On Saturday the 25th of August, I'm excited to be bringing a new raven set to Sydney's City Recital Hall for a 12-hour new music event called Extended Play. There are a host of great artists from the contemporary classical world, along with jazz, world and electronic artists.
I'll be playing some tried and true cello looping works along with some new material using laptop and foot controllers which are giving me a lot of freedom around layering and live processing of sounds. It'll be interesting and fun and most of all, New!
Really glad to be playing a show in Canberra to launch my new album. I'll be joined by my Tangents cohorts Shoeb & Evan doing a Spartak set, which is incredibly exciting for me as they don't play in that format that often anymore, and I've been a fan forever. And there'll be an amazing set from Alphamale aka Hannah de Feyer, who plays viola in Shoeb's solo band!
Tickets available here.
I was recently asked to perform with the wonderful Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance at the annual TEDxSydney. After some brief email conversations, we met the night before the event, had a chat and determined that it would be as spontaneous as possible. We discussed a few ideas, soundchecked, and that was it!
Slightly nerve-wracking on the day, but I'm pretty happy with the results – and very happy that the TEDx & Sydney Opera House teams captured the sound (and vision) so well! (And James Orr's excellent live sound no doubt had a lot to do with it too.)
Some things coming up!
On Friday the 19th of December I'm supporting and playing with Ben Fink & Dale Caldwell's sparse anti-folk act Close to Forever. Should be a magical evening.
And on January 30th (also a Friday), I'll be playing a quite different gig courtesy of Tenzenmen at Black Wire, supporting Hinterlandt Ensemble and Beijing's Guiguisuisui, rounded out by Milkk. Can't wait!
Sadly had to pull out of this show due to certain FourPlay happenings with Neil Gaiman…
I do have a whole unreleased studio album sitting around wanting a good home. It's different, but I'm sure you'll like it. Stay tuned…
I'll be playing a solo set at Matt Wakeling's new gig series Sounds Like This on Saturday the 27th of September.
Doors are 7:30pm, and it's only $10. Venue is the Mars Hill Cafe, 331 Church Street, Parramatta. Matt himself is also playing, along with beatsmith/producer Sails aka Joshua Isaac.
Should be a good one! I'll be doing a straight cello + laptop set. And I did an in-depth(!) interview with Matt the other night to promote the show.
Photo courtesy dancepanther
Very pleased to be supporting the wonderful Zoë Keating at The Basement on Friday, March 15th. Bookings and full details here.
On Sunday, Feb 24th, I'm playing at the wonderful Gail Priest's new series Pretty Gritty, at 107 Projects in Redfern. It should be an awesome start to an awesome series. Quite possibly I'll play cello with Michaela Davies' Involuntary String Quartet, and definitely I'll be playing a raven set!
I'm writing new Raven music as we speak! (Well, almost)
I've written a new cello looping track as a soundtrack for an animation piece to launch the Sydney International Animation Festival at UTS this week. I should be able to air it soon.
And I'm creating a 10-15 minute work for FBi's lovely Ears Have Ears, who have regular new works, mostly performed live, on their Thursday 9-11pm timeslot. You can hear mine on Thursday the 1st of November.
Raven is playing live on Friday the 26th of October with Gilded (aka Perth's Adam Trainer & Matt Rösner), Seaworthy and Pimmon at new venue 107 Projects Redfern. Stellar lineup. Here's the Facebook event. Note it's an early start and finish for this one! I'm on just after 7pm.
And I shouldn't neglect my collaborations here. I'm very excited to be continuing my duo with Ollie Bown of Icarus. We'll be playing one of our improv sets (cello, loops, effects and laptop) at the legendary, shambolic Sando in Newtown on Thursday the 25th of October. Facebook event here – crazy eclectic lineup, should be fun!
And then there's my trio Haunts with Greg & Matt from Underlapper, who've been companions in music – both fandom and performance – for years. It's brilliant to be turning this into a real band, and we have some great songs with crunchy beats, glitchy sounds, vocals and cello loops coming soon. Meanwhile, here's a long track we recorded live on the aforementioned Ears Have Ears a month or so ago:
Haunts' gig has been delayed ‐ now we have Thursday the 29th of November at the Red Rattler in Marrickville as a fund-raiser for Dirty Shirlows, and then Saturday the 1st of December at, er, "secret venue", with ex-Underlapperer Cold House and electronic ambient-techno genius Gentleforce. Facebook event should eventually tell you more.
And finally, I played cello on Sophie Hutchings' amazing new album Night Sky, and we're launching that at Cafe Church (Colbourne Ave) in Glebe on Friday the 2nd of November. Facebook event? You betcha!
Oh yeah, and post-finally… On Sunday the 11th of November I'm playing cello in two of the works in the Radio With Pictures even at this year's Graphic Festival. Radio plays with comics and soundtracks. I have no idea what I'll be playing! Isn't that exciting!
SO MANY GIGS. SO MANY MES! (and yes, FourPlay will return next year…)
Recently I played a set at Cockatoo Island as part of a gig I curated called Postfolkrocktronica Picnic. I briefly played a set of my own, and then debuted an exciting new duo I've been working on with Ollie Bown of Icarus, using custom looping and processing software created by him and workshopped together.
We've got a ways to go, but there's a tremendous amount of potential for some really cool stuff there…
So, first up some solo Raven. This is (most of) a piece without a name that I created for the Goodbye Sarajevo event at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival.
And here's a possibly bewildering excerpt from the Bown/Hollo duo, sometime after Ollie dropped the tempo of the piece and warped everything. You can't really hear the way the beats are synchronised with the cello loops, but hopefully it's pretty at least:
