I'm a London based composer and audio/visual artist, creating conceptually inspired compositions that range from intricately entwined layers of sound, to the haunting and unearthly theatre of my twisted fairground show, "Euphonika".
I have collaborated across the arts with artists such as Scanner, The Generating Company and Jonathan Allen, and enjoy experimenting with contemporary dance, installations, film and theatre.
I have built up a diverse body of works which have been performed at venues from London Zoo to Tate Britain, and include compositions with found sounds and words, melodica, toy piano, string quartets and electronics. I also write bespoke music for film and adverts in an array of contemporary, historical and cross-genre styles.
I'm currently working on a commission from the East Wing Collection at the Courtauld Institute of Art, which will be performed at Somerset House in the Winter of 2008.
"What I find compelling about Troy Banarzi's music is that it is always highly organised but never abstract. I sense quiet obsessions at work. He makes sound worlds that are both tender and dark, evoking the vulnerability of humanity with simplicity and restraint. He treasures found objects - sounds or chords - placing them in time as though they were precious things - so that they become precious things, cool but not quite preserved, vulnerable, almost nostalgic. But above all what I like about this music is that it is mysterious to me, withholding as much from me as it gives to me. It is elusive and engaging."
Alwynne Pritchard
Composer, Journalist and Presenter of Hear and Now, BBC Radio 3
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Euphonika
Developed over the past year, my multi-media work, "Euphonika" involves projections, 8 musicians and 10 instruments in a weird and quasi-theatrical sound and vision performance that explores the urge across cultures and religions to blur the distinctions between the animate and the inanimate. Funded by the Arts Council, the debut performance at the historical Hoxton Hall was recorded and subsequently broadcast by Resonance FM
Dolls, fantasies, fairgrounds, childhood obsessions and those of a darker and more unsettling nature are the inspirations behind this multi-layered, evocative, funny/strange soundscape. Sex dolls, miracles, talking statues, freaks, fetishism and testimonies from real agalmatophiliacs are accompanied by twisted music hall melodies and the music of memory.
Euphonika considers the ‘living statue’ as a historical cultural phenomenon, and looks at the varied attitudes held about believers - from the socially derogated, to the spiritually exalted. From Hans Bellmer to Denis Nilsen to the high priests of Hinduism...
“Euphonika uses real interviews with people who are weird and like dolls and stuff like that... It’s terrifically creepy and looks and sounds gorgeousâ€
Resonance FM
"Euphonika pushes outwards, fusing unsettling imagery, serial killers, rudely obsessed doll fanatics within a vaudeville circus atmosphere, leaving this viewer disoriented, unsteady, yet thirsting for more"
Scanner
"Truly spine-chilling... beautifully recorded... In a word: stunning"
Sound on Sound
“Unsettlingâ€
Time Out
Buy Euphonika on itunes!
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Listen to excerpts from Euphonika below:
euphonika.com
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Experimental Compositions
A selection of compositions performed at Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, Zoo Art Fair, Laban, Resonance FM and Trinity College of Music
www.banarzi.com
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Music for theatre, film and TV
A selection of compositions for productions at Riverside Studios, National Film Theatre/British Film Institute, BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel4, Channel5, Disney Channel, Sky Digital and Sky Sports
www.banarzi.com
