The Plains

PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH ASTRA MUSIC
Supported by Revive Live through the Australian Government and the Robert Salzer Foundation

BOLT WOODWIND QUARTET
PETER DUMSDAY & JOY LEE

SCHEDULE

Sunday 9 November
BOLT Woodwind Quartet: 3pm
Peter Dumsday & Joy Lee: 4pm

Venue
JOLTED Arts Space
342 High Street, Northcote

$15 / $10
Buy tickets at the door or online here. Cards and cash accepted.

PETER DUMSDAY AND JOY LEE

Peter Dumsday and Joy Lee are prominent keyboard performers of contemporary and early music in Melbourne, as well as longstanding members of the Astra Choir. They unite for a special fusion concert that is part multi keyboard recital, part DJ set. From spinet to synthesizer, and from bagatelles spanning centuries to modern electronic textures, the program immerses listeners in a soundscape of diffuse cross-currents.

Program includes keyboard works by François Couperin, Beethoven, Keith Humble and Carl Vine

Recordings by Donato Dozzy & Anna Caragnano, Sainkho Namtchylak, Atom™ and Holly Herndon.

Peter Dumsday, keyboards & electronics
Joy Lee, keyboards

BOLT WOODWIND QUARTET

A series of works spanning 30 years. These works explore space, stillness, momentum and sonic expanse. The first work was written when James Hullick was 20. The most recent work was written in October 2025.

We live in a time of genre saturation. New ideas in sound are becoming rarer. Listeners can gorge on what they thought they loved to listen to, there to find that you can only take so much cake before the gag reflex kicks in. Growing up in in the 80s in Melbourne, people were quite tribal and judgemental about genres: if you were into the Clash, then you would be chastised for liking Prince. Looking back it was all fuelled by teenage logic: which, if you’ve raised a teenager in the wild, you will understand is no logic at all. Parts of the brain are not connected. The works presented here come from 30+ years of composing. The Plains was probably written in 1993 (I can’t remember exactly). Nirvana was huge at the time. John Cage was a year in the grave. Looking for Yuyen was written for composition class under Alan Walker, 1996, inspired by Japanese Theatre – which I had studied at the same university. Pebbles came arrived in the 2010s, Window Frame 2020s and Up a bit, Down a bit is from 2025. The genre for all of these works is irrelevant to me. In different ways they all play with the same guiding principle: Recursion. Processes that iterate with self similarity. A concept that requires a deeper meditation. This gets to the heart of why it’s a good thing that genre is becoming saturated: genre saturation forces the listener to go deeper into music and find other points of creative engagement, which might be far more nourishing than the icing of fashion and style.

BOLT Wind Quartet
Alice Bennett – flutes
Belinda Woods – flutes
Gideon Brazil – flutes/clarinets
Karen Heath – clarinets

WORKS
Wind Trio No. 1: The Plains 12 min
Movement 1
Movement 2
Movement 3
Movement 4
Trio for flutes: Bennett; Woods; Brazil

Looking for Yuyen 3 min
Solo for clarinet: Heath

Pebbles 7 min
Wind Quartet + Electronics

The Domestic Functionality of Window Frames 8 min
Wind Quartet

Up a Bit, Down a Bit 10 min (duration variable)
Wind Quartet

SUPPORTED BY

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