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Jude Elliot
 For five years local singer, pianist and guitarist Jude Elliot has performed live acoustic and festival gigs, her music ranging from warm jazz grooves to contemporary darker rock. Elliot's diverse musical career has seen her composing theatrical scores, providing instrumental accompaniment for films and even creating the aural background for an art installation. Asked how she has produced such an unusual body of work, she comments philosophically, "Things happen by chance; I get offers for a lot of different things and I almost never say no! I think that you create opportunities for yourself, then one thing leads to another."
Her advice to other musicians starting out is "Just travel a lot and play as often as you can, in as many places as you can. Especially if you can get overseas: that's always an eye-opener. I recently went to New York and that just blew my mind. I discovered a whole new world! It's a lot bigger! I mean obviously it's an expansion of the world that I already thought existed.
"I've got a really weird story," she continues. "My first night in New York, I rocked up to the Village Underground, where I had a gig booked. I walked in and there were about 300 people sitting down and I was the only white person in the room. Their house band, that would be backing me, were a black jazz band - which is completely different to my music! I gave them my music and played with - I think there were twelve musicians on stage - and they'd been playing Stevie Wonder and all this beautiful music. Here's this white chick just off the plane, with her acoustic guitar and these contemporary acoustic songs. The band played along to it and it actually went really well. I had a standing ovation...people coming up out of the audience giving me hugs afterwards - it could have gone either way, but I think we pulled it off!"
Her new album is almost completed and the title, 'A Gentle Glimpse Of Waking', is deeply personal to Elliot. "It's from my experience of my eyes being opened to the world more recently. You know, when you're in a dream world, so caught up in your own world and what you're doing that you don't recognise the big picture. And sometimes you get a gentle glimpse of awakening and what the real world is. That sums up each of the songs: each is just a small glimpse."
Performing her music for a live audience is a transformative experience for Elliot. "When I step on to the stage, all my inhibitions seem to fall away. I'm generally a shy kind of person, but the second I'm on stage, that all sort of...slips away. I fall into my own little world, with my musicians - and we start creating freely. Every night is different: we'll play the same songs, but they'll come out with different energies depending on how we're all feeling and combining."
At the Fringe Festival, Elliot and her band will be performing at the Bosco Theatre in the Garden Of Unearthly Delights. "I've heard that it's very intimate and very beautiful." They have two different shows lined up, one with Monique Brumby and the other with Middle Eastern-influenced roots group Tecoma. Elliot anticipates some stimulating contrasts onstage. "Monique's music is more stripped back and acoustic, whereas mine's a bit more intricate and emotive. I've played with Monique many years before - we actually went to school together. I've never played with Tecoma before, although we're signed to the same publishing company. Musically, they're very earthy, very organic."
Elliot anticipates attracting a broad audience. "We should have some locals coming along as well as interstate people from the Fuse Festival music conference and hopefully a new crowd too. It's such a rare opportunity, a really enriching experience, especially as there's not a huge music programme [during the Fringe]." Her hope is that "People that haven't seen us play before, catch a glimpse of some of the really good music that's happening in Australia at the moment."
Jude Elliot plays at the Garden Of Unearthly Delights as part of the Fringe Festival on Sun 25 March with Monique Brumby and on Wed 28 March with Tecoma
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