Emma Donovan.
HIT Productions. Featuring
Emma Donovan with musicians David Tweedie and James Gilligan. The Q’s
Bicentennial Hall. April 5 2024’
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
Emma Donovan entered the stage
with a smile that instantly captures the heart.. She exudes warmth as she
greets the audience and approaches the microphone to begin the evening’s
performance at the Q Theatre’s Bicentennial Hall in Queanbeyan. Joined by musicians
David Tweedie on guitar and James Gilligan on slide guitar Donovan launches into
a repertoire that is both diverse and inescapably compelling. Here is a singer
whose voice charts 65,000 years of culture and tradition, whose songs echo the
love and the longing, the suffering and the sacrifice, the personal and the
political and the inspiration of her Noongar and Gumbaynggirr ancestors and
family. Donovan is the chameleon of song, morphing from soul to rhythm and
blues, from country to gospel and folk. Her vocal intensity is a powerhouse of
emotion and conviction from the familiar Blak
Nation to a prediction for our times
Change is a Coming. In two weeks
Donovan will launch her latest album Til
My Song is Done, which is a testament to her energy, her passion and her connection
to her indigenous heritage and her immediate rapport with audiences fortunate
enough to share a night with an artist of exceptional talent and the ability to
reach out and draw an audience into her unique ability to make the eclectic
mix of styles her own. While acknowledging the debt to people like Uncle Archie
Roach and Aunie Ruby Hunter or Paul Kelly her performance retains an individuality.
Even her full throttled rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water brings an entirely new sound and rhythm
to a song that speaks to the defiant voice of a strong and resilient descendant
of her singer/songwriter father and grandfather and the musical members of the
Donovan family.
It appears that Donovan’s song
will never be done. “We’ve got all night” shouts a member of the audience.
Donovan has already run about twenty minutes over the seventy-minute advertised
time, but her audience could indeed sit and be swayed by their capitulation to
songs that speak to the heart and to the soul.
With only Tweedie and Gilligan on
stage with her to provide the musical accompaniment and occasional vocal
backings, Donovan’s amazing voice and radiant personality were allowed to shine
and the audience became mesmerised by her songs. The Bicentennial Hall is probably
appropriate for an artist on a regional tour, but I kept hoping for a more theatrical
and intimate venue. A low level of house lighting would also have given a
stronger sense of shared community. Donovan sings of family, community and the
relationship between her and her audience.
As a postscript, Donovan will be
presenting her album launch, Til My Song
is Done at Virginia Kay’s Adelaide Cabaret Festival on June 24th
in the Dunstan Playhouse. If you are in Adelaide at this time don’t miss the
concert that is sure to take the festival by storm.
