Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2019 review: Dami Im – My Life in Songs
Who is the true Dami Im? If her Cabaret Festival show is a true indication she’s a down-to-earth, funny, thoughtful woman who just happens to be an incredible pianist and singer with a compelling story to tell.
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WHEN Dami Im moved from Korea to Queensland as a nine-year-old girl she might have well have moved to another planet.
It was stinking hot, she couldn’t speak English and everyone at her suburban Brisbane primary school looked the same.
But there was one thing that made her stand out in a good way – she could play the piano.
In Korea, she tells the attentive crowd at the Dunstan Playhouse, she was just another musical kid. In Australia she was a prodigy.
Her musical chops would eventually see her win TV talent show The X-Factor before going on to an incredible second place at Eurovision.
Along the way, though, Im lost a piece of herself in the whirlwind of fame. She’s only now getting that piece back.
“TV has a way of putting you in boxes,” she says. “My name is Dami Im, and I’m her to tell you my story.”
My Life in Song follows a loose narrative of Im’s life, with significant moments marked with a musical number.
Mariah Carey’s Hero, the song that got her through The X-Factor auditions, gets a run, as does Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head (which is given a particularly rocking makeover by her talented band).
Gangnam Style, her nod to her teenage love of K-Pop, is stripped back and fun, and jazz standard Summertime marks the point at university where she commits to studying singing full-time.
But it’s on the big ballads that Im’s famous pipes get a chance to shine. Little John, a song she wrote for a boy she met while working with people in poverty in the Solomon Islands, tugs at the heart strings, but it’s a note-perfect rendition of Prince classic Purple Rain that really gets the crowd applauding.
Eurovision, she says, was confirmation of just how far she’d come.
“Here I was, a Korean immigrant, representing Australia at Eurovision,” Im laughs. “How did that happen?”
Power ballad Sound of Silence is how that happened, and her Dunstan Playhouse version has all the magic she delivered on that big night in Sweden in 2016.
It was sometime after this, Im says, that she vowed to take off the mask she’d be wearing and reclaim her true self.
And who is the true Dami Im?
Well if her Cabaret Festival show is a true indication she’s a down-to-earth, funny, thoughtful woman who just happens to be an incredible pianist and singer with a compelling story to tell.
Dami Im – My Life in Songs
Australia
Rating: ****
Dunstan Playhouse
June 13-14
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