Interview with Liz Pelly / O,D,E / Ripairian
Three local projects
Not a very creative newsletter—just local gig-related news. Back to regular spiels soon :)
In conversation with Liz Pelly
On Tuesday 2 September I’ll be in dialogue with American writer Liz Pelly, who is in town promoting her book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. The book is a globally important exploration of the musicking community and the ways that digital streaming platforms threaten their integrity. Waitlist here. If you get tickets to O,D,E (see below) on 2 September, you can get discounted tickets to this talk.
O,D,E
O,D,E is an opera by Sage J Harlow, aka Sage Pbbbt. It’s interesting in many ways, but its marquee technical curiosity is that it is a text score opera, meaning there is no traditional notation (for the heads, her score is available here). I think it’s an extremely compelling work with manifold interpretive possibilities. It runs from 26 August to 6 September at the Blue Room Theatre. Info and tickets here.
Ripairian
Ripairian is an exhibition and performance exploring a section of Mandoon Bilya: a floodplain near the suburb of Woodbridge that is historically neglected except as an obstacle to build freight bridges over, and subsequently, a notable site for graffiti and a microcosm of the degradation of the river catchment. I’m composing and performing the music for the two showings, where some twenty-odd community members on the site will live stream a performance to an audience at Midland Junction Arts Centre on 28 September and 5 October. An installation will be showing at MJAC 7 September to 9 November.
LMDNA - Surfaces
An old one-on-one student of mine, LMDNA, has released his album Surfaces, which comprises tracks from his graduation recital in 2022. It was a performance that had some staff asking if we’d ever given 100% at a graduation recital before. I think it’s really great, and this body of work was my first big ‘proud teacher moment.’ Experimentally-inclined folks will get especially wrecked, I think, by the middle four tracks, “Cleaving” through to “Bodiless.” A wunderkind to watch :)