Performance Studio 1
Two New Proposals for an Overland Telegraph Line from Port Darwin to Port Augusta, from the Perspective of Alice Springs (World premiere)
A work for detuned colonial piano and electronics by Erkki Veltheim, written for and performed by Gabriella Smart (58’). Electronic music that distills new music and history, embodied through the first piano to arrive in Alice Springs via Oodnadata by camel. In this engrossing acoustic-electronic work composer Erkki Veltheim morphs history with contemporary culture: morse code played on colonial piano spells out the world’s most retweeted tweet of January 2015, reflecting our universal obsession with trivia.
Erkki Veltheim (Composer) is a Finnish-Australian composer, improviser, performer and interdisciplinary artist. Erkki has been commissioned by Adelaide Festival, Vivid Festival, Australian Art Orchestra, Soundstream and New Music Network, and his pieces have been performed by ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Gabriella Smart (Pianist) received a Churchill Fellowship in 2010, and a Helpmann Award in 2009. She is Artistic Director of Soundstream New Music, which was recognized nationally in 2013 through the APRA/AMCOS Award for Excellence by an Organisation. Gabriella performs regularly in Australia and overseas, recording regularly for ABC Classic FM. She is currently finalising her PhD project Of Broken Trees and Elephant Ivories: performing sixteen newly-commissioned piano works inspired by the legacy of pianos in colonial Australia.
Picnic at Broken Hill
Video Installation Studio 2
On New Year’s Day 1915 at 10 am in Broken Hill, miners and their families set off to Silverton for a picnic. The picnic train was attacked by two former cameleers, “Afghans” Mullah Abdullah and Badsha Mahommed Gool, from the North East “Ghan town” of Broken Hill. Abdullah had just been convicted for slaughtering sheep by the traditional halal method in an un-licensed building. He saw this as racial and religious based harassment. Mahommed Gool was the local ice-cream man and the idea of shooting up some of his British Empirial customers, flying a home-made Turkish flag, appealed. Australia was rife anti-Turkish and German sentiment; the two ex-camellers clearly felt they were in the wrong place and on the wrong side, so they joined together to start their own war. Knowing how it would end they both wrote suicide letters. This composition is a musical transcription of those suicide letters.
Jon Rose (Composer) is a central figure in the development of Free Improvisation and sound art in Australia. His primary life’s work is The Relative Violin. This is the development of a total artform based around the one instrument. Jon has been an innovator in the fields of new instrument design, new instrumental techniques including inter-active electronics, using the media of radio, video and television to create a new, alternative, personal and revised history for the violin. Jon Rose performs regularly in the main international festivals of New Music, Jazz, performance and Sound Art. He has appeared on over 100 albums and CD’s. In 2017 Rose was the composer in residence at The Peggy Glanville-Hicks house in Sydney. www.jonroseweb.com