20 APRIL – 6 MAY
Nicole Corbett explores the aural delights from Tura New Music this month.
You’ve got to take your hat off to Tos Mahoney, the Artistic Director of Tura New Music, as the company is celebrating its 20th year this year. This month Tura presents the biannual Totally Huge New Music Festival (THNMF). The festival features totally huge new music from accessible orchestral extravaganzas to experimental electronica through concerts, sound art, installations, improvisation, screenings, workshops and master classes with local, national and international artists. As part of the festival, Perth will be treated to performances from diverse and extraordinary talented performers, musicians and artists including Michel van der Aa (Netherlands), SunnO))) (USA), Boris (Japan), The Song Company (Sydney), Duo Stump-Linshalm (Austria), Philip Brophy (Melbourne), the WASO New Music Ensemble, and pi (Fremantle) to mention a few. THNMF will cross the landscape, utilising venues including the Art Gallery of WA, Fremantle Arts Centre, the Callaway Auditorium at UWA, the Music Auditorium at the WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), the Perth Concert Hall, Luna Cinemas and the ARTRAGE Bakery Complex.
Some of the highlights?
In the heart of Northbridge at the Art Gallery of WA are quite a few performances including, but not limited to, Sonic Sights on Saturday April 28th with WASO New Music Ensemble conducted by Brett Dean and featuring soprano Merlyn Quaife. The gala night’s program of contemporary music showcases one of Europe’s most awarded composers, Michel van der Aa’s, pieces Here (in circles) and Here (to be found), as well as Andrew Ford’s Scenes from Bruegel and Brett Dean’s offering, Wolf-Lieder. Also at AGWA, earlier in the week, on the 26th of April you’ll be treated to The Song Company and percussionist extraordinaire Claire Edwardes who will play/pay tribute to John Cage, one of the renowned figures of 20th Century art, with ‘Cage Uncaged’.
On the evening of Friday 27th of April is Philip Brophy’s Aurevelateur, Teekee Tokee Tomak by Martin Wesley-Smith and The Passage by Michel van der Aa will feature aural delights with visual bite at Luna Cinemas. The audience will experience Brophy’s live score to the one hour controversial silent 1968 film ‘Le Revelateur’ – don’t go expecting a mere soundtrack though, as the music is designed to create dialogue with the film rather than merely accompany it. Aurevelateur is accompanied by Martin Wesley-Smith’s imagery and computer music portraying post-independence East Timor, a performance which features live clarinettist Ros Dunlop, as well as The Passage, a short film and soundtrack written, directed and composed by Michel van der Aa. The Passage will be performed by Tomoko Mukaiyama.
If you like your sounds late at night best you be heading down to the Bakery for ‘Bake It Up’. The Totally Huge Festival Club will feature Dave Brown in his ‘candlesnuffer’ guise, Robin Fox, who will perform his audio controlled laser system and once again Philip Brophy will blend imagery and sound with ‘Beautiful Cyborg 2’ a homage to anime characters blended with pulsating rhythms and unearthly sounds that will float throughout the space at the Bakery.
The Festival may finish in May but that doesn’t mean that we’ve nothing to surrender our ears to, as Club Zho starts up again in June and the 20th Year Archive Party will also occur at this time. The Scale Variable New Chamber Music Series is in September and November and will feature the WA ensemble pi and a world premiere of a new work by none other than our own community member Cathie Travers. The legendary ‘Ruined Piano Sanctuary Event’ at the Wambyn Olive Farm with WA artist Ross Bolleter will be in October.
Art expresses itself in many mediums and I challenge you to take a risk and experience an aural meal courtesy of TURA New Music!
For dates, ticket prices and more information check out the website: www.tura.com.au
