Wednesday 21 October 2015, 8pm
Hypnotic melodic lines meet dusty, blurred digital powder. A frail crooning gently sweeps over simple, minimal piano notes. The meeting of Italian composer and performer Alessandro Bosetti (electronics, voice) and Australian pianist Chris Abrahams (The Necks) opens an enchanted chest of intimate and oblique sonic explorations that span both improvised fragments and original renditions of compositions like Steve Lacy's Esteem (with Bosetti lyrics) and Milton Nascimento's Bridges (Travessia).
Following the critically acclaimed debut We Who Had Left in 2012, their second album A Heart That Responds From Schooling was released in February by Unsounds.
Chris Abrahams was born in Oamaru, New Zealand but grew up in Sydney, Australia. He became very active in the Sydney jazz scene in the early eighties playing with modern jazz groups including Mark Simmonds' Freeboppers and The Keys Music Orchestra. With Lloyd Swanton he formed the 60's modern jazz-influenced The Benders in 1982. The band broke up in 1985 after having released three albums - E, False Laughter and Distance.
In 1984 Chris recorded and released his first solo piano album - Piano, followed in 1986 by Walk. In 1985 Chris became a founding member of the Sydney indie rock band The Sparklers. As a result of this, Chris began working regularly with the singer and songwriter Melanie Oxley. Chris collaborated with Melanie, writing songs and producing albums, throughout the nineties. There are five releases with her: Resisting Calm (1990), Welcome to Violet (1992), Coal (1994), Jerusalem Bay (1998) and Blood Oranges (2003).
Chris released a third solo piano album Glow in 2001. This was followed in 2003 by Streaming, and Thrown in 2004. Chris has collaborated, in both recording and performance, with many contemporary improvising musicians including Burkhard Beins, Mike Cooper and Anthony Pateras. He performs regularly in the improvising music scenes both in Australia and Europe.
Alessandro Bosetti (Milano, Italy, 1973) is a composer, performer and sound artist currently based in Marseille. Most of his works delve on musicality of spoken language and sonorous aspects of verbal communication. He utilises misunderstandings, translations and interviews as compositional tools.
Bosetti has presented his work at venues and festival like like GRM/Presences Electroniques festival in Paris, Liquid Architecture Melbourne and Sydney, Roulette in NYC, The Stone in NYC and Cafe OTO in London among countless other all over Europe, Asia and the United States.
One of the most innovative radio artists of his generation he created a vast body of work of hybrid, award winning, text-sound and radio compositions for the main Radio and Electro Acoustic Music studios in Europe, most notably for the historical WDR's Studio Akustische Kunst in Cologne and Deutschland Radio Kultur in Berlin.
Most recently he was awarded the Phonurgia Nova prize 2012 for his composition "636Åç (RTBF 2010) and the IDAF prize 2013 for his performance "Mask Mirror" an instrument and software that reorganizes speech for musical purposes enacting an electronic ventriloquism.
As a concert composer he has been writing for ensembles and as the Neuevocalsolisten Stuttgart, the Eklekto/Centre International de Percussions in Geneva, Kammerensemble Neue Musik and Die Maulwerker in Berlin and the Janacek Opera house in Brno.
He plays regularly with his ensembles Trophies with drummer Tony Buck and fretless guitarist Kenta Nagai and in duo with pianist Chris Abrahams (The Necks).
Upcoming pubblications include a DVD collection of recent video work on the Korean imprint The Manual and a 4 CD's retrospective collection of radio works on Monotype records.
