Australian Art Orchestra – Exit Ceremonies (Saturday, 6 February 2016)

Two of Australia’s most vibrant musical forces, Australian Art Orchestra and Ensemble Offspring present Exit Ceremonies, uniting with giant of American experimental music, Alvin Lucier, and celebrated young composer-pianists: Austin Buckett (Australia) and Simon James Phillips (Germany), who have each created immersive and bespoke compositions that exploit the extraordinary array of sonic effects that can only be achieved with large pipe organs.

For one night only on Saturday, 6 February 2016, Exit Ceremonies will create an unfamiliar and entrancing world of sound with the unexpected addition of reel-to-reel tape machines, turntables, electronics, percussion, vocals, trumpet and strings in combination with majestic Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ – one of world’s largest organs that uses 90,000 cubic feet of air every minute.

Internationally acclaimed composer, trumpeter, sound artist and Australian Art Orchestra artistic director, Peter Knight explains that it’s important to constantly stretch genres and break down the barriers separating disciplines, forms and cultures, “Exit Ceremonies creates new rituals for the organ and explores the meeting points of classical, jazz and experimental music. It also aims to be accessible and to draw the audience into a totally immersive sensual experience – an experience that can only be created using this giant instrument.”

Eager to see Exit Ceremonies after recently being appointed the new Australian Art Orchestra director and chair, Brian Ritchie said “Australian Art Orchestra explores a panoply of sonic textures and formal approaches as part of their mission to conquer musical terra incognita and this original new work and international collaboration is testament to this vision.”

Famous for his works that explore phenomena and auditory perception, Alvin Lucier’s commission for Australian Art Orchestra, Swings, will have its world premiere at the Melbourne Town Hall. Many of Lucier’s works explore the difference tones produced by combinations of notes played very closely together that generate sonically hallucinatory effects both conceptually fascinating and sensually engaging.

Swings is a major international event and is written for two violins, cello, double bass, trumpet in C, female vocals as an additional three players will manipulate the sounds of the mouths of the organ pipes that will cause pitch bending and audible beating.

Working in multi-mediums that focus on the perception of sound repetition and a slow evolving approach, Austin Buckett’s Aisles is a new work for that draws on a wide range of inspirations from minimalism to hip hop. Aisles sets up looped conversations between the pipe organ, turntables, percussion and strings as the ethereal voice of Sonya Holowell and the trumpet of Peter Knight float like kites in the ether.

Trained as a classical pianist and currently working as an experimental improvising pianist and composer in Berlin, Simon James Phillips is influenced by electronic music and is interested in replicating mechanical and repetitive sounds. Working with subtle timbral and structural development to build a complex composition, Phillips’ Flaw uses a mix of multi-layered impacts acoustic and electronic instruments.