Artists
Dr Martin Ng - turntables -
(In the long tradition of Charles Ives and Borodin), as well as making the turntables the cutting edge of music Martin works on Invasive Assessment of Pulmonary Vascular Physiology and The Role of the Thioredoxin System in Angiogenesis and Impaired Neovasucalisation in Diabetes Mellitus.
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Hosebeast, illustrious purveyors of a fine vintage doomstep cacophony, have played together in various Duo and Trio combinations over the last three years. The Trio members share many common interests including a love for chamber music, the novels of Herman Hesse and an eagerness to break out the cricket bat at any opportunity. Featuring Jon Hunter, Peter Newman and Ivan Lisyak.
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The Prophets:
Dale Gorfinkel / Peter Farrar / Sam Dobson / Finn Ryan / Rosalind Hall / others
- saxophones and percussion
Some kind of folk music from another planet, where they have similar instruments to our own but have a penchant for funny looking masks.
(Fri 5pm @ Lhamdha Books)
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Reuben Derrick is now based in Christchurch NZ. For a number of years he made a strong contribution to the improvised music scene in Sydney - this is his first time back for 2 years. He explores the sonic possibilities of the sax from such different angles, that he is comfortable in diverse contexts, from the extremely quiet to the full blown.
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Kusum Normoyle is an improvising vocalist/electronic artist/alternative pop musician based in sydney. She works with voice and electronics for performance and installation.
http://www.myspace.com/kusumnormoyle
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David Ahern was born in Sydney in 1947. As a child, he learned violin and taught himself piano and composition. By the age of 15, he became convinced he was to be a composer. At age 16, having composed over 50 works, he went to study composition firstly with Nigel Butterley then later with Richard Meale. Under Meale’s tutelage, Ahern wrote his first performed work, After Mallarmé for orchestra, which was recorded by the South Australian Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Patrick Thomas. The recording was immediately submitted by John Hopkins for the 1967 International Rostrum of Composers in Paris.
But of greatest notoriety is the piece Ned Kelly Music for orchestra, written for the Sydney Proms concert series - a work described as ‘daring and bizarre’. The success of the piece elevated Ahern’s importance within the avant garde.
Soon after, Ahern travelled to Germany, studying and working with Karlheinz Stockhausen, then to Germany to study with Cornelius Cardew. In 1969, Ahern journeyed again to both Germany and England, finding more affinity with Cardew’s working processes. On returning to Australia in 1970, Ahern formed the ensemble AZ Music, drawing influence from Cardew’s own Scratch Orchestra. The ensemble performed largely improvised works and comprised a number of younger performers and composers - Roger Frampton, Peter Evans, Geoffrey Collins, Ernie Gallagher, Geoffrey Barnard, Greg Schiemer and Peter Kinny.
David Ahern died in 1988, aged 40.
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Pilgrimage From Scattered Points – A film by Luke Fowler (45mins, UK, 2007)
Fowler outlines the history of The Scratch Orchestra, composer Cornelius Cardew’s free-thinking grouping of musicians, non-musicians and other interested parties.
Using archive footage - much of it culled from Hanne Boenisch’s 1971 television film Journey To The North Pole - alongside interviews, rostrum shots of ephemera and Super-8 vignettes, Pilgrimage From Scattered Points is at once a coherent narrative essay on the Orchestra’s history, and a fluid portrait in film of Cardew and his confreres. The film runs from the group’s formation in 1969 to its rancorous split in the mid-1970s, by which time tensions between two factions, fostered by divisive debates on the function of art - a Maoist tendency who argued for making music to serve the people and a ‘bourgeoisie idealist’ camp devoted to formal experiment - had risen to boiling point. Along the way, we learn that the Scratch Orchestra - defined in their ‘Draft Manifesto’ as ‘a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performances, edification)’ - improvised from visual scores, including in one case a dog-eared copy of the Radio Times, and took a revolutionary approach to music making in more ways than one….
