Helen Rivero & Ian Blake – Luminous

Lullabies serve to sooth us, to comfort us with sweet familiarity and hope for the future, but also to help us deal with our fears. Some of this music can be unsettling in the way of the logic of dreams: images and characters arise briefly before us, and fade and change as we cross the threshold into sleep. For us, this music can reflect states of mind which we experience during waking, sleeping and the places in between.

We play with text sound and language through lullabies from around the world, with improvisations vocal, instrumental and computeral.

Helen Rivero is a singer and composer.

She was born in Sydney, the daughter of immigrants from Spain.

Helen began performing while a university student, exploring musical styles including jazz, improvised cabaret and folk music from around the world. In 2000 she launched her debut recording, self titled “RIVERO, Spanish, Sephardic and Original songs.”

Helen has performed at festivals including the Bellingen Global Carnival, National Folk Festival, the Illawarra Folk festival, Viva la Gong, Sydney Accapella festival, Diaspora World Music festival etc. and toured NSW and Victoria in 2001 and 2002.

In 2001 Helen was the winner of the Folk award for her song “Wooden Table” (which features on the RIVERO cd) in the 2001 Musicoz Challenge.

Ian Blake played a host of instruments to weave counter-melodies and contrasting atmospheres through the vocal line, moving effortlessly between Celtic harp, bass clarinet, piano, electric bass and a Mac computer. The integration of electronic and instrumental accompaniments was accomplished and added subtle refinement to the performance, developing the vocal line into a total exploration of the chosen story-line.