Arts Centre Melbourne’s SUPERSENSE FESTIVAL OF THE ECSTATIC
The contemplative beauty that is Supersense’s MINIMAL program has been adorned with additional musical artistry with Yirinda (Fred Leone and Samuel Pankhurst), Jessica Aszodi performing Julius Eastman, Rully Shebara, Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, Samuel Dunscombe and Black Cab joining the line-up of exquisite music, performance and dance artists exploring wonder, inspiration and minimalist focus on Saturday 24 August at Arts Centre Melbourne.
These artists join the ranks of the icons and next generation sonic innovators already announced as part of MINIMAL – legendary free-jazz pioneer Roscoe Mitchell (USA) of the Art Ensemble of Chicago; the iconic Merce Cunningham company dancers who perform in an Australian exclusive homage to Merce Cunningham in the Cunningham Centennial Solos: Melbourne, UK sound artist Graham Lambkin, celebrated composer and multi-instrumentalist wunderkind James Rushford and Canadian sound artist crys cole.
In a beautiful addition to the MINIMAL program, Butchulla songman Fred Leone and experimental contrabassist/producer Samuel Pankhurst, collectively known as Yirinda, invoke the sounds of thousands of generations of story and culture. Their unique blend of ancient Aboriginal language and sublime improvisation is a love tap that sidesteps all expectations.
Whilst the sonic beauty of Melbourne-born, internationally renowned songstress Jessica Aszodi beckons in her performance of Prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc. The work, by 1960’s American minimalist composer and performer Julius Eastman, is a cry in the dark from a solo voice, demanding that we recognise our collective presence and be moved to action.
Under-appreciated in his own lifetime, Eastman’s music has burst into contemporary consciousness, finding stages all over the world. His use of repetition, crystallising structures unfolding over time, dramatic tension, and uncompromisingly honest political and personal messaging, create works that are as beautiful and full of life as they are harrowing. Aszodi will perform the work in both the Supersense MINIMAL and MAXIMAL programs.
The minimal program takes an audible u-turn in an unholy communion with one of music’s most uncompromising figures. French Romanian composer Horațiu Rădulescu was the anti-hero of the avant-garde, notoriously scornful of his contemporaries yet bestowed with an unarguable musical genius. His 1974 work for clarinet, mixed ensemble and 42 children is painstakingly recreated by one of his most ardent followers; electro-acoustic prodigy, seasoned performed, and official archivist for the Horațiu Rădulescu Archives Samuel Dunscombe, in an occult ritual of dizzying ambition.
Drawing inspiration from the broad genre of Krautrock, local outfit Black Cab have spent 15 years producing a unique sound that ranges from psychedelic rock to electronic rhythms and sequences. Core band members, Andrew Coates and James Lee have released four studio albums, a handful of singles and e.ps, and an original score to cult anime’ film Akira. They have toured with Tangerine Dream, Ratatat, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Damo Suzuki (Can) and more plus appeared at such festivals as Golden Plains and Sugar Mountain amongst others. For Supersense they perform a once only focus on Krautrock & Kosmische Musik as part of MINIMAL
In another program announcement, Lucy Cliché and Angus Andrew join the MAXIMAL line up. Lucy’s musical oeuvre piles high; as a figure in the Sydney underground for the past 15 years she has always explored sounds that playfully antagonize the status-quo. As Lucy Cliché she unabashedly pumps out her own brand of loose and wonky techno. A hard bitten exploration of how physicality and the ethereal can interact in music – heavy bass rhythms lock into pounding drums, washed over with synth chords and acid bleeps.
Few artists have reached the cult status of Liars; he is both consistently strange and strangely consistent. Angus Andrew has written and performed under the moniker Liars since 2001, while living in New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, and now Sydney. Liars’ eighth full-length record TFCF was the first solo release for Andrew, largely inspired by the seaside bush landscape in which it was made. There’s no defining style to TFCF as it shifts between sampled elements, brash processed sounds and “real” instrumentation, passages of pointed abstraction and others of wilful song craft, avant gestures and genuine pop moments. This approach combined with Andrew’s recent foray into film scoring provides an extraordinary moment in Liars trajectory, one that will be performed in a rare solo set developed exclusively for Supersense MAXIMAL program.
MINIMAL brings together a program of extraordinary master artists from across 20th century performance – exploring possibilities of time, duration, repetition and minimalist focus. While the MAXIMAL program presents works of dizzying wonder, hypnotic rhythms, dance and movement, energy and release.
Now in its third year, Supersense 2019, curated by Sophia Brous and Arts Centre Melbourne, features icons of music, theatre, dance and performance rituals from five continents in an intoxicating exploration of ecstatic performance from 23 – 25 August.
Arts Centre Melbourne presents
Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic
Arts Centre Melbourne
23 – 25 August
Visit artscentremelbourne.com.au/supersense
#supersense
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