Ex-Melb agency AD Mick Sowry launches ‘The Reef’ surf film/music collaboration + East Coast tour with ACO’s Richard Tognetti in Feb + Mar

Former Reality Group , JWT Melbourne, art director Mich Sowry is set launch a tour of the East Coast for his surf film and music collaboration ‘The Reef’ created with ACO (Australian Chamber Orechestra) artistic director Richard Tognetti during the end of February and through March in Brisbane, Melbourne, Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra and Sydney.

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Brisbane tickets here – QPAC Concert Hall: Friday 22 February, 8pm.

Melbourne Tickets here – Hamer Hall: Sun 24 February, 2.30pm, Mon 25 February, 8pm.

Newcastletickets here – City Hall: Thursday 28 February, 7.30pm                                             

Wollongong tickets – Town Hall: Friday 1 March, 7.30pm, 02 4227 5088

Canberra tickets here – Llewellyn Hall, ANU: Saturday 2 March, 8pm.

Sydney tickets here – Opera House, Concert Hall: Monday, 4 March, 8pm.

Sowry, also a former creative director at US Advertising in Melbourne, decided to change careers in the mid-2000s. He had already worked with Tognetti and ACO on the surf film ‘Musica Surfica’, which explored the nexus between surfing and music. At Gnaraloo Station, on the tip of Ningaloo Reef, Sowry was continuing his quest to express himself creatively in the arts rather than the commercial arts.

Audiences along the east coast are about to find out in the new tour of the multimedia production ‘The Reef’, which combines a mesmerising mix of classics and new music with original film footage projected behind the musicians’ live performance.

The tour comes just as The Reef was honoured at the 2013 Australian Surfing Awards, winning the Surf Culture Award at a ceremony in Sydney on Wednesday, 20 February.

During two weeks at Gnaraloo, Sowry worked with ocean cinematographer Jon Frank, photographer Ed Sloane, composer Iain Grandage, didgeridoo player Mark Atkins, singer-songwriter Stephen Pigram, ACO musicians and assorted surfers, including finless board legend Derek Hynd.

Sowry shot hundreds of hours of ocean, surfing and desert footage before heading back to wintry Torquay, where he and Frank spent a month editing the material into one “mythic day”. That film played on a huge screen above the musicians as they performed music ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Alice in Chains and Pete Seeger and the occasional campfire song for The Reef’s world premiere in Darwin last July.

Says The Australian: “The effect is hypnotic.”

A critically acclaimed tour down the West Australian coast followed, culminating in a sold-out performance at the Sydney Opera House.

Says Sowry: “We have been in the middle of revisiting a couple of sections of the performance, and I’m up to my armpits in alligators, fretting as I watch the render bar creep across the page wondering if it will turn into the spinning wheel of death.

“The big news is that The Reef is receiving backing from Screen West to be made into a feature. This is seriously cool, and though we need to raise more funds, the chance to make it into something epic and available to a wider audience is now very real.

“The added time has given Richard, Jon and I the chance to revisit it, a bit like a painter returning to a canvas for some final touches. This is a new, evolved Reef.

“It has been quite an adventure which, now, is still not finished, not by a long shot.”