Canberra Glassworks
May 2, 2018

The hum of machinery mingled with the electronic track to Ned McGowan’s Workshop, performed, fittingly, in the Hot Shop of Canberra’s historic – and still running – glassworks. The sound of Susanna Borsch’s amplified alto recorder skittered off the heaving industrial soundtrack, her fiendish technique machine-like in itself.

Susanna Borsch in the Hot Shop at the Canberra International Music Festival. Photo © Peter Hislop

A flautist and composer, McGowan (also a performer at this year’s Canberra International Music Festival) wrote Workshop for Borsch in 2004, but this performance in the Glassworks felt made to order. The piece is episodic – spanning lyrical passages to grinding, lurching machine rhythms – and unfolded with Borsch playing under a neon Hot Shop sign, glassworkers wandering through the space (sometimes with glowing molten glass) as she duetted energetically with the electronic track. “This is not a doctor’s waiting room,” as festival AD Roland Peelman put it in his introduction to the concert. A large industrial fan that whirred to life behind me felt like it was part of an ambitiously choreographed site-specific performance.

The 12th concert in this...