Crossed & Recrossed
A new album by Peter Knight and the Australian Art Orchestra that explores meeting points between literature and music, jazz and minimalism. Inspired by The Plains, written by iconic Australian author Gerald Murnane, and Diomira, by Italian master, Italo Calvino.
Crossed & Recrossed presents two works composed by Peter Knight & inspired by mappings of imagined places by iconic Australian novelist, Gerald Murnane & Italian master, Italo Calvino.
Simultaneously celebrating & deconstructing the tropes of minimalism, Crossed & Recrossed creates a series of musical mirages that form on an endless sonic horizon, reflecting & reimagining the wide open spaces described in Murnane’s iconic novel, The Plains & the labyrinthine streets of Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
“Peter Knight’s work sets up a post-minimal logic that refracts & disintegrates as we listen. The instrumentation of the chamber jazz orchestra is expanded with the unexpected additions of turntables, a reel-to-reel tape machine & live laptop signal processing. The sounds of acoustic instruments & voices are interwoven with field recordings cut onto vinyl & are filtered & augmented as Knight plays with our perceptions of what we hear & what we imagine we have heard. Time folds into itself in a very Calvino-esque manner, leaving us with the trace residue of moments half remembered.”
“Solos here were like songlines, not paving superhighways through a compositional infrastructure but leaving faint footprints in a soundscape that evolved as organically as an ecosystem.”
- Michelle Mercer, Downbeat (Berlin JazzFest concert)
“It’s a treatise on time, a mapping of remembrances past, present and future. Or it’s a sort of Great Unravelling, disorienting but hugely cathartic. ★★★★”
- Jane Cornwell, Jazzwise UK
“If more readers discover these works because of Knight, all the better; but Crossed & Recrossed is original enough to stand on its own: a brilliant vision from an instinctive composer.”
- Richard Allen, A Closer Listen
“If trumpet is an element then Knight is an alchemist.”
- New York City Jazz Record
Credits
released by Hospital Hill on September 10, 2021
THE PLAINS
Premiered National Forum of Music, Wroclaw Poland
Jazztopad Festival 2018
Finalist ‘Performance of the Year’ APRA/AMC Art Music Awards 2020 for performance at Berlin Jazz Festival 2019
Recorded by Jem Savage May 10/11 2019
Ginger Studios, Melbourne
Mixed by Joe Talia & Peter Knight
Produced by Peter Knight
Mastered & cut by Helmut Erler, D&M, Berlin
Featuring:
Georgie Darvidis – voice
Andrea Keller – piano
Peter Knight – trumpet/electronics
Aviva Endean – bass clarinet
Lizzy Welsh – violin
James Macaulay - trombone
Tilman Robinson – electronics
Jacques Emery – double bass
Simon Barker – drum kit
DIOMIRA
Premiered at Metropolis New Music Festival 2016,
Melbourne Recital Centre
Winner Albert H Maggs Composition Prize 2017
Finalist ‘Work of the Year’ APRA/AMC Art Music Awards 2017
Recording of live performance by AAO for Metropolis New Music Festival May 9 2016 by Jem Savage & ABC Classic FM
Audio system design by Jem Savage
Remixed by Joe Talia & Peter Knight
Produced by Peter Knight
Mastered & cut by Helmut Erler, D&M, Berlin
Featuring:
Gian Slater – voice
Andrea Keller – Nord keyboard & piano
Peter Knight – trumpet/electronics
Tristram Williams – trumpet
Tony Hicks – bass clarinet
Erkki Veltheim – violin
Steve Raegele – guitar
Adrian Sherriff – bass trombone
Mary Rapp – cello
Nicole Lizée – turntables
Vanessa Tomlinson – vibraphone
Joe Talia – Revox B77 reel-to-reel tape machine
Sam Pankhurst – double bass
Jem Savage – audio systems design & live sound
Tamara Saulwick – pre-recorded whispered voice
Remix overdubs:
Katherine Philp – cello
Jacques Emery – double bass
Dan Sheehan – Fender Rhodes piano
Cover Image ‘Fissures in Time’ by Peta Clancy
Design & layout by WBYK
Portrait by Sarah Walker
Original liner notes by Gerald Murnane
Vinyl manufactured by Program Records
Thank you: Gerald Murnane, Peta Clancy, Quinn Knight (whose voice features in the field recording at the end of Diomira), Jem Savage, Des Cowley, Jerry Remkes, Joe Talia, Tamara Saulwick, Brad Spolding & The Substation, Marshall McGuire & Melbourne Recital Centre, Tam Nguyen, Lee Cumberlidge, Dave Roper & Program Records, Matthew McGuigan & Hospital Hill, Martel Ollerenshaw, Erkki Veltheim, Nicole Lizée, Edwina Johnson, David Anderson. Special thanks to all of the musicians who played on these pieces & who gave their energy & inspiration so generously.