WHAT IS MUSIC?

After a hiatus in 2007 the notorious ‘What is Music?’ festival returns in 2008 with what promises to be an experimental music spectacular at the Carriageworks in Sydney this April the 12th. The festival has developed a reputation over the last ten years for presenting the most cutting edge and often outrageous experiments in music making and sound culture from across the globe and around the country. This year, the festival is presenting all homegrown talent with a focus on large scale new instrument design and modification as well as the usual presentation of sonic extremes.Featuring in the Carriageworks foyer will be Miles Van Dorsen’s ‘Feuerwasser’, a towering plume of flame, steam and sound that emanates from a body of water. Van Dorsen pushes our understanding of day-to-day physics challenging us to reconsider what is possible. From Palermo Valerio Tricoli is one of the leading musicians in the new Italian music scene. His compositions bridge musique concrete and conceptual forms of sound. Also featuring will be the Sydney premiere of Robin Fox’s double laser synaesthetic sound and light performance. Fox envelopes the audience in impossible cones and lines of light all generated by audio signal so that what you see is literally what you hear. Also representing the sculptural aspect of the event will be Robbie Avenaim, co-founder of the long running festival and organizer of the 2008 event. His current work involves the deployment of multiple robotic bass drum pedals attached to various surfaces creating a maelstrom of polyrhythmic sound textures. Also, Dale Gorfinkle’s remarkable extensions of the humble vibraphone have become sculptural works in their own right! These innovators represent the spirit of innovation and exploration that is central to the strength of Australia’s experimental music community.Assaulting the full range of the sonic spectrum will be Cor Fuhler (from Amsterdam but an honorary Australian) who will be joined by the legendary Chris Abrahams (the necks) both there sublime use of objects within the piano has to be heard to be believed also performing is Oren Ambarchi (the other co-founder of What is Music?) who’s attention to bass frequencies and ability to sculpt sonic mass is legendary worldwide, Marco Fusinato who brings the visual art perspective to his unique approach to sonic forms and materials and the exciting Sydney premiere of the ‘Maxximal Paterrorist’ duo consisting of Anthony Pateras on piano and Max Kohane on grindcore drumkit!A not to be missed one night only event 12th of April at the Carriageworks in Sydney.
WHATS ON!
VALERIO TRICOLI
- Electroacoustic composer and radical improviser on analogue electronic instruments, sound-engineer and organiser of concerts and cooperations, Valerio Tricoli is one of the leading musicians in the new Italian music scene. His compositions bridge musique concrete and conceptual forms of sound; music, as a recorded or as a synthetically-processed sound, is always hovering between the “here and now” of the event and the shady domain of memory - distant but at the same time present, like a deja-vu experience. Tricoli plays live music with electronic instruments, however the structure of the device is ever-changing, seeking multiple relations between the performer, the device and the space in which the event takes place. He is one of the founders of the Bowindo label/collective, and of the band 3/4HadBeenEliminated, a daring synthesis between improvisation, electroacoustic composition and avant-rock sensitivity.
FEUERWASSER Miles van Dorssen and Zai Van Dorssen displays a dynamic synthesis of elemental forces. Most often perceived as opposites that negate each other, fire and water are coerced together to create an astonishingly poetic tempest of pure energy. This work challenges preconceptions about the nature and behaviour of these fundamental forces, inciting the observer to contemplate the higher mysteries of matter and energy. http://www.cell.org.au/
OREN AMBARCHI Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, "re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it’s no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it’s a laboratory for extended sonic investigation". (The Wire, UK). www.orenambarchi.com
COR FULHER and CHRIS ABRAHAMS - A first time collaboration of two LEGENDARY Pianists.COR FULHER Amsterdam-based Cor Fuhler works in the field of electronic and improvised music. Piano is his main acoustic instrument, and he seeks to take it musically beyond usual perceptions, specializing in sustained sounds with use of various string stimulators: 12 ebows, rotating threads, spinning disks. He often builds his own instruments/ installations/ modifications. http://www.euronet.nl/users/fuhler/
CHRIS ABRAHAMS Chris Abrahams is perhaps best known for his work in the minimalist trio The Necks. The Necks was formed in 1987 and has produced eight albums. In recent years they have toured extensively both in Australia and Europe to considerable critical acclaim. In ‘97 they composed the music for the Australian feature film “The Boys”, and in 2000 they composed the music for the three part ABC documentary series “In The Mind Of The Architect”.
ROBIN FOX Robin Fox’s Multi laser show describes, in three-dimensional visual space, the geometry of sound. Enveloping the audience in synchronous sound and light information, the experience resembles a synaesthetic experience where what you hear is also what you see. The same electricity generated to move the speaker cones is sent simultaneously to high-speed motors that deflect the laser light on an x/y axis converting sonic vibration into light movement. the experience resembles a synaesthetic experience where what you hear is also what you see. The same electricity generated to move the speaker cones is sent simultaneously to high-speed motors that deflect the laser light on an x/y axis converting sonic vibration into light movement. www.robinfox.com.au
ROBBIE AVENAIM Robbie has been performing since the 80's. He has gained a reputation as one of the Australia’s leading drummers and experimental sound artists. His passion is for the unconventional. He has established himself in the international community of experimental musicians and improvisers and composers. Like his peers, he takes music too much more personal and challenging realms, involving spontaneous collaborations, home built instruments and electronics. Robbie will be performing a new solo work for multiple automated instruments based on the Drum Kit. Avenaim is also a founder and co-organiser of the What Is Music? Festival, The What Is Music? festival now in its 11th year since 1994. www.robbieavenaim.com
MARCO FUSINATO Marco Fusinato works across various media and contexts – from installations in museums to performances in venues. His work is a series of propositions that question and re-work accepted cultural forms and concepts, laying bare their construction, re-using them in particular contexts, exploring how those worlds are made. His sound practice involves the exploration of noise as music via the use of guitar/electronics. He combines disregarded electronic detritus into sheer amplified shards and walls of free-noise ecstaticism.He is currently working on a project whereby a video composition made from drumming instructional videos and other percussive cinematic moments are used as an accompaniment to his live performances. http://www.psprojectspace.nl/artists_fusinato.html
DALE GORFINKEL Over the past seven years Dale has developed a unique and personal musical language on the vibraphone, combining traditional and extended techniques with physical modification of the vibraphone. Modifications have included extending use of the instrument’s tremolo mechanism, the addition of microtonally tuned bars, various motorised continuous-bowing and percussive mechanisms, and amplification. In recent years, his creative approach to the vibraphone has become the basis for building new 'vibraphone deconstructions’, which uses to construct installations and spatialized performances
MAXXIMAL PATTERRORIST Anthony Pateras and Max Kohane. Describing themselves as ‘Gershwin meets Lombardo’ this new combination of piano (no preparations) and drumkit will have you stroking your chin and banging your head at the same time. In trying to synthesize the classical baggage of the piano with the hardcore brutality of grindcore drumkit this duo produces what can only be described as infectious confusion and mayhem! http://www.anthonypateras.com/