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LOUISE CURHAM
“Louise Curham (Sydney) is at the forefront of Australian moving image art. As well known for curating innovative expanded cinema events in non-traditional exhibition spaces as for provocative Actionist performances, Curham is highly regarded in the experimental film world for her work using “obsolete media.” Her hand-worked Super 8 films reinvent the home movie medium of years gone by…..”
excerpt from ‘Alchemical torture’ by Danni Zuvela for REALTIME
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Eugene Chadbourne (USA) - guitar, banjo
Please welcome Mr. Eugene Chadbourne to the NOW now festival for the first time.
He will play solo on friday, and hand pick his own band for Saturday night.
(Fri 9pm @ WFSA; Sat @ Akemi)
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Clayton Thomas - double bass and Clare Cooper - guzheng
As everybody looking at this website should already know, Clayton and Clare’s vision and energy is to thank for this festival, now in its 8th year. They have created the NOW now and ran it for many years, established the Splinter Orchestra, and made heaps of great music in Australia before moving to Berlin in 2007. Everybody is excited to have Clayton and Clare back for this year’s festival.
(Clay - Fri @ Akemi; Sat 7pm @ WFSA; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
(Clare - Fri 7pm @ WFSA; Sat 7pm @ WFSA; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
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Magda Mayas (Germany) - piano
Magda Mayas is a pianist and curator currently based in Berlin, Germany. Mayas studied jazz and improvisation at Universität der Künste, Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2001 under Misha Mengelberg and completed a diploma at Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler under Georg Graewe in 2005. During this time she began developing a specific set of techniques for inside-piano performance. Mayas has concentrated her musical investigations on the piano and its sonic possibilities, utilizing extended techniques, amplification and preparations as a process of abstraction, whilst focusing on the physicality of both internal and external parts of the piano. As a continuation of this research Mayas founded the festival Tasten-Berliner Klaviertage featuring contemporary and innovative approaches for the piano. Mayas performs internationally in a variety of roles as interpreter, solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers. She has appeared in various festivals and has performed with many leading figures in improvisation such as Andy Moore, Steve Heather, Annette Krebs, Andrea Neumann, Axel Dörner, Michael Zerang, Johannes Bauer, Christoph Kurzmann, Thomas Lehn,Tristan Honsinger, Frank Gratkowski and Michael Moore.
(Fri 7pm @ WFSA; Sat 9pm @ WFSA)
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Mike Majkowski - double bass
Mike is a long time devotee of the NOW now and the improvised music community in Sydney. After 6 months in Europe, he is back for his first solo gig in Australia in a long time.
Photo by Matt Sutton
(Sun 2pm and 4pm @ WFSA)
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Anthony Pateras - prepared piano
Anthony Pateras is a multidisciplinary musician living and working in Melbourne, Australia. Solo he appears on piano or analogue electronics, and composes written works for ensembles, orchestras and soloists. His four main groups are an electro-acoustic duo with Robin Fox, the trio Pateras/Baxter/Brown, noise-sculptors Poletopra (with Marco Fusinato) and free-grind duo Pivixki (with Max Kohane).
photo by Jean-Michel Monin
(Sun 2:45 @ WFSA)
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Robin Fox - computer
Robin Fox is an experimental artist working in the fields of computer music performance and audio visual diffusion. He has made a series of films for the cathode ray oscilloscope (released on the DVD ‘backscatter on synaesthesia records) and now scares everybody with his audio controlled laser system. Robin has a history of excellent performances at the NOW now using his computer to manipulate acoustic musicians.
(Fri @ Akemi; Sat 7pm @ WFSA; Sun in Wilson Park - Kites)
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Jon Rose - violin and kites
Jon’s achievements in music are not to be taken lightly, he has played with all the people the rest of us wish we had played with, and thought of things nobody else would have thought of. Fortunately for us he continues to be a creative force in Australian music. We will all see what he has been doing lately with kites (weather permitting) and of course hear him playing some violin.
(Sat 2:30pm @ Kings Cave; Sun in Wilson Park - Kites)
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=-0hDsEANvKM
“The first attempt at Kite Music was quite short as kite, electronics and mini cameras were thrown casually by the wind into the nearest thorn covered tree (not too many of them around here but we found them courtesy Murphy’s law). There was a broken stay but the accelerometers survived. Second attempt ripped half a nail off my finger. Interactive technology demands blood. Eventually we were receiving serious video.
There were three cameras, one pointing ahead reading like a NASA space probe (when there were clouds to give a sense of distance); one camera pointed back towards the tail taking audio-visual readings of swirling, disturbing intensity. The camera pointing down the kite line revealed a fish-eyed red ball world being spun and vigorously shaken; human dots stumbled around in the brightness.
The Aeolian sound was all shake, rattle and roll. It could be experienced raw (as are the historic hummers used in Indonesian and Chinese large box kites), or used to drive digital media. This we did using the vagaries of wind power to digitally drive violin sounds or a long sample of an eight-foot diapason organ pipe. The audio-visual data transmission dismissed all the standard new age delusions of the outback - here was a noisy and violent crucible.”
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Botborg
Botborg is a practical demonstration of the theories of Dr Arkady Botborger (1923-81), founder of the ‘occult’ science of Photosonicneurokineasthography - translated as “writing the movement of nerves through use of sound and light”. Botborg’s ‘instrument’ is the Photosonicneurokineasthograph - a complex feedback machine incorporating an entangled mix of new and old technologies, that are altered and customised to the unique features of every venue. Although the human operators of Botborg are skilled manipulators of the system, it is equally unpredictable and uncontrollable, allowing Botborg to look and sound vastly different on every occasion. All demonstrations are completely improvised and no source material is used outside the Photosonicneurokineasthograph.
(Sat 9:30pm @ WFSA)
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Steve Heather - percussion (Germany/Australia)
Steve Heather (drums). Studied percussion/improvisation at The Victorian College of the Art in Australia (1991) and Performance Art at DasArts/Amsterdam (2006). Since 1994 Steven Heather has been performing and recording as a musician regularly in Australia, Europe, America and Asia. Currently living in Berlin, he plays in all sorts of groups, from impro, electro-acoustic and jazz, to rock, noise and dub. His current music projects include DAIRY (Andy Moor, Yannis Kyrialides, Joe Williamson), BOOKLET (Toby Delius, Joe Williamson) THE UNDERSTATED BROWN (Thomas Meadowcroft, Boris Hauf), MRS CONCEPTION, OCHASA, SAND, HALF WOLF (Martin Siewert, Boris Hauf, EFZEQ (Martin Siewert, Boris Hauf, Burkhard Stangl, Billy Roz) and solo performances/installations as ELECTRIC BONGO BONGO. He composes and performs regularly in the fields of dance, theatre, film new media, performance and has had residencies in Australia, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
(Fri 7pm @ WFSA; Sat 6am @ King’s Cave)
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Sam Dobson - double bass Has for 2 years been involved with the Splinter Orchestra and improvising with other young musicians from the Sydney Scene (while strugling to make sense of the Sydney Conservatorium). His duo with Jon Rose should show us all just how far from conservative he is.
(Fri 5pm @ Lhamdha Books; Sat 2:30pm @ King’s Cave; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
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The Splinter Orchestra needs no introduction here. The band has been a vital part of Sydney’s improvised music community and a feature of every NOW now festival. Recently the band went on its first regional tour, and as you would expect there are plenty of new faces amongst the old faithful. (Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
The band:Rod Cooper (klunk), Jim Denley (woodwinds), Ian Pieterse (baritone saxophone), Aemon Webb (electronics), Milica Stefanovic (bass guitar), Alex Masso (percussion), Clare Cooper (guzheng), Monika Brooks (accordion/piano), Abel Cross (bass guitar), Sam Dobson (double bass), Finn Ryan (percussion), Shannon O’Neill (synthesizer), David Green (guitar/miscellaneous), Clayton Thomas (double bass), Peter Farrar (saxophone), Heather Shannon (violin), Nadene Pita (viola), Mike Majkowski (double bass), Dale Gorfinkel (percussion and inventions), Grant Arthur (brass instruments and banjo), Laura Altman (clarinet), Daniel Whiting (computer), Rivka Schembri (cello), Simon Ferenci (trumpet), Mirabai Peart (violin), Reuben Derrick (saxophone), Joe Derrick (trumpet), Rosalind Hall (saxophone), Rory Brown (double bass)
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Inge Olmheim - electronics
Using a mix of field recordings, minidisc manipulations, feedback systems and subtle laptop processing he creates an ambiguous and beguiling sound world. This seemingly quiet, high pitched Norwegian is renown for stretching sound to such limits that he surprisingly destroys speakers.
