Meeting Miriam ... with Celia Craig

Meeting Miriam...

Join me for a free event to hear more about my exciting archive discoveries at National Library of Australia as their final Creative Arts Fellow during my month's residency in Canberra.

Teenage virtuoso synesthete Miriam was a naturally funny person, with her quick wit and flowing fountain pen- so her letters are very entertaining ... and revealing... she met so many famous people in London, including shaking hands with Rachmaninov...

I am delighted to be joined by Australian scholar Graham Abbott to introduce his very real enthusiasm for Miriam's genius. 

The free event includes a recorded performance by my colleagues in Tarrawatta Trio: Thomas Marlin, cello and Michael Ierace, piano. Michael was also an Elder Overseas Scholar to Royal College of Music London, nearly 100 years later. 

With your support, I will produce and present a 10-minute documentary on the early life of teenage virtuoso and synesthete Dr. Miriam Hyde AO (b.1913). As a fellow Synesthete (seeing colour when playing music) and musician, I feel deeply connected to Miriam’s story and life. I will continue my residency research in London at the Royal College and with other connections of Miriam's to produce the most comprehensive body of knowledge on Miriam's early life and neurodiversity and on South Australian artistic history. Our short film will be the catalyst for future projects: providing a pilot episode and marketing collateral and easily accessible media for the public and grant funding bodies.

Our video will profile South Australian history, filmmakers and musicians. It will tell the remarkable story of Miriam Hyde who sailed halfway across the globe from Australia’s oldest music institution, in South Australia, on a major Scholarship to Royal College of Music.

Internationally, many people don't know Miriam's music, whereas people in Australia connect her with piano exam music, due to her 37 years of dedicated examining for the AMEB (Australian Music Examinations Board). My project will deliberately work to restore Miriam Hyde in public sight, from the elderly lady who wrote much loved ‘easy’ exam piano music from Sydney ... to the synesthetic virtuoso visionary student from Adelaide who took London by storm. 

I can't wait to further research and present this engaging and dramatic story and National Library Creative Arts Fellowship. I will examine and amplify her time in London as a soloist at The Proms in a new context - using her own words in her letters, poetry, drawings, her autobiography and in playing more handwritten music for Trio. Miriam's true South Australian legacy should be preserved, continued and celebrated; her neurodiversity examined, for the superpower that it gave her...

Please join me. I look forward to welcoming you in person.

Refreshments will be served. MAX Capacity 60.