Adventures in Pianoland. Written and directed by Gaylene Preston. Music and lyrics by Jan Preston. The Street Theatre. August 11-14. Tickets $29-$35. 62471223 or thestreet.org.au. In Conversation With Jan Preston and Gaylene Preston. The Street Theatre. August 10, 6.15pm. Free. 62471223 or ushers@thestreet.org.au.
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New Zealand-born composer and songwriter Jan Preston and writer and director Gaylene Preston have combined their sisterly talents to collaborate on their first stage show, Adventures in Pianoland. It's only the second time they've worked together – Jan also wrote a score for Gaylene's film Home by Christmas (2010) and admits to trepidation both times.
"We want to keep our personal relationship special and loving," she says. Fortunately, she says, they well work together – "we feed off each other" – and, in fact, she says she misses Gaylene's input when each of their projects is over.
"She's not my director any more, she's just my sister."
Now based in Australia, Jan Preston had the idea to put together a show that told a personal story combining music, stories, narrative, songs and projected photographs and enlisted her older sister's help to put it together. Gaylene interviewed Jan to write the script and the latter says it was quite an unusual experience to see her life from the outside, through the eyes of another person, even one so close.
"She helped make things more lucid to me," she says.
Jan Preston says it seemed like a good time for such a personal show.
"I turned 65 recently – I've been performing since I was 20," she says.
She's been a regular at the National Folk Festival in Canberra for several years and has had a previous concert at the Street Theatre. For Adventures in Pianoland she will be taking the audience on a journey through her life, illustrated with projections of photographs from her past and narrated through words and music. The show premiered in New Zealand and this is its first Australian season.
"I started out as a very serious classical concert pianist, so I play some classical music – Chopin, Soler – just to show I can still do it," she says.
When she was in her late 20s, she became drawn to jazz but making such a crossover on New Zealand's South Island wasn't easy at the time, with no teacher and only a 78 rpm disc of Trinidadian pianist Winifred Atwell to listen to at first, she was largely self-taught, her interests ranging across boogie-woogie, ragtime, blues and other styles and her career taking her to international concert and festival performances as well as making award-winning recordings and scoring films and television programs.
She wrote some new songs for Adventures in Pianoland including My Baby's Leaving Home, inspired by the time her 16-year-old son left Sydney to take up an apprenticeship in Batemans Bay.
"People relate to that."
On a lighter note, she talks about a time she performed a concert in China, an "extraordinary experience" where in the excitement of the moment one of her legs flew up onto the keyboard.
After the concert, she says, "One woman came up and said, 'You are only one piano player in China [to] put leg over."