(Fri 5:30pm @ Lhamdha Books; Sat 2pm @ King’s Cave)
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Ian Pieterse - baritone saxophone
A Slimey Thing, A Ricatetas, A Splinter! Can this man be all things to all people? A deft improviser with an ear for understatement.
(Sat 2pm @ King’s Cave; Sunday 2pm @ WFSA)
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The Spiders - aka James Heighway
Australia is known to be the home of some of the deadliest spiders in the world & James Heighway is no exception. When not behind the drum kit in XWAVE James collects and modifies ancient electronics. These are The Spiders, a unique blend of broken, hacked, modified and recycled guitars, keyboards, effectors, mixers, etc all played simultaneously. Together the sound expressed conveys a feeling of the bush drenched in feedback.
James’s intense live performances have him known as king of noise throughout the region. Others have dubbed him Merzbow of the Mountains.
(Fri 7:30pm @ WFSA)
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Hollis Taylor:Birdsong : 
The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music. Could animals have an aesthetic sense? Is musicality a capacity humankind shares with birds? No, according to those who see them as them as mere animal machines—but yes according to Charles Darwin, who in 1871 credited birds “with strong affections, acute perception, and a taste for the beautiful.” This thought-provoking lecture/concert is an audio-visual celebration of birdsong and more. Afternoon talk @ Wentworth Falls School of Arts small hall 5:30pm.
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T.A.D. - guitar, voice
TAD entertainment is ran by Tadaki Koyano. Provide various entertainment shows such as MC, comedy/physical theatre, live music or etc…. Tad entertainment is joyful and dadaismic.
(Fri 8:30pm @ WFSA)
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The Loop Orchestra - John Blades / Richard Fielding / Manny Gasparinatos / Hamish Mackenzie / Juke Wyatt
Exploring the possibilities of reel-to-reel tape loops since 1980.
(Sun 3:30pm @ WFSA)
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Lucas Abela - glass
Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham) began his musical experiments in the early 1990s working at a community radio station where, in 1994, his on-air experimentations were heard by Ambarchi and Avenaim. They invited him to participate in their festival and Abela has been performing as a musician ever since, touring extensively overseas, including Europe, United States, Japan and China.
His instrument of choice since 2003 has been a contact microphone attached to a pane of glass. Abela sings, with his mouth pressed against the glass, creating vibrations which are magnified through the use of pedals. The pressure and teeth against the glass ultimately causes it to shatter, but Abela plays on, barefoot in shards of glass, face squashed against the remaining blood smeared pane.
Despite being classified as ‘noise’, Abela sees himself as an improvising musician in the free jazz tradition. In a recent performance there were subtle layers of spatialised sound, unexpected stops and shifting dynamics. Although the voice is mediated by the glass and electronic manipulations, this is a vocal performance – an extended and complex scream. The fakir-like act gives a corporeal immediacy that most 21st century Western music avoids.
(Sun @ Akemi)
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Sean Baxter (drums/percussion/household audio equipment) has been involved in improvised music for over a decade.
He is a founding member of bucketrider (with David Brown and Tim O’Dwyer).
In 2000 he was involved in DADA Cabaret (recipient of two Green Room awards for their performances during Melbourne’s 2000 Fringe Festival), with Eric Griswold (piano), Vanessa Tomlinson (percussion), Ernie Altoff (found instruments), Mark Shepherd (contrabass), and Tim O’Dwyer (alto saxophone).
