BY CUTCOMMON
Dots+Loops has announced its 2022 Performance Fellows — and the line-up is pretty impressive. These musicians will have access to a week’s worth of mentoring and networking opportunities, workshops and collaborations, and then the space to perform with industry leaders at NONSTOP, a music festival in Meanjin/Brisbane.
Before all of that takes place, we wanted to learn what the fellows hope to gain from Dots+Loops’ unique creative and professional development opportunity. So we asked them.
Here are the responses from all four fellows — cellist Ceridwen McCooey, guitarist Vincent Choy, and saxophonists Paige Gullifer (pictured above) and Dale Schlaphoff.
Vincent Choy
I remember when I started music lessons in primary school, I was taught how to distinguish music by the names of composers: Bach is baroque, Debussy is impressionism, and Coltrane is jazz. But the more I study jazz at WAAPA, the less I perceive music as colonies of genres, of which their citizens feel superior about the type of music they love. Duke Ellington said “There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind.” This really resonates with my view towards music.
Being a Dots+Loops Performance Fellow means embracing different origins of music, being an open-minded musician, and willing to take artistic risks. I seldom collaborate with musicians outside the jazz circle. Dots+Loops provides a great opportunity for me to expand my artistic practices, and foster my growth of becoming an all-round musician. This will be challenging, but I am sure that it will be rewarding.
Ceridwen McCooey
I’m really excited about being a Dots+Loops Performance Fellow! I’m looking forward to meeting musicians from other states of the country. I’m excited to discover new live performers and composers I didn’t already know about. I’m also really keen to collaborate with other musicians, and learn about how they make their music.
Personally, I’m attempting to straddle the world of composition and performance, and so I’m really excited to be able to focus on performance for the week whilst also being around other creatives and observing their practice. The workshops coming up look educational and useful, and seem to cover things that one would otherwise have to self-learn. It’s lovely to be able to have help from experts.
Generally speaking, I think there is a lot to learn from being around other musicians for an intensive period. There are the actual structured workshops, but there are also the ‘accidental’ conversations that happen outside the classroom, and these are invaluable.
I’m so excited to hear all the performances at NONSTOP festival!
Dale Schlaphoff
I am super gratified to have been selected as one of this year’s performance fellows with Dots+Loops! The fellowship is an incredibly exciting opportunity for me to enter into an environment so disparate from that of classical institutions. Coming from a classical conservatorium background myself, the chance to perform and create in a contemporary setting, more in line with my current interests and goals, is invigorating!
Similarly, much of my practice has often struggled with balancing the relationship between my primary compositional identity and that of my often-secondary new music performance persona. With an array of colleagues and mentors from such disperse backgrounds to connect with, I’m hoping to interrogate this aspect of my practice further throughout the program. Increasingly, much of my art-making and musicking continue to rely on both identities, and thus the Dots+Loops fellowship program provides a potentially highly validating experience for me to engage with.
Already in the lead-up to this fellowship, Dots+Loops have made me feel incredibly well supported by the Australian new music scene. The program is an awesome initiative that brings together a diverse combination of different personalities, practices, perspectives, and backgrounds. It is this community of unique new music individuals that I am most excited about connecting with and creating amongst.
More and more, my interests, voice, and sound yearn to immerse myself deeper into this contemporary, community-driven scene, and the Dots+Loops fellowship is an amazing opportunity to do so.
Paige Gullifer
It is such a privilege to be named a Dots+Loops Performance Fellow this year. I’ve always admired the innovation and diversity Dots+Loops brings to Australia’s music scene, and can’t wait to be part of their NONSTOP festival this year!
I’m certain the fellowship will open my eyes to what live performance has the potential to be, and I’m excited to leap out of my comfort zone as a largely classically trained musician. Above all, these opportunities are about getting to make music, and what could be better than getting to do that alongside an inspiring group of fellows and artists?
I can’t wait to see what ideas and music the other fellows and I develop across the week, and Dots+Loops NONSTOP features an incredible lineup of artists — just being surrounded by so much passion for new music, and an array of music you won’t find anywhere else, is so exciting.
These fellows will take part in the Dots+Loops Fellowship Residency Week from 13-18 December. NONSTOP is a 7-hour music festival at The Tivoli, 18 December. Visit the Dots+Loops website for more information and to book.
Images supplied. Paige captured by Oliver Quirk.
