Poetica Founder Miriam Hechtman curates this unmissable evening of local musicians, writers and poets playing songs of and inspired by The Beatles.

After sold out tribute nights for Leonard Cohen (2019), Joni Mitchell (2019) and Bob Dylan (2020), Poetica finally brings to Bondi the anticipated music tribute to The Beatles - a night celebrating the Fab Four.

"You were only waiting for this moment to arise" (as sung by The Beatles in Blackbird)

Poetica began in September 2017 at  Gertrude & Alice Bookstore in Bondi. What started as a very intimate night for 40 people has now blossomed into a growing community of hundreds, who meet for open mic nights and tribute events across Sydney.

Artists line up

Huck Hastings & Sachin Burns (Hacky Sack)
Jessica Chapnik Kahn & Nadav Kahn
Declan Kelly
Miriam Lieberman & Lara Goodridge
Jenna Ní Mhurchú 
Eve Wheeler + Pauli Wheeler
David Leser
Tug Dumbly

with surprise special guests.

Artist Bios

Huck Hastings

Huck Hastings is the solo recording project of Sydney singer songwriter and creative Harrie Hastings. His debut album Cheers To Progress is a profound and witty exploration of codependency, self liberation and the art of letting go. It has amassed over half a million streams worldwide. In 2020, during the height of the Sydney lockdown, Hastings began work on a new collaborative project with guitarist Sachin Burns - a series of home recorded songs written and recorded together via correspondence. Their debut album is due out early next year.

Jessica Chapnik Kahn & Nadav Kahn

Nadav Kahn is an APRA award-winning singer/songwriter, and sound therapist, meditation facilitator & mantra teacher. He has released 12 records to date as a solo artist and in various bands and musical collaborations with incredible artists from all over the world. This year marks the 20 year anniversary of his first band Gelbision’s critically acclaimed album 1704. To celebrate, the album will be re mastered and re-released on vinyl.

Jessica Chapnik Kahn is an Argentinian-Australian writer, actor and singer-songwriter. She has appeared in plays, films and TV, worked with some of Australia's finest musicians, as well as releasing two solo albums under the moniker Appleonia. She is the author of children's book Lenny and the Ants and poetry collection MADRE, and co-author of the biography A Repurposed Life, which was nominated for an ABIA award for Biography Book of the Year 2021.

Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly has a way of captivating fans with his roots and his rhythm - inspired by his upbringing in a musical home in Sydney's Bondi Beach, with a Maori mother and Irish father. His music is heavily influenced by the mix of cultures - weaving together story telling of traditional Irish folk music, with Polynesian harmonies, drumming and blues n roots music and rhythms into his singer/songwriter style of music.

Miriam Lieberman

African influences blend seamlessly with blues-infused melodies and soaring vocal harmonies in the music by Bondi singer song-writer, Miriam Lieberman. Her albums are soulful collections of stories, beautifully told through strings, African kora and Lieberman’s unmistakable voice.

Amongst the themes, the songs relate a love for the natural world, stories of transformation, motherhood, love, loss and the power of imagination. The music is coloured by Miriam's journeys - from Guinea and Mali, where she studied kora  (West African harp)  to India and Latin America. These places have left an imprint on Lieberman’s musical style which she unifies with a catchiness and contemporary tone that is entirely her own.

Jenna Ní Mhurchú 

Jenna Ní Mhurchú  is one quarter of gritty local indie band Powersuit (formally known as E For Echo). Murphy fronts the band on guitar and vocals with co-front woman Zana Rose. The band are known for their lush harmonies, intricate overlayed melodies and lately - a throwback to 90s grunge. This is the first time Murphy has played solo for a while, having lived the life of a solo folk artist prior to the band.

Eve Wheeler & Pauli Wheeler

Bondi sister-brother duo Eve and Pauli Wheeler are electrifying together on the stage. Together with Modifii records they have co-written, performed and produced for Goldwyn horror thriller whodunnit film soundtrack, Dreamcatcher.

Eve is a singer-songwriter who has been songwriting, composing, recording and performing voice and piano for over 28 years as a jazz, cabaret, pop and rock singer including a NYC stint for a few years as lead singer with her originals rock electro band The Toxic Femmes who released two EP’s. Evie is a top five MusicOz and APRA Artist Development award finalist.

Keyboard, trumpet player and producer Pauli Wheeler is a veteran on the international music scene having played alongside Boy George, Ben Folds Five, James Morrison and Roger Sanchez. He plays regularly on the Sydney scene with his own DJ/Trumpet duo band, Binary Live along side DJ veteran, Johnny Gleeson as well as Double Touch.

David Leser

David Leser is a multi-award-winning Australian journalist and author of seven books, including his memoir To BeginTo Know, shortlisted for the 2015 National Biography Award, and the recent critically acclaimed Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing, about patriarchy and misogyny in the age of #MeToo. A former Middle East and Washington correspondent, he is a contributor to Good Weekend magazine and a Doctor of Creative Arts in the ethics of memoir.

Tug Dumbly

Tug Dumbly is the pen and stage name of Geoff Forrester, a Nowra-born poet and performer who has lived in Sydney for decades. He has worked extensively in radio, venues and schools, and founded a couple of seminal poetry nights in Sydney. He has performed his work as resident-poet on ABC radio (Triple J, ABC 702), and released two spoken-word CDs through the ABC – Junk Culture Lullabies and Idiom Savant. His awards include the Banjo Paterson Prize for Comic Verse (twice), and Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup (thrice). His poems have appeared in many publications and he has been shortlisted numerous times for major awards. In 2020 he won the Borranga Poetry Prize, in 2022 he won the Woorilla Poetry Prize, and most recently he won the 2023 Bruce Dawe Poetry prize. His first poetry collection, Son Songs, came out in 2018 through Flying Island Books. He is also a singer, songwriter and musician who likes photography and nature, especially cicadas.