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MAKE IT NOW FESTIVAL PERTH : NATIONAL FESTIVAL OF IMPROVISED MUSIC
NOVEMBER 17 2003
9 of Australia's best contemporary improvisers create 3 totally unique events as part of this national festival.
From Melbourne: Ren Walters electric guitar, Robin Fox laptop and electronics, Sean Baxter percussion
From Sydney: Amanda Stewart vocals and text, Clayton Thomas acoustic bass violin, Adam Sussman guitar and electronics
From Perth: Ross Bolleter accordian and prepared piano, Cat Hope electric bass and electronics, Lindsay Vickery reeds and electronics
A Festival of Improvised Music ???
This is not jazz, this is not extemporisation of classical music, this is not a "jam"...
This is spontaneous compositional work at the highest degree of rigour and practice. This is the development of techniques that draw on old and new traditions throughout the world simultaneously deconstructing them and inventing the new. Each of the composer/performers have international reputations and careers in their own right, performing at Festivals around the world.
What is unique is that this will be the only time when this particular group of improvisers will create and perform together, bringing their own unique improvisational processes into virtually one off combinations. These combinations create wonderful resonances and juxtapositions, challenging both the performers and the audience to be actively involved in every moment.
Solos, small ensembles and the whole group will perform over the three nights of Make It Now Perth in ever changing combinations - so each night will be totally different.
Though all performances will be recorded and videoed for the future, there is nothing like the excitement of witnessing the creation of new music live. All artists will be available after performances to discuss their work with the audience.
DON'T MISS THESE 3 UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES !!!!!
Make It Now Perth is hosted by Tura and co-produced by Tura and the Make It Now Project. By years end, Make It Now Festivals will have taken place in all capital cities throughout Australia. The Make It Now Project was devised by the Make It Up Club, Melbourne and NOWnow, Sydney. It has been funded by the Australia Council under the 'Playing Ad Lib' initiative, to present a series of Festivals of improvised music making.
Robin Fox - laptop and electronics - VIC
Robin is a Melbourne based performer, composer, researcher and sound artist/designer. He has collaborated with some of the country's finest contemporary musicians including Natasha Anderson (recorders), Erkki Veltheim (viola), Danny Fischer (drums) and Anthony Pateras (piano etc) among others. Recent soundworks have appeared at Westspace gallery and the Australia Council foyer as part of Gateing and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as part of Variable Resistance. His work as an improviser has resulted in two recent CD releases (both supported by Arts Victoria) and worldwide performances with Anthony Pateras as part of the Synaesthesia records world tour (April/March 03).
Sean Baxter - Percussion - VIC
Sean, a musician and an academic, teaches cultural theory and aesthetic philosophy at the Victorian College of the Arts. As a performer, he specialises in extreme forms of improvised music and dada performance, sharing time between drum kit, percussive junk and absurdist performance art. A founding member of Melbourne's renowned free jazz/punk noise group, Bucketrider, he has played with many of the finest of Australian and International improvising musicians, and has appeared at numerous prestigious events including regular gigs for the What is Music? Festival, Electrofringe, the Melbourne Festival, Melbourne Fringe, the Wangaratta Jazz festival and the Melbourne International Jazz festival.
Ren Walters - electronics - VIC
Ren has led his own bands in precomposed and free music since 1971. He is also a practicing visual artist and occasional educator, teaching at the VCA 1995-99, and was a member of the Australian Art Orchestra. He is a member of spontaneous composition group, THAT, and a founding member of The Make It Up Club (improvised music venue in Melbourne) where he regularly performs improvised music with friends. Whilst still working with precomposed music, his current activity is largely based on non-performance 'domestic music making', 'audio assemblage', video/audio works and computer based visual art.
Clayton Thomas - double bass - NSW
Clayton plays the double bass using mallets, sticks, fingers, pieces of pipe, metal, clothes pegs, bows, bells, rocks, hooks, springs and other unexpected non-musical objects to make unexpectedly musical sounds. In the last three years he has been blessed to record and perform around New York, Europe, New Zealand and Australia with some of the world's master improvisers including Sonny Simmons, Marilyn Crispell, Cooper-Moore, Brandon Evans, Aleta Hayes, Jim Denley, Jon Rose, Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck, Jeff Henderson and Daniel Carter. He is also a passionate and possibly over zealous organiser of Sydney's only dedicated improvised music festival - The NOWnow.
Amanda Stewart - vocals and text - NSW
Amanda's recent work centres around language and its relationship to the voice. Her performance explodes outside text to include utterances and non-verbal implications. In 1999 she released a book/CD of her selected poems and vocal works entitled I/T, and her voice has been described as "all edges, explosives, throat, pssssts running in quick breathless overlap like many persons in one." (Keith Gallach, Real Time). She has recently performed at sound and poetry festivals in Munich and Lyon.
Lindsay Vickery - Reeds and electronics - WA
Lindsay is active as a composer and performer across Europe, the USA and Asia. His music includes works for acoustic and electronic instruments in interactive-electronic, improvised or fully notated settings, ranging from solo pieces to opera. He was a founding member of Magnetic Pig, SQUINT and HEDKIKR and has been a visiting artist at a number of universities and new music institutions such as STEIM (NLD), HarvestWorks (NYC), and Kyoto Seika University. Significant honours include a Sounds Australian Award (1989), Churchill Fellowship (1995) and a seeding Grant by the Australian Major Festivals Initiative (2001). Lindsay is currently a lecturer in music at the WA Academy of Performing Arts.
Ross Bolleter - ruined piano, accordian - WA
Ross has performed in Slovakia, Czech Republic, the USA, and around Australia. He has performed with many noted improvisers, including Jon Rose, Stevie Wishart, Jim Denley, David Moss and Simone de Haan. Ross formed WARPS - the World Association for Ruined Piano Studies - in 1991 together with Stephen Scott, and was featured in the WIRE magazine in 2001. His album LEFT HAND OF THE UNIVERSE featured a composition for up to seven performers playing left handed on any number of Ruined Pianos on three continents, simultaneously. His contribution to Music in Western Australia was rewarded with an ArtsWA Fellowship in 2002.
Cat Hope - electric bass and electronics - WA
Cat is a composer, performer, singer, songwriter and audio visual artist as well as an improviser. Her improvising has taken her on numerous overseas tours, most recently to perform at the 2002 International Symposium of Electronic Art in Nagoya, Japan and 15 different European cities. Her recordings are distributed and published worldwide and her audio installations have been presented around Australia (most recently at Electrofringe, Liquid Architecture and the ACMC) as well as in the USA and Europe. She is also a classically trained flautist, member of pop group Gata Negra and audio visual duo cAVity. She works with bass feedback and low frequency distortion.
