THE CHITTENDENS SUITE

Ensemble: 
Gascia Ouzounian	 Violine / violin 
James Eccles	 Bratsche / viola 
Augustin Maurs	 Cello 
Jane Grothe	 Harfe / harp 
Ivan Manzanilla	 Schlaginstrumente / percussion 
Andrew Infanti	 Piano, Synthesizer, musikalische Regie und Zusammenarbeit / piano, synthesizer, musical direction and collaboration 
Carl Francis	 Kommentator / narrator 
Carolyn Shoemaker	Gesang / vocals

Download of excerpts of "The Resuscitation of Uplifting" and "Shallow Brown" at the Tate Modern wesite: 
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/sullivan/viewthework.htm

"Griffin's scores reflect on whether structure is music's way of "getting a grip" on itself after some hard times, dirty secrets, bad faith, or ugly divorce. His structural "Betty Ford Clinic" later checks in Thrash Punk, Webern, Canonical Horror Film Music, Free Jazz, Hysterical Opera vis Berio's aging Sequenza III, and Pythagorean drones across expensive La Monte Young tunings. Each of these patients remain mutually condescending in their white rooms ... they also refuse to just shut up and take their pills." 
Wolf-Dieter Schlühnz, from Regimenting the Perhaps-burgs

04 Bean Counters

une in to Ears Have Ears this Thursday night for an exclusive soundtrack by Tasmanian radio artist and curator Julia Drouhin. Drouhin’s fascinating back catalogue of soundworks include investigating the haunted air of ghost towns and improvising with a gleam robot.

An exclusive soundtrack for FBi Radio Sydney's Ears Have Ears experimental music program. For the show, Drouhin has contributed a surprising and dynamic soundtrack titled ‘We Are Too Close to Everything‘. The piece features field recordings from Europe and Tasmania, electromagnetic frequencies from Jupiter, electric hurdy gurdy and bontempi synthesizer 103 amongst other things.

EHE 07.05.15 - Julia Drouhin (TAS) -  .we Are Too Close To Everything.

Born In A Donga

Excerpt (4'38") from 'Turing Test' for violin and electronics by Erkki Veltheim (2014)
Performed by Erkki Veltheim, violin

Turing Test excerpt 2

In Anthony Pateras’ Prayer for Nil the electronics are a swell of voices so dense they seem inhuman, amassed like a threatening cloud. As the piece unfolds the masses thin to a taper. By its conclusion the solitary singer is left brutally alone, though it’s hard to tell if she wasn’t alone the whole time – every voice in the throng was her own - my own. The ‘live vocal’ part is a highly structured improvisation. Anthony gave me a set of rules, pitches, and rhythms. Within the electronic field, and those restrictions, I had to find an improvisatory freedom. This approach could be seen as a metaphor for the whole process of making the album – the composers and I trying to find ways to understand one another, building a shared understanding of the musical objectives, negotiating varying degrees of control and freedom – and inside this discourse, me trying to find a way to be present in realising the sounds as myself. - Jessica Aszodi

Prayer for Nil – Anthony Pateras 
Performed by Jessica Aszodi
Electronics by Anthony Pateras

Produced and engineered by Samuel Dunscombe
Mastered by Calyx

© & ℗ 2017 Hospital Hill
HHLP03160745

https://jessicaaszodi.com

Prayer for Nil

Buy on Bandcamp

Jessica Aszodi // Prayer For Nil (Anthony Pateras)

This work was inspired by an article about Endlings, animals that are the last of their species, and by a set of piano miniatures composed by Pierre Boulez in 1945.

In her award winning article entitled Endlings: On Love and Extinction, Harriet Riley explores some of the psychology of dealing with extinction. She suggests that the notion of extinction is too overwhelming for us to face and that we associate it with "fantasy," as "nothing but the epic scale of myth can capture the immensity of losing an entire species."

In one part of the article Riley describes her emotional response to a report in the Living Planet Index that "more than half of all creatures have died out in the last 40 years," as "a deep, primal pain - a disturbance in the force."

"To feel grief is to admit that we loved. And sometimes it's easier to pretend the lost thing didn't matter than to confront the fact that it's gone. That's why we call endlings such a fanciful name, because pretending that they never existed means that there's nothing to grieve. But any psychologist will tell you that you have to grieve to move on."

Boulez composed Douze Notations while he was studying with both Messiaen and Leibowitz  at the end of World War II. The pieces are free extrapolations of a 12 note row, with each movement lasting exactly 12 bars. The pieces represent Boulez's desire to leave the old world in the past and to embrace the new musical language of the post war era.

Initially I found his use of extreme limitation very interesting, but as I explored some approaches to 12-tone composition and serialism, I was unable to find the appropriate materials for my composition. However, I did use the thinking behind serialism to organise my resources. I divided the piano, and piano playing into segments: two hands; seven registers; a range of articulations from very short to very long and at least eight graduations of dynamics. To this I divided each octave into groups of consecutive notes and explored the permutations of each group melodically and rhythmically.



Ultimately, the greatest impact of the Boulez pieces was purely musical. They inspired me to explore time, duration and resonance in a freer way than I had previously.

Both movements explore time and resonance. The rests, or spaces between the notes, are at least as important as the composed notes. Small gestures are separated by unpredictable measures of time and one is left to ponder the resonance left behind by each gesture, whether it be a short, sharp articulation or a sustained one. In this way, through the musical gestures, the performer explores the acoustic properties of their performance space.
Quotes from Island 146, Island Magazine, Hobart Tasmania, 2016.

The Endlings I for piano

When I arrived in Tasmania from France, I've heard about a train in a tree in an abandoned mining town on the West Coast.

So I went bushwalking with my family, tracking remains of civilisation in the wilderness, and found the carriage, but not on top of the tree, sitting as the biggest forest pot plant for few Australian Blackwood and ferns that had grown through the rusty structure.

From there we went on to explore other ghost towns in the area, former bustling communities that thrived through the copper mining boom but now lie dormant. Lake Margaret, Linda, Williamsford and Crotty, and then Gormanston, where we finally encountered people.

Previously a vibrant city with thousands of people, six pubs, seven hotels, a school and a swimming pool, Gormanston is now inhabited by eight permanents and thousands of rabbits.

Jenny, Mike, Shane, Taz and Beverley are all residents of Gormanston, some of them newly arrived, and some who have been around forever.

Featuring the voices of: Jenny, Mike, Taz Huxley, Shane Viper, Beverley Legge, Arjan Kok, Julia Drouhin, Emma Drouhin and Sanne Kok Drouhin.

Original music composed by Julia Drouhin and sound design by Simon Drouhin. 
Completed at Ina GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) Studio 116, Radio France in September 2013 and facilitated by the Phonurgia Nova Award 2012.

Credits
Producer and composer : Julia Drouhin, Sound Engineer : Angela Grant / Tim Symmonds, Supervising Producer : Miyuki Jokiranta

02.09.2016

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/soundproof/ghost-track/7794724

Photo Arjan Kok

The Endlings I for piano

Joel Roberts 5