This work for solo violin and accordion was written in 2015 for violinist Tara Murphy who is a personal friend.

The work was premièred on the 21st August 2016 at Brown’s Mart Theatre as part of the 2016 Darwin Festival by violinist Netanela Mizrahi, with the Cathy Applegate on keyboard playing a modified part.

The work was inspired by the following quote from the novel, Levels of Life by Julian Barnes:

In the late 1800s, “Sarah Bernhardt travelled with her artist-lover Georges Clairin and a professional aeronaut in an orange balloon called Doña Sol, after her current role at the Comédie-Française. At six thirty in the evening, an hour into their flight, the actress played mother, preparing tartines de foie gras. The aeronaut opened a bottle of champagne, firing the cork into the sky; Bernhardt drank from a silver goblet.  Then they ate oranges and tossed the empty bottle into the Lake of Vincennes. In their sudden superiority, they cheerfully dropped ballast on to the groundlings below: a family of English tourists on the balcony of the Bastille Column; later, a wedding party enjoying a rural party.”