like-minded people always do. In short, it was a lot of fun. At this point Nora and I have known many of these people for almost a decade. So for us, the Sydney Club makes the distance between Australia and America grow less and less significant every time we reconvene.
