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Hester Ida and the Music is the newest vision of multi-disciplinary artist Hester Ullyart.

For Tiny Fest, her talented band of musicians are on an intimate journey of sound, word, and song.

Youth, love and human experience are held up to the light in an open-armed, unforgettable ode to self-government and love.

We spoke to Hester ahead of her Tiny Fest performance.

Tell us what you’re doing for Tiny Fest this year?

I’m doing a performance called – Hester Ida and the Music and we’re doing a thing called ‘The All Clear’ which consists of spoken word songs. They’re songs that I wrote a few years ago and they’ve been sitting there waiting! This last year, I’ve been collaborating with some local musicians and turning them into audio visual pieces, so the performance has come out of this process.

You come from a theatre background, so the show incorporates all aspects of theatre in a way?

Well, it won’t have visuals – we won’t have video – but it will be live music. I have a band with me, I’ll be doing vocals and plus we’ll have a surprise element.

But a focus on the spoken word?

It’s like a blend of songs – a bit Laurie Anderson-ish – they’re like song poems somehow, but they are songs. It’s been a really interesting way of producing songs for me.

Is there a connecting theme?

It’s kind of like an autobiographical story. In this case it touches on themes like getting over heartbreak, and a lot of it is about connection to a childhood self and growing into autonomy. It’s about people and how we all do stupid things – it’s like a genuine frank poetic response to hard things that we all go through. I’ve often found the things I’ve written that are really personal, resonate the most. We may be all different but we still all share so much.

Tell us a bit more about the collaborative aspect of the show.

I wrote all the lyrics and poems. I have a musical brain, but I don’t pretend to be an amazing guitarist – I can work the tone and tempo out. With this, I knew I wanted to turn it into a live situation with an organic sound and so I approached Hannah, Reuben and Thomas and we got in the studio, and I played the songs and treated it like I was directing something. I work in visuals a lot so I would direct like ‘It’s a sad murky space on the beach’ and they’re such artistic musicians and have such a breadth of worlds inside them with their backgrounds, they were able to bring it to life. When you’re creating by yourself it’s not as good – you need people.

How do you find performing at Tiny Fest?

I really like Tiny Fest. I like their vision of really looking at the art and looking at ways of changing things and looking at things differently. They put the artists first. It really is a marathon, going to one thing after another. A lot of its free, and it’s great that it’s at the library, it’s a great space.