A broadcast of the Camera Obscura concert is currently up (only a few days I think) on the New Music Up Late – ABC Classic FM website. Please go forth and stream the entire concert at your own pleasure. Thanks to Julian Day for the kind words and excellent presentation and explanation of the concert.

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The concert is performed by Decibel and features the following works:

Marina Rosenfeld (USA): WHITE LINES (2003 ongoing) for film score and ensemble, feat. Rosenfeld live on turntables [Australian premiere]

Samuel Dunscombe (AUS): West Park (2011) for Bass Clarinet, Bass Flute, MaxMSP, and Quadraphonic Spatialised Field Recorded Sound [world premiere]

Austin Buckett (AUS): Mothlight (2011) for flute, percussion and electronics [world premiere]

Lindsay Vickery and Cat Hope (AUS): Exquisite Corpse (2011) for ensemble [world premiere]

Kynan Tan (AUS): Split Mirror Planes (2010) for 4 instrumentalists, 4 speakers, laptop processing and 4 video sources [world premiere]

Screenshots from the 4 channel spatialised visuals for Split Mirror Planes

Also temporarily available is the Tura Festival Sampler edition of New Music Up Late, which also features some great works including compositions and performances by Philip Everall, Peter Knight and Dung Nguyen, Pollen Trio, Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery.

So! Decibel performed my new commissioned work Split Mirror Planes on Monday 29th September 2011 at PICA in Perth. As far as I have heard it was a success, but time will tell with some more documentation and perhaps asking friends what they really thought. The whole commissioning process was really fantastic in this case (something that I can’t expect in every situation). Everything went smoothly, I sent them the piece, they tried it out, sent me recordings and notes, I corrected some things and then they rehearsed some more, and finally played the piece live. All while being on the other side of the world! I would like to semi-officially thank Decibel, PICA and Tura New Music for facilitating the commission and collaboration, I look forward to working with Decibel again in the future (composition, programming or otherwise) and am definitely interested in doing further compositions for groups/ensembles.

There have been a few reviews of the Camera Obscura concert posted so far, in no particular order:

Cool Perth Nights
RealTime
Cyclic Defrost

And some of snippets pertaining to my work:

“the stark and haunting soundscape, performed on cello, bass flute, bass clarinet, and percussion, is a poignant counterpoint to the otherwordly psychedelic auroras that traverse computer screens in an enigmatic choreography” – Lyndon Blue, Cool Perth Nights

“Spatialising audio is by now a fairly common technique in new music but spatialised visual material is something I have not seen before. The sound and images here do not merely reflect one another but rather create a sonic-visual counterpoint, constantly in motion toward or away from each other” – Henry Anderson, RealTime

“laptops….ebbing and fading through multiple graphics – a glow of thermoluminescence. From the musicians, microscopic gestures and extended techniques foreground the nuance and understatement of a defiantly lowercase sound” – Oliver Laing, Cyclic Defrost

Photo: Decibel by Lisa Businovski

The digging continues! I’ve uncovered a number of collaborations or one-off recordings that I still rather enjoy. The dance score “An Empty Room” was composed 2009 in collaboration with Emma Fishwick.
Audio is comprised of no-input mixer, granulated drum sounds, max/msp synthesis and noisy radio. The complete work was featured in the 2009 PICA season Zilch, in Dance Compass Showcase 2009 and again in the 2010 Short and Sweet Dance season in Sydney.

an empty room

“An Empty Room” – 5:48

Images: 12 visualisations of phase space

As I continue to dig through old archives, clean up my computer (!) and get things together I have uncovered some more live performance recordings to share.

live recording from the Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle, Western Australia – 21/01/2011
live vocals, modular synthesiser and sample arrangement

crt, live recording by Kynan Tan

crt, by Kynan Tan

Thanks to Joel Ong for the recording

score mash-up, performances invited