Midnight Sun by Heather Shannon

Sydney's Heather Shannon – best known as the keyboardist in the beloved art-pop band The Jezabels and now a composer – journeyed to remote Iceland to create a bold solo project: the atmospheric piano album Midnight Sun.

Shannon's rendering of her inner-self in flux is simultaneously personal and universal, with a cinematic aesthetic evoking the Arctic Circle's polar days and bleakly beautiful Westfjords scenery.

Prior to achieving success with The Jezabels, Shannon – originally from Byron Bay – completed a Bachelor in Piano Performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Today this auteur is exploring new means to deconstruct an outmoded dichotomy between the hallowed classical tradition and popdom, while redefining the avant-garde – Midnight Sun comparable to the output of boundary-breakers like film composer (and Art Of Noise alumni) Anne Dudley, Icelandic art-popster Björk, and experimental pianist Nils Frahm. "I've come from this contemporary music world and now I'm operating in more of a classical world, but they're both related," Shannon says. "The Jezabels is such a huge part of my musical experience, learning how to write music through improvisation and collaborating and all of that really feeds into everything that I do now."

Shannon was at 'The Con' when she co-founded The Jezabels back in 2007. The band's 2011 debut Prisoner – home to the indelible hit 'Endless Summer' – reached #2 on the ARIA Albums Chart, and scooped an ARIA ('Best Independent Release') and the prestigious Australian Music Prize. Auspiciously for Shannon, the group headlined the Sydney Opera House in 2014. The Jezabels cultivated an international fanbase, touring extensively and playing festivals like Glastonbury.

But, in 2016, as The Jezabels prepared to release their third album Synthia, Shannon underwent treatment for ovarian cancer – necessitating that the band go on temporary hiatus. Ironically, illness motivated Shannon to diversify, and deepen, her artistry. "It's funny – having the experience growing up with the band and being thrown into that world and we toured the world internationally for about 10 years and were homeless for part of that time and lived on a bus and played most nights and it was just so crazy… Then you come out of that world and you think, 'Oh gosh, now what am I gonna do?' The band is still happening obviously – and we're still going to be playing. But there's a whole life and you need to sustain yourself with other things as well. So part of it for me was going back to what I left before the band – which was my piano-playing. That's something that I had spent hours doing. I wanted to bring this newfound love of writing music to my classical piano-playing."

Shannon was already moving in that direction with The Jezabels. "I do have a classical background, I grew up playing classical piano, and I approach my piano and synth-playing with the band thinking about those kinds of textures and harmony and those musical influences – the drama of and emotion of classical music. That progressed to me starting to write some string arrangements for the band."

In 2017 Shannon won a competition for Sydney's Metropolitan Orchestra – her work 'Sequence And Variation' subsequently performed under Artistic Director Sarah-Grace Williams, the transition communal and "organic". She's since composed for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra. In the meantime, Shannon made forays into cinema – apt as The Jezabels have long synced their music to TV shows such as True Blood. She collaborated with lead guitarist Sam Lockwood on the scores to Heath Davis' indie films Broke and Book Week.

Ever-protean, Shannon has likewise gigged as "a hired gun", notably joining sessions for the first solo album by Midnight Oil's Peter Garrett, A Version Of Now. Currently, she's pursuing a Masters in Composition – her interests the Australian Gothic and reconfiguring electro-acoustic dynamics – at The Con while teaching music.

Again during 2017, Shannon travelled to the town Ísafjörður in north-western Iceland for an ArtsIceland residency – seeking seclusion and space. It was here she conceptualised Midnight Sun. "I was lucky enough to go over there," Shannon recalls. "I lived in a house there on my own for a month. I basically wrote all of that music in Iceland; in Ísafjörður – so all of that music was either all written or started or finished there. It's very much connected to that place and that time in my life.

"I needed to have that alone-time at that point. I'd just gone through six months of chemotherapy and had very intense cabin fever – because you can't really do much when you're going through that; you don't have any energy. I was very homebound after flying all around the world with the band for so long. I just felt really odd. So I had to get as far away as I could – and so I went there.

"The landscape was so incredibly beautiful. It's quite overwhelming how sublime the nature is there. I think there was something about just how unfamiliar it was that almost helped me to get my ideas out on paper. The music reflects the nature that I was surrounded in, but also the solitude and the peace and quiet and being alone.”

Indeed, Shannon recognised in Ísafjörður's striking topography an allegory for her interiority – the ambient instrumentals of Midnight Sun revealing a visceral narrative of discord and disconnection. "I wanted it to sound peaceful, but also have an undertone of tension or uncertainty to it," she explains.

The otherworldly album opens with the searching 'Fragments', leading into the disquieting 'Ricochet' – which Shannon previously presented to the ACO Collective. Midnight Sun's most melancholy moment arrives in 'A Place To Go'. It then takes a tumultuous turn on 'Fossavatn'. The album culminates in the buoyant and restorative 'Engi'.

Midnight Sun's title was prompted by the Westfjords' disconcerting temporality – the infinite summer nights heightening Shannon's sense of displacement. "When I was there, literally the sun was up all night – I think it set about 3 am. The midnight sun was really beautiful because it was more of a dusky pink and orange… I felt like that softness really entered the music a bit, although the music is quite icy in certain ways as well. I kind of liked that – having that unsettled element or uncertainty in the music or this feeling of the uncanny or something, like a shadow."

Shannon was always cognisant of being an outsider in Ísafjörður – responding to, rather than representing, its mythic terrain. "I was so influenced by the nature there but, at the same time, I'm very conscious of the fact that it's not my culture and my land to give voice to," she ponders. "I feel like this record is about both my state of mind and the landscape that was surrounding me. I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to go to Iceland to compose. It is a place that fosters so much art and music, a lot of which I have grown up listening to and learning from. Being in that environment was very inspiring.”

Shannon is anticipating performing Midnight Sun live – and introducing contemporary classical music to those Jezebels fans who might otherwise deem it too rarefied. "It can be something that is mass-appealing and it can be something that's for everyone," she maintains. "It doesn't have to be over-complex and you don't have to have training – you don't have to have a certain ear for it or understanding of it to really appreciate it.”

Heather Shannon is best known for her work as a member of internationally renowned independent band, The Jezabels. Shannon has spent the past decade writing and recording award winning albums and performing in venues such as The Sydney Opera House, The O2 Arena (London) and at festivals such as Lollapalooza and Glastonbury

Recently, however, Heather has moved into other areas of composition.

heathershannonmusic.com
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