Thankyou for the music: Review’s Isolation Room comes to an end

Review’s Isolation Room — a groundbreaking series featuring artists performing from their homes exclusively for our readers — comes to an end

Singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke at her home in Brisbane, for her appearance in Review's Isolation Room video series. Photo: Glenn Hunt / The Australian

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. So said Friedrich Nietzsche while waxing philosophical on the human condition. I’ve thought a lot about that saying during the past 18 months as the Covid-19 crisis swept through and shut down the world. It’s no understatement to say the abyss has for many people been less philosophical and far more real: people have died, families have been split, jobs have been lost in the tens of thousands. The world has changed immeasurably. Many industries have been deeply affected, but arguably there has been no greater professional black hole than the one that has faced the live music industry. Musicians around the country, and especially on the east coast, have been mothballed as music venues shut their doors and audiences became a thing of nostalgia. With government rescue packages barely touching the sides for most performers, one wouldn’t have blamed musos for throwing in the towel. But that, of course, is not how a vocation works. Eighteen months ago when we ran our inaugural Review Isolation Room, inviting musicians to perform from the comfort (or otherwise) of lockdown for our audiences, we were touched by the enthusiastic response. Artists as diverse as opera singer Nicole Carr, Vika and Linda Bull and Marina Abramovic were part of a 36-episode series that took the music we love and beamed it into the homes of our readers.

Three months ago, when the east coast was plunged into its second major pandemic-induced lockdown, Review’s music writer Andrew McMillen once more put the call out to the industry. And again, it answered, with 13 artists during the past 12 weeks taking part. Today marks the end of Review’s Isolation Room. Fittingly, today’s feature artist is the one who started it all: Missy Higgins. She was the series’ inaugural subject, performing Let It Be in a pink wig. Higgins bookends the series today, sans wig, with a performance of one of her breakthrough hits All for Believing. It’s a song of hope and optimism.

This latest cache of lockdown performances has been special. The quality of musicianship and recordings have blown us away. Interestingly, too, the performances have been filmed in a variety of locations. From their homes in Brisbane, we tuned in to see Dami Im, Troy Cassar-Daley, Sarah McLeod and Kate Miller-Heidke perform. Playing down the camera from regional Victoria were Archie Roach (Killarney), Joe Camilleri (Kyneton), Mark Seymour and James Reyne (both Mornington Peninsula) and also Higgins (Warrandyte). From regional NSW Don Walker (Alstonville) and Kasey Chambers (Bensville) did their thing, while Fanny Lumsden, travelling in a caravan, beamed in from Darwin. And what a treat it was to witness Jet’s Nic Cester, singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow from his home in Milan.

McMillen has again done a marvellous job bringing together these musicians and curating their offerings, and we commend him. But our biggest thanks go to the musicians themselves: those whose livelihoods have been on hold since the pandemic began and yet whose generosity seems only to have grown in the face of adversity. This series, more than any other, has made clear the importance of music — but more critically those who make it — in our lives.

Nietzsche knew a thing or two about the human mind, but that understanding was in large part informed by his interests as a philologist, writer, poet and composer. He knew the value of musicians and their impact on the lives we lead. It’s a lesson we should do well not to take for granted. “Without music,” he said. “Life would be a mistake.”