Reviews

'Sarah Hopkins has the rare gift of being able to conjure music which sounds like the very essence of the universe. Whether she's summoning forth this music from her cello with long, deep draws of her bow or with her primal vocals, the result is, at first, haunting and later, mystically calming. When one becomes attuned to what's going on, it can become an experience that's part of a journey to the centre of being.'
Phil Brown, Oz Arts Magazine

'In an earlier age, Brisbane musician and composer Sarah Hopkins might also have been called either a miracle worker or a witch. The ethereal sound of her voice harmonising with the sonic bells, 'whirly' wind pipes and cello she plays in original compositions such as Reclaiming the Spirit, Deep Whirly Heart Song and Past Life Melodies has an uncanny effect on audiences.'
Kate Maccheroni Collins, The Courier-Mail

'Past Life Melodies for a capella choir is a profound musical work which blends European antiquity with Aboriginal song lines and then transports one to Nepal, the roof of the world, where the monks are chanting.'
Stuart Phillpot, Canberra

'I feel if the powerful history and immense beauty of the Australian landscape could speak to us - then Sarah Hopkins would be its voice.'
Belinda Key, Nature and Health Magazine (excerpt from Honour the Earth CD review)

'Hopkins is an exquisite musician who creates an enormous sound out of that most soulful of instruments, the cello.'
Andrea Borsay, Dance Australia

'As Sarah played, tingles ran down my spine; her music recalled emotions that I have felt while sitting high in the mountains at night, listening to the wind wail through jumbled blocks of granite. I felt alone in the universe, but at peace.'
Paul Doherty, Exploratorium Quarterly, San Francisco, USA

'Words cannot do justice to Sarah Hopkins as she harnesses haunting sounds from a collection of corrugated plastic tubes to produce a stirring musical experience.'
Nicole Harkins, Northside Chronicle, Queensland

'A violin and a harp produce beautiful music but the whirly instruments produce pure magic.'
Stephanie Walkem, Brisbane Biennial International Music Festival

'Dreamtime inhabits the world of Sarah Hopkins: a timelessness, an ancient wisdom is set in the lie of her instruments and voice.'
Bernadette Cruise, The Canberra Times

'In Cello Chi, accompanying herself with the elaborate hand gestures of Tai Chi, she sang overtones above a drone, Tibetan Buddhist style, and played the cello in the same way. This kind of reverse virtuosity posits the cello not as a tool to be mastered, but as a natural resource to be developed in accord with its own potentiality; a model for an ecology, in other words. Hopkins vividly communicates a holistic, non-European world view. It was impossible to watch Cello Chi without entertaining an alternate approach to the physical world.'
Kyle Gann, The Village Voice, New York

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