in the loop nov 20: the next 25, celebrating sounds in wa

tura 25th birthday celebrations

Tura, Shothole stage, Sounds Outback (... to Reef), Exmouth, WA photo Peter Strain

IT IS NO EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT TURA NEW MUSIC PUTS PERTH ON THE MUSICAL MAP, NOT JUST FROM A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE BUT ALSO INTERNATIONALLY. FOR 25 YEARS, WITH TOS MAHONEY AT THE HELM, THE ORGANISATION HAS PRODUCED VAST NUMBERS OF CONCERTS, HOSTED RESIDENCIES AND GENERALLY ADVOCATED FOR THE ROLE OF NEW AND EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC, NOT JUST FROM WESTERN AUSTRALIA BUT FROM ACROSS THE NATION.

For a very small organisation, the output has always been ambitious with projects including the appropriately titled Totally Huge New Music festival (see the archive of RealTime coverage below) which takes place biennially and brings renowned international artists to Perth along with some of Australia’s leading composers and ensembles. Every other year Tura hosts the Sounds Outback Festival, the first four held at Wogarno Station with this year’s program moving to the glorious Ningaloo Coast. Add to this a Regional Touring Program and a range of country and city-based residencies and this is before we even get to the concert program. Scale Variable features concerts by small ensembles and Club Zho offers a regular, more casual gig format. Then there’s the Commissioning Program and a Young and Emerging Artists Program. Tura has also recently undertaken the mammoth task, in collaboration with The Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University, the State Library of Western Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Commission and the National Library of Australia, to create an archive of Western Australian music covering the last 40 years.

Tura, shearing shed percussion, Sounds Outback (... to Reef), Exmouth, WA photo Peter Strain

The 25th birthday celebrations continue Tura’s agenda of promoting both local talent and interstate artists and comprise four concerts and a Club Zho bash. Before the formal concerts there’s also a rather swish fundraising event titled the Next 25 at an undisclosed private residence on the Swan River. Along with fine wine and food, it will feature performances by Ensemble Offspring. The first concert will also be by Ensemble Offspring who will perform celebratory compositions from Australian composers such as Matthew Schlomowitz and Marcus Whale alongside works by international composers Thierry de Mey, Larry Polansky and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Concert 2 exemplifies the broad scope of Tura’s agenda featuring Melbourne audiovisual artist Robin Fox with Perth emerging artist Kynan Tan. Fox, renowned for his works with sound and lasers, will be presenting some of his new experiments with synchronators which take sound and translate it, according to frequency, into the colours of the spectrum. Tan, who has been mentored by Fox as part of the Jump program (http://jump.australiacouncil.gov.au/about/), will present his new work, multiplicity, which explores “tiered levels of interaction between the sonic and visual, in the form of computer-generated sound and imagery, manipulated brain data and complex data visualizations” (program).

Decibel, performing The Talking Board at Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011 photo Brad Serls

Perth ensemble Decibel will take charge of the third concert to explore the acoustic properties of the Hackett Hall Gallery at the Western Australian Museum, focusing on how the space responds to genres such as jazz, indie, music concrete, minimalism and glitch. The concert will feature compositions by Australian composers Erik Griswold, Mace Francis, Chris Cobilis and Decibel members Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery, as well as pieces by international composers Lionel Marchetti, Roger Smalley, Tristan Murail and an arrangement by Decibel of Lalo Schifrin’s In the Floodlights.

The final concert will also feature Erik Griswold with Vanessa Tomlinson as Clocked Out Duo exploring the recent proposition by physicist Frank Wilczek of the existence of “time crystals…perpetually moving structures that repeat periodically in the fourth dimension” (program). On piano and percussion the duo will use patterning and poetic interpretations of perpetual motion and crystalline structures. Sounds like a fascinating composition most fitting for a time-based celebration.

No birthday is complete without a party which will be manifested as Club Zho’s 100th gig. It will feature an array of local artist who’ve participated in Tura over the last 25 years, all of whom have helped make Perth the vibrant musical city it is today.

Tura 25th Birthday Celebrations, artistic director Tos Mahoney, various venues, Perth, Nov 21-Dec 6 2012; www.tura.com.au

Jon Rose, Totally Huge 2001 photo Nat Brunovs

tura archive highlight

RealTime has been around for 18 of Tura’s 25 years. Below is a selection of some of our coverage of the Totally Huge Festivals and other Tura presentations.

totally huge new music festival
2011
totally huge new music festival 2011—onsite coverage
RT’s Associate Editor Gail Priest was joined by local writers Sam Gillies and Henry Andersen to deliver daily reviews of concerts, installations and events across the 10-day festival. There are 14 reviews plus video interviews with Marina Rosenfeld and Speak Percussion's Eugene Ughetti.
Online feature September, 2011

2009
machine age new music
jonathan marshall: decibel, tape it!, totally huge new music festival 2009
RealTime issue #94 Dec-Jan 2009 p49

2007
vertiginous pleasures of disconnection
jonathan marshall at the totally huge new music festival 2007
RealTime issue #79 June-July 2007 p40

media multiplies opera
jonathan marshall talks to michel van der aa, totally huge new music festival
RealTime issue #78 April-May 2007 p41

2005
totally huge: knots and flames
gail priest: totally huge new music festival 2005
RealTime issue #70 Dec-Jan 2005 p15

2003
totally huge contemporary chamber music
sarah combes: totally huge new music festival 2003
RealTime issue #55 June-July 2003 p31

tura events & presentations
sharing sound with painters
jasmin stephens: philip samartzis, desert, east kimberley, tura residency
RealTime issue #106 Dec-Jan 2011 p40

head music, hard splatter
jonathan marshall at club zho
RealTime issue #73 June-July 2006 p38

unexpected musics
andrew beck & bryce moore: drums in the outback, wogarno station
RealTime issue #49 June-July 2002 p34

lindsay vickery: running up an opera noir
andrew beck: rendez-vous—an opera noir
RealTime issue #46 Dec-Jan 2001 p33

tos mahoney: programming new music
andrew beck
RealTime issue #41 Feb-March 2001 p32

RealTime issue #111 Oct-Nov 2012 pg. web

© RealTime ; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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