When
Sonorous IX –Thu 18th Jul 2024, 7:00 pm
Sonorous X – Thu 14th Nov 2024, 7:00 pm
Where
Primrose Potter Salon
Melbourne Recital Centre
31 Sturt St
Southbank VIC 3006
Cost
$50/40 Bean Bags (Full/Concession)
$37/30 Standard Seating (Full/Concession)
10% Discount for MESS Members
MESS is proud to announce this year’s program for our celebrated Sonorous Commission Series.
Approaching its tenth performance, Sonorous welcomes both the listener and performer to experience an expanded and inspiring universe of sound. Presenting synthesis as it should be heard – spatially manipulated, diffused and controlled across multiple channels, untethered to the limitations of stereo.
This year marks an exciting development in the commission series, as it is the first to be presented at the Melbourne Recital Centre. We look forward to hearing these four brand new and high-powered, octaphonic performances immersed within the Primrose Potter Salon.
Considering space as a fundamental compositional element, commissioned artists Joel Ma, Jannah Quill, Lauren Squire and Joel Stern will create an immersive electroacoustic performance, capturing the unrealised and extra-human potential of sound. During this process, they will work closely with the MESS Collection, having access to one of the most eclectic and historically significant collections of electronic instruments in the world. This opportunity to engage difficult to access instruments and be supported in the creation of long form work is unique in Australia and very rare worldwide.
Join us on July 18 and November 14 for this singular opportunity as these extraordinary artists push their work to new directions through the experimentation and manipulation of sound spatially across multiple channels, creating a truly immersive experience.
Sonorous IX: Joel Ma & Jannah Quill
July 18, 2024
Joel Ma
Producer, rapper, composer and multi-instrumentalist Joel Ma is recognised as a unique voice in the Australian music scene with a reputation for innovation and sonic experimentation. The past two decades has seen Ma work with a huge number of artists, writing, collaborating and producing with Birdz, Hermitude, Emma Donovan, Ecca Vandal, Tim Rogers, Parcyn Singh and Mindy Meng Wang. Awarded Music Victoria’s Producer of the Year Award in 2020 and named a Sydney Myer Fellow the following year, Joel Ma was invited to become the inaugural Artist in Residence for Gamelan DanAnda which resulted in the intercultural Balinese Melbourne project, Saundra Sound System.
Jannah Quill
Jannah Quill is a Naarm (Melbourne) based cross-disciplinary artist exploring the boundaries of electronic music production and performance through technological research and experimentation. She has an ongoing interest in the interplay between light and sound, with major presentations of audio visual works which use innovative A/V systems to invert conventional signal flows and sonify light. Her music production is a reflection of her varied experience across experimental music, sound design and contemporary club contexts, as well as her ongoing practice in modular and analogue synthesis; the latter of which has spurred research into relationships between generative synthesis, intuitive composition and feminine technological histories.
Sonorous X: Lauren Squire & Joel Stern
November 14, 2024
Lauren Squire
Lauren Squire is an electronic music producer, synthesist, DJ, audiovisual artist, and sound designer based in Naarm, Melbourne. Her practice focuses on experimental and ambient music, underground dance music, audiovisual installation art and the spaces where these disciplines intersect. As an artist, Lauren works with her partner Matthew Wilson in an audiovisual duo called OK EG. Together they create wholly immersive live sets, superbly textural, ambient techno that ensconces all listeners in reach. Also producing and DJing under the alias Zosia Kossak, she explores the relationship between the human voice and that of synthesisers whilst incorporating heavyweight bass and rhythm into the mix.
Joel Stern
Joel Stern is an artist, curator and researcher based in Naarm. He has been involved in experimental music and sonic art for more than two decades as a solo artist and in groups including Sky Needle, Abject Leader, and Soft Power. Alongside fellow collaborators Sean Dockray and James Parker, Joel is Co-Lead on the Machine Listening project, a platform for collaborative research and artistic experimentation, focusing on the political and aesthetic dimensions of the computation of sound and speech. Machine Listening emerged out of Eavesdropping, Stern’s previous work with James Parker, a multifaceted project addressing the capture and control of our sonic worlds alongside strategies of resistance. The project was staged at Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, and City Gallery, Wellington. Joel was also Director at Liquid Architecture 2012-2022, and is currently Research Fellow at School of Media and Communication, RMIT University.
