PRESS QUOTES:

“Semaphore is very much a performance where music and dance meet, the fusion of these two forms at times worked so beautifully that the action on stage was mesmerizing, with audiences being drawn into this confusing reality”
Australian Arts Review, June 2nd, 2015

“Semaphore finds grace, urgency and hum¬our in an array of coded communications: from flag semaphore and morse code to novel visual and aural syntaxes…..”
Eamon Kelly, The Australian, June 3rd, 2015

“Her pieces for percussion quartet also call on the musicians to perform physical gestures, such as blinking, nodding and bending at the waist, as well as operating flashing lights and vocalizing..”
Chloe Smethurst, The Age, May 28, 2015

“In two passages the bright red and yellow semaphore flags were furled through signalling sequences like the flag-waving of a grand European Renaissance pageant.”
Eamon Kelly, The Australian, June 3rd, 2015

“Kate Neal’s Semaphore turns mixed signals into an art form”.
Eamon Kelly, The Australian, June 3rd, 2015

“Neal draws on visual and auditory codes such as Semaphore and Morse code and refigures them in extraordinary ways.”
John Bailey, RealTime June-July 2015 pg. 43

“Often humorous, the adventure stories and descriptions of learning to decipher code anchor Neal and Walsh’s more abstract compositions to human experience.”
Chloe Smethurst, The Age, May 28, 2015

“….combined in washes of ¬tintinnabulation like a Javanese gamelan ensemble.”
Eamon Kelly, The Australian, June 3rd, 2015

“Timothy Walsh’s choreography bleeds into Neal’s composition as semaphore flags slice the air with audible snaps and flutters, while the musicians are given movements that make their own performances dance-like.”
John Bailey, RealTime June-July 2015 pg. 43

“The interspersed dance brackets were consistently engaging, Timothy Walsh’s choreography for three dancers creating dynamic, precisely synchronised symmetries of rapid, fixed upper-body poses.”
Chloe Smethurst, The Age, May 28, 2015

“If the staccato telegraph and the blinking signal light can be considered their own forms of language, Neal has proven that they’re as capable of poetry as any other.”
John Bailey, RealTime June-July 2015 pg. 43

The musicality of this performance is complex, rousing stuff, performed with precision, from a base of percussive beats rose the sounds of strings and woodwind.
Australian Arts Review, June 2nd, 2015

Neal’s compositions show great variety: one moment she is combining with video artist Mendel Hardeman for some sharp social satire (Holy Vessels), the next she explores micro-tonalities (Little Fury). Rabid Bay, for piano and big band, blends dense notation with bebop riffs’……
Martin Ball, The Australian, 2004
Review – Australian, Martin Ball

‘There’s nothing moribund about the music she has written for this remarkable eight-piece ensemble; her ‘dead horses’ literally leap with life’. Neal…. an Adrenalin-filled musical adventure a winner, at a gallop’…..
Jessica Nicholas, The Age Oct 2007
Adren. ReviewAge.

‘Composer Kate Neal represents the new wave of Australian composers and is the heart and brains behind dead Horse Productions. Neal’s Rabid Bay, a new work composed for Michael Kieran Harvey, is an explosion of scintillating colour and intoxicating movement’…..
Xenia Hanusiak, Herald Sun, 2004
Review – Herlad Sun

‘Transforming traditional parameters of the classical musical experience has been a challenge for many entrepreneurs. Dead Horse gets it right’…..
Xenia Hanusiak, Herald Sun 04

‘New music, new champion … … the program established Dead Horse as an exciting vehicle not only for Neal, but a wide range of new music’ …
Jonathan Marshall, Real Time 04
NewMusic.

‘It’s not every day that you go to a concert featuring a concerto for two Toyota Cressidas and a string orchestra. But that’s just the sort of thing to expect from [Kate Neals’] Dead Horse Productions’…
Martin Ball, The Australian, 2006
Australian 2006.

The evening’s finale, Kate Neal’s Concave City and A Love Story for Two Cars (2006) is the show-stopper. In the open space between the string Orchestra and the audience, 2 cars drive in, one gently crashing into the other. Two traffic weary drivers emerge to confront each other and begin an intense, agile and at times erotic dance in, on and around the cars. The miked sounds of slamming doors, indicators and windscreen wipers form part of the score. The excellent dancers – Lina Limosani and Choreographer Anton – portray frenetic urban life with power and energy, supported by Neal’s evocative composition for strings. This collaboration is the most effective and powerful blending of media’……
Chris Reid, Real Time 2006.
OntheStage.