As an individual performer he has played with a range of prominent Australian and International improvisers in duet and small group situations including Max Nagl (Austria), KK Null (Japan), Steve Heather and Alex Waterman (Netherlands), Robbie Avenaim (Sydney), Jim Denley (Sydney), Greg Kingston (Hobart), Tom Fryer (Melbourne), Philip Samartzis (Melbourne), and Philip Brophy (Melbourne).
He is also First Year Co-Ordinator with the Centre For Ideas at the Victorian College of the Arts, teaching cultural theory, performance theory, aesthetic philosophy and improvisation.
(Sun @ Akemi)
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Joe Derrick + Simon Ferenci = Trumpet
Two long standing Splinters and fine exponents of 21st Century trumpet
(Sat 7:30pm @ WFSA)
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Helmet Head 
aka Rod Cooper and Anthony Magen - electronics and projections.
HelmetHead - an audio visual LIVE performance by post-human provocateurs AM+RC, where expanded cinema, noise and body art transmute. Hand held images and found objects are manipulated and combined with a relentless stream of dangerous and humorous projections. Wrapped in a fast chaotic blanket of audio to uplift your tangential human existence. Described by J.Stern once as “semi-visible mental furniture of the ‘helmet-head;’ a literal dream-screen”
(Sat 8:30pm @ WFSA)
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Adam Sussman + Martin Kirkwood - acoustic guitars
(Fri 8pm @ WFSA)
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Dave Brown
(Sun @ Akemi)
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The UnAustralians (Chris Nylstoch + Bonnie Hart)
Taking their name from Meat & Livestock Australia propaganda the Melbourne based duo of Ein and Aus transgress a spiritual reality in which grindcore is subverted towards a path of procratinat-obliteration. 46 cranial fracturing songs featuring wailing banshee vocals, a drum machine set to over 300bpm and a possesed 20th century shredder guitarist. On stage, the couple use chainsaws, exploding corpses, and other visual devices to communicate their ideas about domestic violence and civil disobedience. UnAustralians truly represent the extremely brutal end of improvised music in Australia.
(Sun @ Akemi)
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Aemon Webb
One experimenting kid to watch.
(Fri 5:30pm @ Lhamdha Books; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
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Laura Altman - clarinet
The kind of composer and improviser that Sydney needs more of. Laz will have just got off the plane from her musical adventures in Europe.
(Sat 9pm @ WFSA; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
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Lloyd Honeybrook - Feedbax (saxophone and amplifier)
He takes an antiquated acoustic instrument and essentially supersedes it by casting off its previous contexts and relocating to an entirely new position of hierarchy.
The process begins with investigation via the examination of past sound production, of resonance, sound phenomenology and the inherent desire to create new sounds. It delves into the realm of the tangible, the object itself and the physicality of its noise.
(Fri @ Akemi)
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Monika Brooks - accordion
A quiet achiever of the Sydney music scene, and often a quiet musician. Mon has made valuable contributions to creative music through the Splinter Orchestra, Ubercube, West Head Project, Creeks and other projects; she is also one of the people you might want to thank for this year’s NOW now festival.
(Sat 9pm @ WFSA; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
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Dale Gorfinkel - vibraphone and home made/modified instruments - is now a resident of Melbourne, but spent the last few years igniting the Sydney scene with his inventions in terms of instruments and music. His use of mechanical percussion has given him a unique performance approach, and his extended ideas for trumpet keep getting loonier.
(Fri 5pm @ Lhamdha Books; Fri @ Akemi; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
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Finn Ryan - drums
He may seem like an ordinary kid from Stanwell Park, but at 17 Finn has already started his own band, toured and recorded with The Splinter Orchestra and 3 of Millions, played with Gorfinkel, Avenaim, Crewdson, Dobson, Farrar, Majkowski and Masso, and has got his P’s.
(Fri @ Akemi; Sun 2pm @ WFSA)
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