Renowned for his love of unusual and innovative wind instruments, immersive and engaging musical performance, and world music inspired collaborations and creative collectives, Linsey Pollak OAM is once again engaging others through the beauty of music and our stunning natural landscapes with his new ‘Sunrise Sessions’ series.
Filmed at beautiful locations around the Sunshine Coast since November 2022, and uploaded to YouTube and Linsey’s personal Facebook page, ‘Sunrise Sessions’ have garnered an incredible groundswell of support and appreciation, with the series resonating deeply on various levels with a wide audience both locally and internationally.
GC&M News recently caught up with the well-known musician and instrument maker, who had just filmed his 26th morning session. Linsey said that he had plans to continue on with this personal project indefinitely with some exciting collaborations with other musicians also on the horizon, as well as the possibility of extending the locations to beyond the Sunshine Coast.
Filmed at dawn, occasionally alongside other musicians, the series mostly features Linsey playing either bass clarinet, clarinet or a reed instrument from his extensive self-crafted range of hybrid and adapted instruments; always accompanied by the sounds of the surrounding nature and wildlife.
Linsey said some of the rationale behind his latest creative adventure was that the project had come at a point where he was looking to simplify both his life and larger scale artistic endeavours. Having spent many years travelling the world performing and investing passion and energy into big projects, Linsey said although he loved working on large productions, he was now keen to scale back; he was also mindful of the time and environmental impact of overseas travel. Over the last few years, he had consciously decided to stop touring overseas to lower his carbon footprint, however he still enjoyed composing, playing and sharing music.
“At the moment, my New Year’s resolution is to remove all the big administrative and organisational projects and just play more music. Maybe it’s also part of getting older – you just want to simplify things!” he said.
The initial concept was to make sunrise concerts both solo and with other musicians and invite small audiences to attend. Linsey said he soon realised he didn’t really want to organise more gigs, and he just wanted to do something simple for himself that he could also share with others. Using a very straight forward process of heading out with two iPads to record video and audio followed by simple post-production at home, Linsey said he was pleased that people had related so strongly and warm heartedly to the uploaded videos.
“I feel part of that appreciation is because the experience is one of meaningful sharing, and that it’s non-transactional. I feel like people also partially react to the beauty of the environment and the music, and enjoy a sense of being at one with the natural world,” he explained.
Linsey said he had held a long-term interest in playing in beautiful locations with the sounds of the environment as part of the composition, and felt Sunrise was a particularly strong and evocative time of the day. Equally inspiring, mesmerizing and yet deeply soothing, the Sunrise Sessions have been extremely well received, perceived by many as a generous gift – with overwhelmingly positive feedback posted online.
“I love waking up early and heading out to these beautiful spots. We are so lucky here on the Sunshine Coast – you can walk down the road and suddenly be in paradise playing music. I hope people can feel the strong connection with our natural environment and it opens up the possibilities that we can all have these wonderful experiences,” said Linsey. The videos are all available to watch at: https://www.youtube.com/@sunrisesessions202/videos
With a fascinating musical journey that spans over 50 years, Linsey picked up his first clarinet while still in primary school before discovering a passion for making woodwind instruments in his late teens. In his early 20’s Linsey discovered the Macedonian Gaida (Bagpipe) and travelled overseas, developed a lifelong fascination with Macedonian folk and Romani Brass band music before returning to Australia to facilitate numerous national community arts and educational projects, and multicultural music ventures which have continued to his day.
In 1990 he relocated to the Sunshine Coast, where he ‘reinvented’ himself as a musician – live looping solo shows and touring the world extensively, as well as co-ordinating larger performance pieces and appearing at most major festivals around Australia.
More recent projects have included Songs of Gaia (Ensemble Beyond Borders) as part of the 2022 Horizon Festival, and the MYCORRHIZIA project at the 2022/23 Woodford Folk Festival.
Linsey was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to the performing arts and music.
