Peter Knight (composer) and Georgie Darvidis (voice) in Diomira. Image supplied
PREVIEW
Diomira, The Australian Art Orchestra, The Substation, Newport
Saturday, October 7 at 8pm. 1 hr, no interval
Tickets $49 ($39 concession)
If you are up for a challenge, members of the Australian Art Orchestra are ready to play with our perceptions of what we hear and what we imagine we have heard at The Substation tonight.
Sparked off by one of the imaginary lands in Italo Calvino‘s novella Invisible Cities, the AAO’s Diomira is described as “an expedition forging a path between the observable and the unreal”.
AAO artistic director Peter Knight composed the first 15-minute movement of Diomira for the orchestra to premiere as part of the opening concert of the 2016 Metropolis New Music Festival in Melbourne. It won that year’s Albert H. Maggs Composition Award, providing funding for the addition of subsequent movements to build a full-length concert work.
The premiere performance of the concert-length version will be presented as part of Melbourne Festival along with a video created by artist, Scott Morrison.
Drawing inspiration from Diomira, one of the imaginary cities described in Italo Calvino’s novella, Invisible Cities, Knight’s work “sets up a post-minimal logic that refracts and disintegrates as we listen”.
The instrumentation of the chamber jazz orchestra is expanded with turntables, a reel-to-reel tape machine (which replaces the drum kit) and live laptop signal processing. The sounds of acoustic instruments and voices are interwoven with field recordings cut onto vinyl.
In this performance, it is said, “Time folds into itself in a very Calvino-esque manner, leaving us with the trace residue of moments half remembered.”
Diomira is also a finalist for the APRA AMC Art Music Awards Instrumental Work of the Year’.
Diomira features:
Peter Knight – composer, trumpet/electronics, Revox B77 reel-to-reel
Georgie Darvidis – voice
Dan Sheehan – Fender Rhodes keyboard
Stephen Magnusson – guitar
Lizzy Welsh – violin
Tristram Williams, trumpet
Martin Ng – turntables
Matthias Schack-Arnott – percussion
Tony Hicks – clarinet/saxophone
Adrian Sherriff – bass trombone/electronics
Samuel Pankhurst – contra bass
Jem Savage – system design, electronics, audio engineering
Tamara Saulwick – dramaturgy
Paul Lim – lighting design
Produced by Tam Nguyen and Insite Arts
Tickets $49 ($39 concession)
(Material in this post drawn by Roger Mitchell from material supplied by the AAO.)
