Hear Them Holler talk to us about Amy Winehouse

First up, we’d love to know a little bit about who you are, and what Hear Them Holler is all about.
Hear Them Holler is a Melbourne based creative artist and event management agency. We work with an array of talented artists including Tinpan Orange, Jazz Party, Husky and Miles and Simone.

Did you know much about Amy Winehouse before your involvement in curating the music program, and have you made any discoveries since learning more about her upbringing and background through the exhibition?
We were already fans of Amy Winehouse before getting involved in curating the music program, but what a privilege to get to research and learn more about an artist that you already love. I guess as consumers of music we aren’t always thinking about the hard work and self-educating an artist does to find their voice. Amy sort of made it appear effortless. She was an incredibly hard worker who fought for her now iconic and truly unique style. I also learnt that despite what I had assumed and heard about her upbringing, that she came from a family filled with love and music. It’s easy to assume that people with messy lives come from messy homes. When you go through the exhibition it’s heart warming as much as it is devastating to see that Amy clearly came from a house of love and that she is being remembered in the way she wanted! This exhibition is no hype. It’s really just about the girl who became Amy, a powerful talented and driven musician!  She was the real deal.

What are the main things we can expect from the music program which is part of the Amy Winehouse exhibition?
We hope we have captured the diversity of Amy’s influences through the Thursday Late Night Program. We have reached out to a real cross section of the music community from Thando, the R&B and soul queen who runs regular improvisation nights at The Penny Black in Coburg, to Carlton jazzbos The Rookies, Melbourne Indie Voices -a indie-pop choir who will be singing Back to Black acapella and all ticket buyers will have the opportunity to learn and sing with them, Gospel style. We are also working with established soul and hip hop DJs from PBS and Kiss FM. For the musically adventurous and pop culturally engaged, there is the Melbourne Music Week gig at Toff in Town with jazz mavens Uncomfortable Science and hilarious Melbourne podcasters, ‘Quality Time with Angus & Jean Podcast’. People can expect to be blown away by Amy Winehouse – A Tribute at Memo Music Hall in early Feb! The line-up of musicians and vocalists who we have secured is pretty amazing. It will be a not-to-be-missed event! We have musicians and singers from The Bamboos, Jazz Party, Husky, All our Exes Live in Texas,  Clairy Browne and the Bangin Rackettes, Vulture Street Tape Gang and The Cat Empire. It’s a bit of a who’s who of Melbourne talent.

How easy or difficult or difficult was it to curate? How did you go about choosing the artists?
It was super fun to curate and hard because there is such a pool of incredible talent in the Melbourne Jazz scene but I guess hard as well because you have to choose between lots of great options. Some of the less mainstream genres in Australia like R&B, soul and hip hop were a little bit more challenging but Melbourne’s music scene is so dynamic, if you look hard enough, you can find everything.

What are some of your personal highlights we can look forward to?
That’s a really tough one, because I kind of want to go to everything but I wouldn’t recommend anyone missing the Amy Tribute at Memo. People will be talking about that one. There are lots of Amy tributes around, but this has an all-star cast of some of Australia’s greatest musicians and jazz and soul singers who are fans of Amy and I think it will be a bit of a love in.

Thanks Lior and Jesse! You can find all our music events here. Be sure to grab your tickets as our program is sure to sell out.