BY GABRIELLE CADENHEAD
We’d like to welcome Gabrielle in her first story as a CutCommon contributor!
Backstage Music is an initiative which began in Sydney in 2017 to present living music in living spaces.
With an emphasis on new music, curators Lamorna Nightingale and Elizabeth Jigalin pair an established artist with an emerging artist for each program.
Over three Thursdays this October, Backstage Music will present three concerts packed full of living music and musicians at The Newsagency in Annandale. Their first concert Radio Signals is coming up on October 17, and will feature composer Lewis Mosley as the early career artist.
Lewis’ creative practice falls somewhere between installation art and contemporary classical music. He studies composition at Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Damian Barbeler, and has composed music in the classical space (including a solo work for Ensemble Apex cellist James Morley), as well as crafting more interactive works. He also writes noise music and plays in multiple bands across Sydney.
His most recent work was an installation for 10 amplifiers, using feedback drones that were manipulated live. For Radio Signals, Lewis has composed new work Speaking Alone for two saxophones and amplifiers, which explores the idea of conversation within a closed system.
You draw on a wide range of musical influences, from contemporary classical to garage rock and noise music. What impact does such a diversity of styles have on your compositional process? Will the audience recognise elements of these influences when they hear your music?
I’ve always listened to and enjoyed heaps of music of different styles; and have been playing in bands since early high school, each of which have been in different styles.
I think the thing that draws me mostly to garage rock and noise in particular is the rawness of it, and that ability to communicate one idea as simply as possible, whether it’s three chords in an entire song or single drones for a few hours! […] Although there isn’t a total rock or noise aesthetic in my music, there are definitely still traces.
Your new work for Backstage Music’s Radio Signals, entitled Speaking Alone, is in part an exploration of space. What is the importance of space in this work? How do the performers interact with the space, and how will the audience experience it?
Space is not something I’ve fully explored before, so I wanted to take a closer look at it in this piece. [The space serves] to blur the lines between the saxophones and the amplifier system.
The amps I’ve used are placed in such a way that it becomes necessary for saxophonists Charlie Sundborn and Sam Weller to move around the space in order to play into certain amps at certain points.
Having a background playing in bands, I’ve always felt like I could run around the stage and jump into the crowd. I guess I just wanted some of that same freedom to come through in this piece as well.
What is the importance of a “closed system” to the conception and construction of this work? Why have you chosen to frame the music in this way?
Speaking Alone is a lot about conversations of all different kinds. I’ve often found in some conversations there’s a point where you can feel like you’re just going around and around and not getting anywhere, and the only thing that’s changing is you’re getting louder and more frustrated.
In this piece, though it isn’t a ‘closed system’ the whole way through, there does reach a point where everything that’s being said is repeated, only to get louder and louder and louder.
A lot of the gestures in the music work this way too, and I’ve tried to keep both saxophone parts quite similar to each other to keep this theme throughout.
This performance blends acoustic and electroacoustic sounds through the instrumentation of two saxophones and four amplifiers. Why did you choose this instrumentation, and what has been your experience working with saxophonists Charlie Sundborn and Sam Weller?
Recently I’ve been working with amplifiers a lot. The piece I composed before Speaking Alone was for 10 ‘solo’ amplifiers creating feedback drones that I then manipulated live. I really like how guitar amplifiers reproduce sound, so I wanted to keep on this idea for a little longer, but decided to steer away from the feedback drones and instead use live performers as the input source.
There are four amplifiers, and each amp has a delay on it, so as the saxophones explore the amps it’s almost as if there are six saxophone players instead of just two.
Charlie and Sam are both amazing players as well, and when I started writing the piece, I pretty much knew that they were the ones I wanted to play it. Charlie comes from a jazz background and Sam comes from a classical background, so they each give the music their own unique sound.
Both of them are really open to new music as well, so working with them has been a super open and enjoyable experience.
Why did you decide to compose this work for Backstage Music’s Radio Signals? In a program which features Stockhausen and Berio alongside living composers Cathy Milliken and Fiona Hill, what led you to craft Speaking Alone?
I’d already started working on the piece when I got involved with the concert, but it really seemed to fit in well with what was already on the bill. Stockhausen and Berio are classic composers when it comes to electroacoustic and spatialised music, and Fiona Hill and Cathy Milliken are such amazing contemporary composers that, more than anything, I’m just really honoured to be on the line-up! Under the umbrella of new music, I think we all work really differently too, so I’m really looking forward to hearing the diversity of our works.
What can the audience look forward to in your piece?
The amplifier system is one I’m pretty proud of, and the way the saxophones interact with it creates some really interesting textures. Charlie and Sam are just great players too, and I find watching them play is always super exciting. It does get really noisy in parts as well, which for me is always good fun.
Head to The Newsagency for Radio Signals at 7pm on October 17.
Shout Gabrielle a hot chocolate?
If you like, you can say thanks to Gabrielle for volunteering her time for Australian arts journalism. No amount too much or little 🙂
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