Discover

#29: Berlin (1995)

published

30 August 2019

In 1995 Graeme Murphy collaborated with Icehouse’s Iva Davies for a second time on a love letter to the city of Berlin. The dominant physicality, according to Murphy, was that of “cranes lifting the spirit of the city towards the future, juxtaposed with a street riddled with deep dark holes that seem to contain the ghosts of its past”.

Davies and Max Lambert at Coogee

Fittingly, the score sounds like a cabaret at the end of the world, with covers of David Bowie, The Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, The Cure and Talking Heads performed with extravagant, flamboyant flourish by pianist Max Lambert, alongside a cellist, jazz drummer and bassist.

Former Company dancer Katherine Griffiths

“The idea for the music of Berlin was based around the salons of the 1800s, where wealthy people would hold small recitals and concerts in their drawing room, with everyone sitting around the piano, perhaps with a cellist,” remembers Iva Davies. “The ensemble did a miraculous thing for these songs, because you could do anything through it, like Public Image.”

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