Press Release.
Exploratory music heads for the hills!

Although usually held in the polluted, confined spaces of Sydney’s experimental music ghettoes the NOW now Festival will take a deep breath and relocate to Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains this year.

There are 3 days and nights of instrument building workshops (for kids and families), outdoor concerts, installations, post-gig jams, soundwalks, noise works in the car park, food and licensed bar, all the exploratory music CDs from Australia and overseas, surround soundscapes, noisy electric, quiet acoustic, and audiovisual work. Want to know what’s happening in new music in this country? This is the place to be!

The festival will celebrate the remarkable community of exploratory sound artists who live in the Mountains. Jon Rose, Joyce Hinterding, Adam Sussman and Matt Earle are known around the world for their innovative work. There are also a host of emerging artists who call the Mountains home – this is a festival of intergenerational exchange.

Three of the most interesting female vocalists in the Australia (and the world), Amanda Stewart (Sydney), Jo Truman (Blue Mountains) and Carolyn Connors (Melbourne) will be performing. Three large groups, The Splinter Orchestra (Sydney), Sun of the Seventh Sister (Blue Mountains) and Taste of Teeth (Brisbane) will bring different ideas and sensibilities about how to improvise in numbers in the 21st Century. Three of France’s most interesting sonic explorers are here, Mathieu Werchowski (violin), Xavier Charles (who recently played his clarinet amidst Penguins in Patagonia) and sound poet Emmanuel Pellegrini.

From Perth, Ross Bolleter (who shared his ‘obsession’ on the ABC program, ‘Collectors’) will find music on a piano so ruined that others would take it to the tip. And the great master of transgressive gesture, Greg Kingston, will extract himself from the safety of Hobart suburbia, to unleash his frightening guitar hi-jinx on an innocent public, and himself.

Other artists include: Phil Samartzis (VIC), Marcia Jane (VIC), Paul Winstanley (NZ), Rosalind Hall (VIC), Clare Cooper, Thomas Meadowcroft (Germany), Dan Whiting, Rory Brown, Louise Dibben, Brendan Walls, Jim Denley, Natasha Anderson (VIC), Ben Byrne, Peter Farrar, Yusuke Akai (QLD) and many more.

THE 7th NOW now FESTIVAL of Spontaneous Music
18th - 20th January 2008
Wentworth Falls School of Arts,
Blue Mountains NSW

For more information see www.thenownow.net
Contact series
For photos and interviews 02 9380 9310 / 0405 906 694

Tickets available at www.moshtix.com.au, 1300 GET TIX (438 849), on your mobile
www.moshtix.mobi and all moshtix outlets.

Ends.