Barney McAll is a multi-award-winning pianist. He grew up in Mooroolbark Melbourne but has spent 20 years in NY. He has played with the Groove Collective (nominated for a Grammy) Jazz legends but also pop stars Sia and Daniel Merriweather and Gary Bartz, a Black American Saxophonist who once played with Miles Davis and is the musician who has had the greatest influence over Barney’s career.
In 2009 in NY we learn from Barney, “music is spirit” with Cuban sacred bata rhythms reworked into his own music which he brings to Melbourne, rehearsing with local musicians. We get to know Barney.
In 2013 in NY Barney is concerned technology is changing our world! It’s early days for social media and he asks strangers around Manhattan their views. He brings GRAFT to Melbourne (about our grafting to I-phones) with a human choir pitted against a laptop. We hear Sia sing FIREFLY as dancers move with i-phones.
He returns permanently to Melbourne. He writes in Mooroolbark, winning an Aria. He works in his Coburg shed on a pop album ‘Global Intimacy’, about technology stealing from us. Then he suddenly quits piano altogether. Surely there’s a better way to earn a living! Spotify pay most musicians $ .00173 per stream.
Fortunately Barney returns to his spirit music with Black Gospel he learnt in Jamaica Queens. And as thousands in Melbourne protest over climate change, “Together We Must UnFuck The World”, he plays BLEEDING TREES.
He plays at The Strawberry Field festival where night-time is magic but daylight a drought. To this ‘Mad Max’ crowd he blends all he has learnt in the USA with what’s ‘now’ in their music.
He turns to writing with pop singer Daniel Merriweather a song about a black man shot by USA police when he was just going home. And then his stars align – he writes with Gary Bartz – 26 tracks of their best music ever, recorded in a major Hollywood studio. And in Melbourne he plays his favourite song PRECIOUS ENERGY about the sun shining love over all of us on earth.
Writer/Director Nicola Woolmington – BA double Drama major, Dip Ed Drama English, Post Grad Film VCA. Initially she worked in theatre as an actor, writer and director. She has written and or directed short dramas including OCEANS APART – SBS WISH STAR eps for SKYTRACKERS Channel 9 and GET REAL – SBS. But she is especially drawn to big picture social issue documentaries including SEARCHING – ABC / BBC, award winning WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD – ABC, PAYING FOR THE PAST – SBS , EINSTEINS WIFE – ABC, and THE FORGOTTEN AUSTRALIANS – SBS National Interest Program. They have all screened internationally.
