Video from the Australian Art Orchestra's Creative Music Intensive 2016 held in September in Tarraleah Tasmania. Featuring, Sunny Kim (Seoul), Bae Il Dong (Seoul), Peter Knight (AAO Artistic Director), Simon Barker (Sydney) and others.
The opportunities that exist in Australia for dialogues with Asian cultures are among the most exciting prospects for Australian musicians, and improvised practice, which is at the core of the Australian Art Orchestra, is an ideal platform for facilitating these dialogues. The Creative Music Intensive residency, established in 2014, is conceived to provide a unique professional development program for musicians from Australia and internationally that explores this meeting of cultures and practices.
Held at Tarraleah in the Tasmanian Central Highlands, the cultural focus in 2016 will have two streams: Korean and indigenous Australian culture featuring extraordinary p’ansori singer Bae Il Dong and the Young Wagilak traditional songmen Daniel and David Wilfred from Arnhem Land. The program will be co-directed by AAO Artistic Director Dr Peter Knight (composer/trumpet), and Dr Simon Barker (drums).
The ten-day practice-based residency is made up of daily lectures, small ensemble workshops and open group practical sessions bringing together the extraordinary cultural traditions of Arnhem Land manikay (song) and Korean traditional p’ansori. These approaches to human voice sound very different but there is much that also links them: stories, improvisation, a focus on extreme refinement of vocal techniques, and repetitive/hypnotic rhythmic elements.
The CMI daily program is divided up into the transmission of specific information and skills development during morning workshops presented by the leaders, and the practical application of these skills in the context of music practice in the afternoons/evenings. These sessions will explore the meeting points of these two ancient musical traditions, and will encompass a diverse range of influences including Arnhem Land manikay, Korean p’ansori singing, live electronic processing of instruments, jazz instrumental and vocal improvisation, complex rhythmic ideas and extended instrumental techniques. The central objective we maintain is to facilitate and encourage collaboration through the development of new music using tools and ideas discussed and taught during the course of the residency.
