Plus three

It was the last flourish from Carmen Chan Schoenborn on vibes that gave me a chuckle.  This virtuosic little upward flowing line on the vibraphone borrowed from the CSO and then the look up to find ... the end.  This happens, of course.  Then set had vibes/piano with erhu and Gail's synth with floating tones and Jasmine's bowed erhu (what a lovely sound it can make) and like harmonies and synth and bells and cymbals and some other smaller percussion but it was coming to closure then this lively, perhaps hopeful flourish that had the three players looking at each other and chuckling. Thus is improv, of course.

Carmen had played earlier, too, this time with another bassist, Sam and Joe on drums and Gemma on trumpet and some vocals.  We'd heard bowed cymbals as well as bowed bass and harmonics, plastic bag noises , plucked piano strings and bass and various drones and percussive seed pods (Toca) into a finale of octave vibes, blown trumpet mute and a final bass pizz and bowed cymbals.  I found some a little airy but the bass/drums combination had purpose and power at times to satisfy my less developed ear.

Then another bassist, Chloe Sobek, or at least a somewhat busetto-shaped baroque violone.  That was odd to see.  Chloe also played a set on violin, but I didn't see that.  I can't imagine anyone with a six-string violone  and baroque bow and gut strings and gut frets who doesn't play mediaeval/renaissance/baroque music, so I guess that's Chloe's background.  Here, she played slides and pizz and odd intervals to sounds from around the piano, under the lid, piano-related noises but not from the keyboard with an accompaniment of alto sax with water bottle mute moving to hisses and bubbles of water boiling on hotplate with handheld condenser mic, if I got it right.  Not common in Llewellyn hall, but quite fascinating sounds that we all know but don't think about too often.  Here we can.

Variously, the musicians were Carmen Chan Schoenborn (vibes, piano), Gail Priest (electronics), Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung (erhu), Gemma Horbury (trumpet, vocals), Joe Talia (drums), Samuel Pankhurst (bass), Chloe Sobek (violone), Elizabeth Jigalin (piano, percussion) and Peter Farrer (alto, electronics).  They played at SoundOut at the Drill Hall Gallery.

One to four

I caught Peter Knight doing a solo set, sadly missing his masterclass.  His presentation was solo, initially sitting in the audience playing whispy trumpet tones, quiet, then whistley calls, then louder, twissddling, flipping between harmonics, animals, tones and lip suctions and kisses (do I have the tech terms right here?).  Then a return to the stage, playing trumpet through various electronics and effects, hevily echoed eighth-note pairs, then a tonal rise and taps and trumpet drones.  Thisd was all mystical, pensive, feeling something like repeating 8 bar 3/4 passages with almost endless echo and layered harmonics.  His t-shirt stated "No music on a dead planet" reminding me of posters that have appeared around Canberra from Extinction Rebellion.

I had met Khabat Abas earlier in the day so I was interested to hear her.  She's played cello with the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra and a string of more experimental groups variously around Europe and was over from London for just 5 days. Her website claims "experimental and transgressive cellist" so clearly apt for SO.  She appeared in a session with Jon Rose, bassist Mark Cauvin and voice artist Nikki Heywood.  They presented 4 quartets, one each introduced by each performer, then a final journey from Jon playing and dissembling the theme tune from the film Love Story, "Where do I begin / to tell the story...").  Quite a lovely melody if schmaltzy and gloriously dismembered here into effective noise.  I heard bowed end-pins and explosive bass lines and bowed hammers and dissonant cello slides, occasional words but also non-verbal tones and song from Nikki and again those evident chops put to whatever purpose from Jon.  These were five short, guided, purposeful segments that intrigued with their diversity from different leaderships.

Peter Knight (trumpet, electronics) performed solo and Jon Rose (violin), Khabat Abas (cello), Mark Cauvin (bass) and Nikki Heywood (vocals, electronics) performed together at SoundOut.

And now for music

I managed most of two sessions in addition to the Jon Rose workshop at SoundOut.  Just a touch on my impressions rather than a full list of players and collectives.  Suffice to say each performance was 20-30 mins, usually one or two numbers.  Numbers may start with agreed, even stated, intentions, usually outspoken, or perhaps just crescendo from soft noises.

Whistle Biter reintroduced me to the intensity of Hermione Johnson on prepared piano.  Or rather it reminded me of HJ as she'd attended a previous SO where I'd heard her 9 years before.  She prepares her pianos with chopsticks in the strings, and the sound is delicate and pretty, although her attacking, impulsive, vigourous style knocks them for six at times and somewhat hides the tone.  Hermione is all intense handfuls in right and left hand and occasional dropped (mostly left) arms on keyboard and then plucks under the piano lid.  Just stunning and committed, trained or not.  Her offsider, Dave Brown, was more sedate if still atonal and noise-y, so the result could be sparse, open or intense, with guitar effect hits, piano extravagance and repetition.  A nice pairing

We heard Hermione again the next day in a star trio led by Jon Rose and with bassist Clayton Thomas.  I heard communications, great chops, intent, interestingly plenty of eyes and ears open to each other, imagination, variation, it had it all.  Jon displaying years of technical exercises if not flaunting it, and similarly Clayton, mixing sounds and emotions with pizz lines, pulled strings, pizz below the bridge, strums, bows, drumstick in strings, the lot.  Just a stunning outing by this trio. 

Hermione Johnson (piano) played with Dave Brown (guitar) as Whistle Biter, and later with Jon Rose (violin) and Clayton Thomas (bass) at SoundOut.

Inventions

SoundOut 2023 was the 14th iteration on this festival and duly it was well praised.  It's challenging and it's small, to some degree an expected pairing.  This is experimental music.  It claims also free jazz, but my guess is that free jazz is more tonal/atonal, whereas experimental includes more noise, as in outside a formal musical system.  Not that it is totally out of systems.  Some players make noise perhaps on invented or even established instruments and maybe have no formal connection with classical or jazz or other instrumental forms.  But there are others with significant connections, training, chops, even interests, that inform to some degree.   And the small number in attendance is not so significant.  As much as anything, this is a meeting of like-interests, coming from Sydney or Melbourne or other Australia, or NZ or even UK or more.  The importance is the playing together, the discoveries, perhaps also the recordings as posterity.  For Richard publishes select recordings from these sessions (26 to date).

This SO comprised  four sessions (Fri eve, Sat arvo, Sat eve, Sun arvo) and two workshops (Fri arvo, Sat morn).  Each session mixes various combinations, perhaps regularly playing together, perhaps first time at this SO or perhaps returning after an earlier SO or other event.  It's not a big community, so these people often know each other.  As for the two workshops, they were particularly well-known proponents, Jon Rose and Peter Knight.  I got to Jon Rose.

Jon has a long history in music, having started early with violin, then through other instruments and eventually returning to violin.  There were classical scholarship offers and more at young age, but Jon was adventurous and quite daring, getting into inventing instruments, discovering sound capabilities and the like.  The workshop was a visit to a few of these instruments but there's a string of others on his website.  We heard of Jon's thinking, his trials, his concepts and experiences and heard some of the outcomes as recordings.  Fascinating if challenging.  Think 5 string trapezoidal violin with revolving double speaker or 19 string violin (or cello, for that matter) or hysperstring (as I understood, an interactive violin with a midi bow powering some software) or Aeolian double neck violin (wind powered with sail).  We also heard of tales of Violin, a town in the Czech Republic, and a history of a violin museum there established.    It was a challenging bit of thought and musical play and something to test the dada in us all.

Jon Rose (violin and various inventions) gave a workshop at SoundOut 2023.

SoundOut recordings at Bandcamp

Jon Rose website