Songs for Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas

Andy is an award-winning director of theatre, music theatre and opera. He has also worked as creative producer of multidisciplinary arts programs, creative director of large-scale events and festival director. In 2007 Andy co-founded Adelaide based theatre company Slingsby. The company is now well-established as a leading international immersive theatre company, having toured to more than 170 venues, with over 1,000 performances across 13 countries and counting.

Andy is renowned for creating original live performance moments that are emotionally powerful and visually bold. His work across theatre for young audiences, opera, cabaret, music theatre and symphonic concerts has pushed him to develop a distinctive theatrical aesthetic that is at once personal and epic.

Andy has directed productions and events for Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, State Opera of South Australia, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Adelaide Festival of Arts, Adelaide Fringe, Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide Chamber Singers, Australian String Quartet, Windmill Theatre, Restless Dance, Tutti Ensemble, Rundle Mall Management Authority and the International Astronautical Federation. In 2019 Andy was Show Director for the World of Wearable Art Awards Show in Wellington, New Zealand.

Quincy has spent his life being a freelance composer and musician. He has played and written for many bands over the decades, in many different styles – the most recent being the despicable gypsy band Golonka and the folk outfit Miranda Bede. 

He has written over seventy works for soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras that have been performed in hundreds of concerts. And written the music for over forty theatre works, for companies all over Australia, with his second opera being scheduled for performance in 2025. 

He has toured many countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas. 

He is co-director of The Firm, a company that presents concerts each year featuring Australian classical musicians in programmes of new Australian music along-side carefully chosen repertoire. 

Quincy lives in Adelaide with his dear Anna, and has three children: Arland, Clara and Miranda.

• soundcloud.com/quincys-room/sets
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• YouTube Channel

He then studied at Flinders Drama Centre and did additional training with Gerrard MacArthur at RADA in London. He has worked for all of Australia’s major theatre companies and been involved in the development of many new Australian works. Cameron recently premiered a one-man show in The Adelaide Cabaret Festival The Sound Of Falling Stars, in which he played 30 male singers who died before their time. He also recently completed a long run playing Zazu in Disney’s The Lion King. Prior to that he spent three years with Sydney Theatre Company’s full-time acting ensemble under the direction of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton.

Cameron is also an ARIA award winning singer/composer (The Audreys). He has composed music for film and television and for many other shows, often in collaboration with song-writing partners David Heinrich and Quincy Grant (including previous Adelaide Cabaret Festival hits Little Bird and You, Me And The Bloody Sea).

A childhood spent in the laid-back tropical climes of Darwin in the Northern Territory, Leah brings a refreshing and unique authenticity to her work. You can hear the echo of artists such as Meshell Ndegeocello, Martha Wainwright, Joan As Police Woman and Trixie Whitley in Leah’s vocal delivery. You can hear and feel the depth of emotion she invests in her songs and the honest stories that populate them. On stage you’ll also experience some of the tales and inspiration behind Leah’s songs and enlivened by a rich musicality – whether backed by a full band or solo with ukulele (in the Northern Saltwater country style), acoustic, or  electric guitar in hand.

With Venetian, Aboriginal and Irish heritage, Leah has a fascinating historical, geographical and cultural mix to draw from. As a result, she possesses a versatility and stylistic range that has seen her work with a long list of diverse musicians and projects.

Satomi started playing orchestral percussion at the age of 12, then studied jazz drumming with maestro, Takeshi Inomata in Tokyo. She has played extensively in Japan with the Soulful Unity Jazz Orchestra and her groups, Vivace and Jackpot, the latter winning two major jazz contests. Satomi won the Best Player Award at the 1993 Asakusa Jazz Contest and her group was then twice invited to perform at the Manley Jazz Festival. In Adelaide, she plays regularly with Black Fedora Jazz as well as with several other ensembles covering blues, Latin and Bulgarian music styles. She joined the Brendan Fitzgerald Trio in 2012 and performed with the group in Beijing, Shanghai and at the Hong Kong Performing Arts Centre Street Concert. Satomi has appeared twice at The Hoot!, Adelaide Hills Jazz Festival and at 2014 The Clare Valley Carnival of Music performing with Brendan Fitzgerald and Svilen Panayatov accordian duo, Latin-jazz group Ah Hum! and holding her own multi-cultural percussion session/workshop.

Satomi Onishi is also a physical chemist with specific expertise in scanning probe microscopy and surface physics.

Gareth regularly works with Australian ensembles The Zephyr Quartet, Golonka, The Baker Suite, The Various Nefarious, The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and other Art music ensembles as an accordionist, as well as regularly recording for theatre companies, Slingsby and Brink. He is also a regular collaborator with cabaret star, Anya Anastasia.

As a writer, Gareth composes for gypsy outfit Golonka, theatre, and doco/mockumentaries on SBS and ABC tv, as well as being a former member of world music group The Meru Vibe, which has shared the stage with The Bamboos, Sneaky Sound System, and international electro/tabla sensation, Talvin Singh.

