Micro-festival at Ainslie Arts Centre

“ON Location” is a brand new, immersive micro-festival, coming to Ainslie Arts Centre this weekend as a part of its Ainslie Salon collection.

The brainchild of current APRA-AMCOS award-winner Sia Ahmad, who takes care of stay music programming at Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres, its focus might be on digital and improvised music, utilizing area recordings, sound artwork and digital music.

That includes Del Lumanta, Leah Blankendaal, Lydian Dunbar and “Soften” on Friday (September 23) then Ben Marston, Lisa Lerkenfeldt, salllvage [Rowan Savage] and “trm-b” on Saturday, the mini-festival might be accompanied by projections and hands-on sound sculptures across the constructing to boost the artwork expertise.

Ahmad places me in contact with Ben Marston, best-known in Canberra as a trumpeter, however who modified musical course when in 2014, armed with an ArtsACT grant, he travelled to Norway to check with Norwegian musician and document producer Jan Bangs, identified in his residence nation as the highest electronics guru .

“As a trumpet participant if you progress from Miles [Davis] and the ’60s, ambient music is the logical place to go,” Marston says.

Bangs co-founded the “Punkt Competition” in Kristiansen, southern Norway, and there Marston bought to comply with him round —” I might play, and he would remix me – it was a surreal expertise,” he says.

Marston, by day director of bands at Radford Faculty and who additionally teaches a course in New Orleans jazz rehearsal fundamentals for the ANU’s Open Faculty of Music, has been working with drummer Chris Thwaite, and in “On Location” he’ll use a few of his drum elements and configure them for digital music. There’s be a cinematic aspect, too.

Subsequent I converse to First Nations artist Rowan Savage of “salllvage,” who lives in in Ashfield and wasn’t introduced up on Nation, however  is a Kombumerri man from the Nerang space on the Gold Coast who  goes again there each couple of months to make area recordings.

“I’m going on the lookout for sounds, particularly primary sounds from nature like hen calls and the ocean, however typically I make sounds out loud, tapping rocks collectively,” he tells me. “As soon as I get again to my desk, I’ve a complete library of sounds – I assume it’s my method of connecting to nation.”

“I grew up not understanding my tradition, so I’ve needed to make my connections as an grownup,” explaining that his cousin up there’s the top of an Aboriginal organisation and has significantly helped him.

Savage typically will get surprising sounds equivalent to vehicles passing on the bridge or individuals talking and tries to include them with the sounds of nature, however the piece he’ll to carry out for “On Location” is all about that the majority clever of birds, the crow.

“’Wagahn’ is the phrase for Crowe in our language. I hearken to crows rather a lot and there are many crows round my home in Sydney and this piece was created for reacting to them.”

Lastly, I meet Leah Blankendaal, a composer and performer of electro-acoustic sound artwork who additionally works in Canberra for Musica Viva.

“My personal follow is utilizing loop pedal work, however not within the conventional method. It’s very meditative within the area about being current with the viewers and being nonetheless,” Blankendaal says.

In “On Location,” she’ll carry out a  new work  and a chunk from her 2020 album, “Alongside, Amongst And Towards.” That, she says, might be alongside a chunk of artwork, towards a chunk of structure, or amongst an viewers, relying what the setting is.

Ainslie Foremost Corridor, Ainslie Arts Centre, Braddon. 6.30pm, Friday and Saturday, September 23 and 24.