Helpmanns’ contemporary music wins show an edge

The judging panel for the contemporary music categories of last night’s Helpmann Awards – made up of promoters, agents, festival and venue operators and music media – showed a real edge.

Patti Smith, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and the experimental MOFO Festival won over more populist offerings.

Smith and Bluesfest Touring took out Best International Contemporary Concert, for seven theatre sideshows around two appearances at Bluesfest Byron Bay.

She was up against major drawcards Adele (600,000 tickets through Live Nation Australasia) and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (200,000 tickets through Frontier Touring) as well as PJ Harvey who was toured by Billions Australia.

“It is very gratifying for my band to be recognised for our collaboration with the people of Australia,”Smith said a message following her win.

“Each concert felt that way, as if we all formed each night together.”

She thanked Bluesfest Director Peter Noble and his team “for all their efforts and patience” to bring them back to Australia, and her London-based agent Andy Wolliscroft of Primary Talent “for al his hard work.”

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Billions Australia, won Best Australian Contemporary Concert following their January run in the wake of the #1 ARIA chart debut for theSkeleton Tree album.

The tour included an outdoor performance on the banks of Lake Wendouree in Ballarat which saw Cave and Warren Ellis return to the area of regional Victoria they grew up in.

Other nominees for the categoryincluded Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier’s The Beginning & The End, Flume and Missy Higgins.

In Best Contemporary Music Festival, Tasmania’s MONA FOMAhad to compete against St. Jerome’s Laneway, Bluesfest and WOMADelaide who draw far larger crowds.

But Brian Ritchie’s program included Saharan psychedelic rock, interactive vintage synthesisers, a 24-hour pipe organ marathon, Puscifers wrestlers, amplified water tanks, Peaches Christ Superstar and the world premiere of Mike Patton and Anthony Patera’s new Tetema project – giving it the edge it needed to take out the award.

The festival drew 11,500 people over five days in January, of which 35% came from outside Tasmania and made it a tourism and cultural boon which other regional centres in other parts of the country are looking at replicating.

Responding to theirHelpmanns triumph, the MONA FOMA team explained that theartists and audience share equal credit with the organisers, “because the process won, not the product”.

“Winning this award is an affirmation of the work we’re doing in Tasmania,” they said.

“It points to a new way of creating, listening and absorbing music.”