Gypsy outfit Golonka!, has played at numerous Australian festivals, including The Adelaide Arts Festival, Womadelaide, and shared the stage with many interstate and international groups including Zulya & The Children of the Underground, and has recently represented Australia as part of the UNESCO Cities of Music project in the Hamamatsu World Music Festival in Japan…

In 2017, Gareth composed the music for William Yang & Annette Shun Wah’s work in the Adelaide Festival of Arts, ‘Backstories’. (CAAP : Contemporary Asian Australian Performance)

Geoff has worked as an Event Producer, Production Manager, Lighting Designer, Set Designer, Public Artist and Venue Designer. His work has ranged from many smaller innovative productions at the Performance Space, Queens Theatre, Belvoir, Red Shed, non-theatre venues (tents, warehouses and more) to large-scale theatre/dance productions, festivals, art exhibitions, events, museums and venue creation. His love of light and dance has led him to work with many of Australia’s top choreographers and allowed him to explore the endless combinations of colour, angle, intensity, and movement, of light. With his company Bluebottle he has designed many lighting installations and lit public artworks, buildings, landscapes and freeways. Geoff received a Churchill Fellowship in 2010 to study Outdoor Theatre in Europe. This led to the creation of Barrio, inspired by the “participatory theatre” movement currently sweeping Europe. Finding innovative ways to involve community and other industry in Events was at the heart of Barrio. Its success was in the unique way it gave its audience ownership of the event. Geoff has been working on Festivals since the late 80s when he began working for Sydney Festival. He subsequently went on to become an integral part of the senior management teams of the Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival and Womadelaide Festival. Recent Awards include: 2015 Helpmann Award for Best Scenic Design for Little Bird; Ruby Award for Sustained Contribution; Green Room Award Best lighting Design for Night Letters; Sydney Theatre Award Best Lighting Design for Never Did Me Any Harm. Geoff is Slingsby’s Artistic Associate (Design).

Ailsa holds a Bachelor of Dramatic Art in Design (NIDA). 

Recent design credits include The Marriage of Figaro (SOSA), The Dictionary of Lost Words (STCSA/STC – costume design), Lady Day (STCSA/MTC/Belvoir), The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (STCSA/STC – costume design), Tracker (ADT – costume design), Girls and Boys (Sydney Festival/Adelaide Festival), A Christmas Carol and Boxing Day BBQ (Ensemble Theatre), Single Asian Female (STCSA), Chalkface (STCSA/STC), Watershed (Adelaide Festival) and Myth or the Go Between (Gravity and other Myths/Blue Soup Films). 

Slingsby credits include Songs for Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas, costume designs for The Boy Who Talked to Dogs, Emil and the Detectives, The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage and Ode to Nonsense. 

Credits for State Theatre Company South Australia include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Ripcord, Gaslight,  The 39 Steps, Jasper Jones, End of  the Rainbow, Creditors, Sense and Sensibility, Switzerland, The 39 Steps, Romeo and Juliet, Mendelssohn’s Dream,  Beckett Triptych, The Importance of Being Earnest, Hedda Gabler, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play, War Mother, The Ham Funeral, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), The Price, The Cripple of Inishmaan,  Betrayal, A Doll’s House, Things I Know To Be True and Little Bird. 

Chris is a Lighting and Video Designer. Following his completion of the Technical Production course at the Adelaide Centre of the Arts, Chris has continued to develop his experience across theatre, dance, and other live events in Australia including:

2021: Creation Creation by Windmill Theatre Company; Hiccup! by Windmill Theatre Company; The Boy Who Talked to Dogs by Slingsby
2020: The Bleeding Tree by Theatre Republic; Of All Things by Alison Currie for ADT; Anatomy of a Suicide by Flinders University Drama Centre; Lighthouse by Patch Theatre Company; Incognito by Flinders University Drama Centre
2019: World of Wearable Art 2019; Madama Butterfly by State Opera of South Australia; A View from the Bridge by State Theatre Company SA; Cher by Vitalstatistix; ZOOM by Patch Theatre Company; 13 Ways to Look at Birds feat. Paul Kelly by GWB; Femme by Erin Fowler Projects; Zizanie by Restless.
2018: Lines by Theatre Republic; World of Wearable Art 2018 with Bluebottle; SOLO (Sea Wall & Bitch Boxer) by Flying Penguin Productions; Julius Caesar by Flinders University Drama Centre; Songs for those who come across the Sea by Slingsby; Brothers Wreck by Malthouse Theatre & State Theatre; Baba Yaga by Windmill Theatre Company; Terrestrial by State Theatre Company of South Australia; In The Club by State Theatre; The Walk of Fame Gala by the Adelaide Festival Centre
2017: Angelique by Is This Yours? ; Beep by Windmill Theatre Company ; Emil and the Detectives by Slingsby; Vigil by the Adelaide Cabaret Festival ; Mr Burns by State Theatre Company of South Australia & Belvoir St Theatre; Long Tan by Brink Productions 2016: Ingition 2016 by ADT; Love & Information by Flinders University Drama Centre; Juliet Letters by Flying Penguin Productions; Gorgon by State Theatre Company; Beginning of Nature (WOMAD) by ADT.