52 Fridays
Highlighted tracks from the album
52 FRIDAYS PROJECT & album release
as featured in Emmy award-winning Sonya Pemberton’s documentary ‘Cracking COVID’ on ABC (Australia)
In October 2019, Dale decided to embark on an ambitious artistic project, committing to create a spontaneous piano improvisation every Friday for an entire year. Performances were filmed to document the process and posted to YouTube. Little did he realise this commitment to 52 FRIDAYS was about to be influenced by a tumultuous year ahead – a year as improvised and randomly structured as his performances. These compositions, formed during Victoria’s length lockdowns, became deeply personal artistic responses to events and circumstances beyond Dale’s control, as the isolation of his studio began to mirror the world around him.
‘Wind’s Telephone’. Inspired by the story of Itaru Sasaki’s telephone booth, constructed in his garden so he could talk to his departed cousin, and has since allowed thousands of Japanese to do the same with their loved ones. Spontaneous Piano Improvisation No.30
Fast forward to 2021, Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker, Sonya Pemberton, contacted Dale to discuss collaborating on her new documentary film, Cracking COVID, after viewing the performances on YouTube.
Sonya had a sense of what she wanted, “solo piano, not maudlin but full of dissonance and strangeness”.
“Here was a genuine soundtrack to the pandemic, created in real time, just as our filming of the science response was evolving in real time. It became clear to me that in so many ways were all improvising. We had to find a way to weave this unique and authentic element into a mainstream science documentary. What has evolved is a very different film to what I imagined at the start, 16 long months ago. It has become a tender story of hard science, a story that’s surprisingly sweet and funny at times, whilst also deeply, profoundly sad. It has become an unusual record of these times, a gentle contribution to collective remembering.” Sonya Pemberton
The end result? Cracking COVID features several of Dale’s video improvisations (watch trailer here), along with many performances from the project used as underscore throughout the film.
52 FRIDAYS consists of 16 tracks selected and remixed from the original spontaneous improvisations on YouTube.
52 FRIDAYS – Apple Music/iTunes
52 FRIDAYS – All other streaming platforms
Review excerpt by Kevin Perry at TVBLACKBOX.COM.AU “….Dale’s music provides a telling and deeply emotional soundtrack to Cracking Covid”
FAN RESPONSE…..