BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
The Queensland Symphony Orchestra today announces the QSOCurrent festival – and we’re super excited. Moving away from tradition and convention, the four-concert fest crosses the boundaries of genre as it brings together young musicians, new Australian composition, and beatboxing.
Opening the evening series is contemporary music ensemble Kupka’s Piano, which will perform its show Things are Becoming New in the State Library of Queensland on April 29. The group of emerging musos is used to playing sell-out gigs, and this one is bound to follow suit. Expect Phillipe Hurel’s 1999 exploration of grief in his Tombeau in Memoriam Gerard Grisey, along with Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise – nearly 200 pages of abstract shapes known as the ‘score’ brought to life by a six-piece. The title work Things Are Becoming New was written by emerging composer Samuel Smith.
Straight after Kupka’s, soak up some more sounds in the library with saxophonist Rafael Karlen’s new work While We Forget, which was commissioned for this festival. The world premiere show also features pianist Steve Newcomb and the QSOCurrent Chamber Orchestra as it plays jazz-influenced music into the dark of night. Rafael, a Brisbane-based muso and composer, took out the 2011 Lord Mayor’s Fellowship for Young and Emerging Artists from the Brisbane City Council and travelled to Europe to study with some of the best. Now he directs the Queensland Youth Orchestra Big Band.
Get as much sleep as possible before you do it all again on April 30 – the headline show will take place in the Powerhouse Theatre as the QSO teams up with Tom Thum in Prints of the Pigeons. This marks a world premiere from Gordon Hamilton, whose music combines the fine sounds of the symphony orchestra with the delicate timbres of…beatboxing? That’s right. Tom is a young beatboxing legend and the QSOCurrent’s 2016 Artist-in-Residence.
Stay on at the theatre for the QSO and Sampology – another world premiere featuring young audio-visual talent Sam Poggioli (Sampology). The producer has toured the world and collaborated with artists from Summer Heights High’s Chris Liley to South Africa’s Spoek Mathambo. In this gig, he’ll present African and Latin percussion layered with birdsongs and orchestral arrangements from Gordon Hamilton.
Also on April 30 is a series of free pop-up gigs, starting with the boundary crossing duo of composers Ben Heim and Connor D’Netto, known together as Argo. More on these pop-ups to come.
So – are you hungry yet?
Ok, we’ll give you a taste. Here’s the QSO with Tom Thum in two free tracks released today.
Check in with us in the coming weeks for CutCommon’s major coverage of the festival, which supports new music and emerging artists in Australia. You can browse the full QSOCurrent program right here.
