Theoral Concert: A Night Of Pyramidical Silence
Musik Klangkunst Performance Musikperformance
Great Waitress (AUS), Ahoo Maher + Christina Ruf (A), Great Waitress meets ddkern und Susanna Gartmayer (A)
I
Ahoo Maher, cello
Christina Ruf, cello
II
GREAT WAITRESS
Magda Mayas, piano
Laura Altman, clarinet
Monica Brooks, accordeon
III
Great Waitress meet Susanna Gartmayer, b-clarinet and Didi Kern, drums – small groups, short sets
Great Waitress (AUS)
From 2008 Laura Altman and Monika Brooks’ duo excited the Sydney experimental scene, (of which they were important contributors), with quiet, ambiguous, ephemeral music – they treated duration as if it were precious. Spawned from the Splinter Orchestra (splitrec 17), and mutated by current viruses, Altman’s clarinet and Brook’s accordion fused, not with lines, but with pools of sound, coexisting in an ecology that had no clear beginning or end – a calmly focussed, infinite field. As such, it was a seminal Sydney impro project. In January 2009 the Berlin-based pianist Magda Mayas collaborated with them on a memorable performance at Sydney’s Now now Festival. Mayas injected not only an array of startling sounds, but insistent motion to contrast the stasis. Two years later they reconvened as a band for an intense period – a return appearance at the 2011 Now now Festival, gigs around Sydney, the SoundOut Festival Canberra and finally this studio session. Great Waitress initially possessed a dual processor – the long durations and static patience of the duo and Mayas’s compulsion for change. This created a vital rub – there was an edge between these world views. But as they evolved over this period, this duality splintered into multiplicity.
Laura Altman: Clarinettist and composer, Sydney
Laura Altman is a clarinetist, improviser and composer, born and based in Sydney. She has been an important voice on the Sydney improvised music scene since 2007, playing with groups such as The Splinter Orchestra and Prophets, and collaborating with Australian improvisers including Jim Denley, Dale Gorfinkel, Monica Brooks and Peter Farrar. Laura has toured Australia and Europe with a range of projects including the trio Great Waitress, featuring Monica Brooks on accordion and Berlin-based pianist Magda Mayas. Laura graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with a B.Mus Composition (Honours) in 2011, and composes both instrumental and electro-acoustic music.
http://lauraaltman.net
Magda Mayas : piano, Berlin
Magda Mayas is a pianist living in Berlin. Developing a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using preparations and objects, she explores textural, linear and fast moving sound collage. Lately she has also focused on the clavinet, an electric piano from the 60s with strings and metal chimes, where she engages with noise and more visceral sound material, equally extending the instrumental sound palette using extended techniques and devices. Current projects are “Spill”, a duo with drummer Tony Buck, a duo with Anthea Caddy (cello), a duo with Christine Abdelnour (sax), “Great Waitress”, a trio with Monika Brooks (acc) and Laura Altman (cl) and different collaborations with Andy Moor, Clayton Thomas and Peter Evans. Magda Mayas has performed and toured in Europe, the USA, Australia and Lebanon and collaborated with many leading figures in improvisation and composers such as John Butcher, Peter Evans, Annette Krebs, Phill Niblock, Andrea Neumann, Axel Dörner, Thomas Lehn and Tristan Honsinger.
www.magdamayas.jimdo.com
Monika Brooks:accordion, Sydney
Monica Brooks models compositions and improvisations on piano, computer, and accordion. As a performer she has collaborated with musicians such as Jim Denley, Dale Gorfinkel, Herminone Johnson, Chris Abrahams, Robbie Avenaim, Kraig Grady, Richard Nuns, Eugene Chadbourne, and Joe Talia. Long-term projects have toured nationally and internationally, including Great Waitress with Laura Altman & Magda Mayas, West Head Project, with Dale Gorfinkel & Jim Denley ; and Embedded quartet. Monica’s sound installation works are often heavily inspired by the technology and usage of radio transmission. Brooks also fronts the eight-piece ensemble, Electronic Resonance Korps, developing compositions for multiple computer performance. Other projects include co-presenting/producing Shepard Tones on Eastside Radio 89.7FM, and currently undertaking a Masters at the University of Western Sydney.
www.softpotatoes.net
“Great Waitress is a trio, with Magda Mayas on piano, Monika Brooks on accordion and Laura Altman on clarinet, and their music is featherlike, with soft sounds cautiously weaving a calm but intense silenscape. …Fragile and solid at the same time. Like touching the wings of a butterfly, it is almost as risky and daring to listen to this music, as your personal volume and sound could harm what you hear“ (all about jazz)
“If spiders have musical dreams while spinning webs, they might sound like the fragile wisps of sound created by Great Waitress….Sometimes the individual instruments become blurred in a sonic mystery that is both enthralling and disorienting. Almost invariably, the sounds are tiny and delicate - just the faintest engraving upon silence - and as intricately connected as that spider’s web“ (John Shand)
“It’s lucid improvisation that doesn’t revel in compulsive freak-outs or stagnant passages. The effect is partially hypnotic and largely unsettling…” (Bobby Power)
Theoral: oral music histories and interesting interviews
http://www.theoral.org/
https://www.facebook.com/events/715605341857870/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
doors 19h, stage 20h