HAMMERHEAD

Supported by Revive Live through the Australian Government and the Robert Salzer Foundation

ABE NSEMBLE (with ROD COOPER)
BOLT ENSEMBLE with soloist AARON CHOULAI (Australian Art Orchestra)

SCHEDULE

Sunday 21 September
BOLT Ensemble: 3pm
ABE Nsemble: 4pm

Venue
JOLTED Arts Space
342 High Street, Northcote

$15 / $10
Book online here or pay at the door on the day. Cards and cash accepted.

ABE Nsemble

Johannes S. Sistermanns       www.sistermanns.eu
Joachim Zoepf      www.newimprovisedmusic.com
Rod Cooper

As in the ‘ABE nsemble’ title with its unfamiliar spelling, the performers, sound artists, sound researchers and instrument inventors represent both opposites in their musical and cultural origins and the spaces into which they perform. How does (the)new emerge? When glass rods vibrate with watery fingertips on a newly developed ‘Electric Cristal’ instrument, when the bass clarinettist releases horizontal sounds in the modular system/MAX/MSP into the 360° space? When a thread, spun during the sung room tone, forms the base of glowing phosphorus lines? Or sounds are transferred to the wood, glass and metal surfaces of the performance space, transferring it to its material resonance? Are linear time sequences abandoned here, when the beginnings and ends of the piece are pushed acoustically far above each other? The ‘nsemble’ plays nothing to the audience. ‘The ‘nsemble’ dissolves the usual audience relationship to become a situational-intuitive creative process. Our focus: the moment of the emergence of a spatial digital performance using sensor and audio technologies as well as electro/acoustic instruments. We assume that this is a way to provoke the new.

BOLT ENSEMBLE

BOLT will perform a series of new works by James Hullick including Hammerhead. For the concert, Hullick’s works explore the intersection between acoustic instrumentation and machine sound. Several works feature sound machines created by James Hullick.

With much thanks to the Australian Art Orchestra, the BOLT Ensemble will present Aaron Choulai as a soloist for the event.

For this event the following BOLT musicians will be performing:

Alice Bennett (flute)
Belinda Woods (bass flute)
Karen Heath (clarinet)
Reuben Lewis (trumpet)
Simon Baldwin (trombone)
Hamish Upton (percussion)
Timothy Phillips (percussion)
Zac Johnston (violin)
Miranda Hill (double bass)

with special guest soloist:
Aaron Choulai

The Hammerhead works include:

SUPPORTED BY

This series is supported by Revive Live – an Australian Government Initiative. Supported by The Robert Salzer Foundation

AARON CHOULAI

Aaron Choulai is an award winning and critically acclaimed pianist and composer whose work is recognised as innovating new directions in jazz, hip-hop and improvised music. From large scale multi media cross-cultural festival commissions. to Japanese hip-hop beat tapes, Choulai’s career spans over 20 years, crossing international borders and intersections between genre and culture. 

Born in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and having lived in Tokyo for 15 years, Aaron Choulai is an artist of diverse culture and musical expression. Choulai began his career in Melbourne as a pianist before signing with the American record label Sunnyside records and moving to New York in the early 2000’s. While working during this time as a bandleader and sideman in America and Europe, Choulai’s profile as a composer and arranger grew while participating in projects such as The Black Arm Band (arr: 2007) We Don’t Dance For No Reason (comp: 2008) and Kate Ceberano (md: 2004 -2007) back in Australia. In 2008 he undertook postgraduate studies at theTokyo University of the Arts and after graduating in 2013, continued living in Tokyo where he has become a prominent figure in music in Japan. 

Aaron Choulai was awarded the Freedman Fellowship in Jazz (2014), the MEXT scholarship (2008) and was included in ‘The 100 most influential people in Melbourne’ by People Magazine (2005). He has collaborated with various artists including Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Ben Monder, Jim Black, Daichi Yamamoto, Slack, Alan Browne, Paul Grabowsky, Joel Frahm, Yoshimoto Akihiro and more.