This will be my last contribution in person to any event in the Mountains this year. I'll be taking care of the audience as MC at this very important fundraising concert for the BM Refugee Support Group endeavours. There will be a brief interview with performer Keyna Wilkins, musician/ composer & refugee advocate about her collaborations with unjustly detained refugees and the public awareness that is growing via these projects and others like these.
Moments of seriousness balanced by spirit lifting fun!
The Legendary MIC CONWAY and Robbie Long - A Circus of Comedy, Music & Magic!
The brilliant Mic Conway & Robbie Long’s irreverent and hilarious mini-vaudeville show is entertainment plus... A circus of comedy, music, magic, tap dancing and shameless bad jokes, combined with Robbie’s superb musicianship, timing and cheeky asides and you can expect the unexpected.
Born out of the legendary Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, Circus Oz and the National Junk Band, Mic and Robbie perform idiosyncratic tunes from Tin Pan Alley on guitars, ukuleles, saws, harmonicas, crazy noises and even newspapers. Both of them add various magic tricks and sight acts etc and you have a unique format of variety and new vaudeville.
MIC “MICROPHONE” CONWAY is an ARIA award-winning performer who has toured Australia and internationally as a singer, musician, magician, actor, juggler, fire eater and tap dancer. On vocals, tenor guitar, musical saw, harmonica, ukulele, gum leaf, silly noises, tap-dancing, fire-eating, juggling, magic.
“BIG DADDY ROBBIE LONG LEGS” is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist and recording artist who has toured internationally with Mic and others. On Guitars, ukulele, stomp box, mandolin, dobro.
Keyna Wilkins, jazz musician and composer extraordinaire
Keyna Wilkins is a pioneering Australian/British composer-musician. She is a two-time finalist for the Australian Art Music Awards for Individual Excellence in 2021 and 2018 (APRA/AMCOS). Her music is characterised by a passion for human rights, astronomy, Indigenous culture, jazz, intuitive improvisation and existential quests. Wilkins is an Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre and has five tunes in the Australian Jazz Realbook. She also writes music for films and theatre.
Keyna’s recent album released in 2021, "Set Me Free", a collaboration with an innocent refugee poet-artist detained for 9 years by the Australian government, Jalal Mahamede, has been described by New York DooBeeDoo arts magazine as "Beautiful and sobering...an important story to tell". Keyna will talk about this project with our own Meg Benson as well as performing solo for us.
Blackheath’s own choir, The Heathens
The Heathens, ‘an irreligious, uncivilised and unenlightened mob’ (dictionary definition), are surprisingly disciplined when it comes to harmonising on a good tune. We take the words of Eric Bogle to heart, when he says: And so when the music starts, open up your hearts / Let it soar like a lark in early morning /Sorrow, care or fear, tonight have no place here /They shall all soon disappear in the sound of singing’.