Songs at the Paragon Theatre to celebrate the Winter Season:
The evening will feature solo songs by Tiff Norchick, Tasha Zappala, and duets with the accompaniment of live soundscapes and field recordings captured across the state.
Tiff Norchick is a reclusive creative based in nipaluna. She plays harp in the Royal Hobart Hospital, and The Creek Road Art Orchestra. She also sings, writes songs and choral arrangements and has recently completed her first opera. She loves to play with Tasha Zappala and the birds and bugs of lutrawita.
“Tiff’s music keep reminding me that music is always born from essential emotions and that these emotions do not require exaggeration in order to be powerful. While other song writers display their emotions through bold enhancements and fancy technologically-assisted trickery, Tiff communicates her honest presence to us through a disarmingly minimalist combination of voice and accompanying instrument. Her expression has no peers in today’s music scene. The result is a child’s heart beat. I have never, in my whole composing life, come across such a mesmerising artist. This is pure creativity at work and at play.” – Daniel Fournier
The Paragon Theatre opened on October 28 1933.
The theatre enjoyed capacity crowds until the emergence of VCR in the late 1970’s. Patronage declined and the theatre closed in 1985. Soon after, the building was shoddily repurposed as an indoor cricket stadium which closed after a few years and the building left derelict.
In 2003 Dr Alex Stevenson took on the mammoth task to reopen as a 60 seat luxury cinema. Alex, and later wife Alice, spent 4 years restoring including painting the floor to resemble marble.
In 2012 they returned to their home in Zimbabwe passing the mantle on to Francisco Navidad who operated a cinema buffs club but with the decline of mining “Cisco” took the tough decision to close the Paragon in 2014.
In July 2017 Joy Chappell & Anthony Coulson began their quest to return this gem of Queenstown’s history into a thriving entertainment venue for all to enjoy once again.
