Recorder Queen invites viewers to ask what it’s like to be a musician

By Craig Mathieson sydney Morning Herald

August 19, 2020 — 4.00pm

It takes seconds, not minutes, for Recorder Queen to dispel the conventions that so often govern the biographical documentary. Beginning with an animated flourish, director Sophie Raymond doesn’t just tell the story of internationally acclaimed Australian recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey, she captures the musician’s vivid mindset, complete with Lacey playing a version of herself in stylised scenes or amid fantastical imagery.

Through live action and animated scenes, the half-hour work adds the otherworldly to autobiographical detail and literally positions the act of creativity as an inspiring force of magic. “Music can sometimes reach places where words cannot,” Lacey, who co-wrote the script with Raymond, notes in her narration, and Recorder Queen boldly reaches for that same space.

“It’s a story of collaboration and it weaves in and out of stylistic forms. It takes risks, and that’s Genevieve’s story as well,” says the Sydney-based Raymond. “We felt that we were telling a story bigger than Genevieve’s alone. I could relate to the idea of being taken over by the power of music. When you have that moment you can’t ignore it. We felt that the stepping stones of the story had a universal aspect to it. As we developed it visually we just naturally looked to fairytales and storybooks.”

The two women met when Raymond was shooting the 2011 documentary Mrs Carey’s Concert, which she co-directed with Recorder Queen producer Bob Connolly. Lacey was coming to give a masterclass to the high school students of the titular music teacher, and the wave of anticipation that preceded the soloist’s arrival alerted Raymond to her standing. By the time Raymond fitted Lacey with a radio mic the pair were deep in conversation, and their “old souls” bond has only grown stronger since.

The film captures how, after demanding study in Switzerland and Denmark, Lacey rose to the rarefied rank of soloist and recording artist even as the demands of her career dampened her love for the recorder. Part of restoring her equilibrium lay in pursuing collaborations, so when Lacey applied for Arts Council fellowships in 2013 one of her proposals was for a film project with Raymond. When it was approved the following year, the film’s core creative team was completed by producer Clare Sawyer.

“What we wanted to do was make something that invited audiences into what it feels like to be a musician,” says Raymond, whose background includes a roots-based singing career of her own. “Gen’s story presented itself and became concreted as our vehicle when she shared her writing about her time in Europe studying and having to step into that world.”

The development process was intuitive. One autobiographical passage Lacey showed Raymond described how after an intense period of rehearsal she felt “wedded to my recorders”. Raymond instantly had a vision of Queen Elizabeth I, who sanctified her rule by declaring she was married to England. Raymond sketched Lacey as the 16th century monarch, drew it, and then shot the image complete with collared costume.

“It felt effortless. There was no tension and it was ego-less,” Raymond says. “It went back and forth a lot but without any issues, and that speaks to Genevieve’s trust and generosity as well. I did put her in some awkward situations: I had her standing in Dorset in a corset on a freezing morning to get the light. But she went with it all and it was great fun.”

The team spent what budget they had on sequences that required crew, worked alone after that when they were in the same city, and had a breakthrough with a philanthropic gift from former ABC executive and Foxtel CEO Kim Williams that got them to the finish line – just two weeks ago – with completed visual effects and animation. The finished Recorder Queen ties together both Raymond and Lacey’s prior creative endeavours, and then shows them through a fresh lens.

“We could always see it, but it was never an easy task to get other people to see it the way we did,” Raymond says. “I try to surprise people with their perceptions, and here was the opportunity to make the recorder different than it’s normally perceived. When you hear Gen play and watch her play it’s instantly transformative, and in a film sense that’s gold.”

THE AUSTRALIAN – NEWSPAPER – (excerpts)

Graeme Blundell

This short irresistible film takes us deep inside the experience of record a virtuoso Genevieve Lacey, her inspiring story, as her director says, defying the almost universally uncharitable response to the recorder.

….

Lacey is simply spellbinding, not only as she plays her recorders but in the range of characters she creates to fleshout her poetic biography.

Raymond too conveys a thrilling sense of momentum from the start, that propulsion to turn emotion into music that comes to Lacey at an early age when she falls in love with her recorder. There is a lovely device with animated birds that guide her journey and a whimsical animation that takes us inside her music.

….

With some cinematic ingenuity the film takes us in and out of tunnels and dark spaces, memories and mental states suggestive of what Lacey calls her ìhyperactive brainî, and the way she lives with music, constantly visited by sounds.

It’s a gorgeous collaboration of highly skilled artists, and as Raymond says Lacey’s intimate story is really a framework for a bigger story about creativity and the creative artists the commitment, courage, compromise, fear, vulnerability, and moments of absolute bliss.î