Sonorous IX: Joel Ma & Jannah Quill

A liberation of sonics from the shackles of stereo, Sonorous welcomes listeners to go beyond a traditional listening experience into an expanded universe of sound.

For its ninth instalment in its Sonorous series, MESS invites Joel Ma and Jannah Quill to engage with the limitless possibilities of the MESS collection. Commissioned to create an immersive multichannel electroacoustic performance, these two extraordinary artists push their work to new directions through the experimentation and manipulation of spatial sound across multiple channels.

Join us as they demonstrate the unrealised potential of sound and diffuse their brand-new works in glorious, octaphonic surround at the Primrose Potter Salon.

About the artists

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 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.