Program

Soak / The Hollow Air

9th October, Melbourne International Festival, Melbourne Recital Centre

Image: Tobias Titz

Composer, Soak Alister Spence
Curator, The Hollow Air Phillip Slater
Collaborators 2010 Louise Curham (film artist), Riley Lee (shakuhachi) and Greg White (sound designer, composer and improviser)
Past Collaborators: Richard Nunns

Program Notes

Soak is a live music and film experience. An extended ambient work, it slowly unfolds through compositional elements influenced by artists such as Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki, Brian Eno, Radiohead, Dust Brothers and Miles Davis. Soak, composed by Alister Spence, reveals the Australian Art Orchestra as a fluid organism that is constantly evolving through a many-layered palette of sound. Add to this a visual component manipulated by film artist Louise Curham in real time using multiple projectors and screens, and you have an aural and visual exploration of sound that breaks down distinctions between musical genres and incorporates elements of ambient music, electronica, contemporary art music, jazz and rock.

The Australian premiere of The Hollow Air features a collaboration curated by Philip Slater between members of the Australian Art Orchestra and shakuhachi player Riley Lee. The work focuses on the various tonal and timbral nuances of the respective instruments and incorporates sound projection and real time digital manipulation using the visual programming language MAX/MSP.

Watch an excerpt of The Hollow Air

Tour History

2007 – Auckland Town Hall, Auckland Festival

Performance Artists

Alister Spence Piano, laptop
Phillip Slater Trumpet, Laptop
Louise Curham Film Artist
Greg White Laptop

Audience feedback from the 2010 Australian Premiere of The Hollow Air and World Premiere of Soak at the Melbourne Recital Centre

‘What extraordinary performances. As an audience, I do not think we could immediately applaud because to do so was to cut short that place of otherness and bliss you had been transporting us to all night. We were in central Melbourne, in a built structure but at times during both performances I was somewhere by water tripping over small rocks or under the moon …….. wow. Thank You.’

‘The MRC was a perfect venue for the haunting passages on the Japanese flute-the lighting and colours of the wood wall panels felt like we were inside a pyramid, akin to some David Hikes music I have.’

Press for Soak / The Hollow Air

Phil Slater Describes The Hollow Air