Two rather different takes on the piano duo and a very different side of German electronic master Marcus Schmickler on display here after he blasted a bright ray of noise in cahoots with Peter 'PITA' Rehberg for the PAN Festival in January. Here he returns alongside the master British pianist John Tilbury for a set of exacting stillness and subtle, shifting atmosphere.

Schmickler/Tilbury will perform alongside another duo making a welcome return to OTO. Tony Buck is regarded as one of Australia's most creative and adventurous exports, with vast experience across the globe he has been involved in a highly diverse array of projects but is probably best known around the world as a member of the trio The Necks. Magda Mayas is a Berlin based pianist who has concentrated her musical investigations on the piano's sonic possibilities, utilizing extended techniques, amplification and preparations as a process of abstraction, whilst focusing on the physicality of both internal and external parts of the piano.

JOHN TILBURY

British pianist John Tilbury is renowned for his remarkable touch and in constant demand as an interpreter of piano pieces by composers such as Morton Feldman and John Cage. He is also an incredible improvisor, most famously as a member of legendary british group AMM. During the 1960s, Tibury was closely associated with the composer Cornelius Cardew, whose music he has interpreted and recorded and a member of the Scratch Orchestra. His biography of Cardew, "Cornelius Cardew - A life unfinished" was published in 2008.

Tilbury has also recorded the works of Howard Skempton and John White, among many others, and has also performed adaptations of the radio plays of Samuel Beckett.

With guitarist AMM bandmate Keith Rowe's electroacoustic ensemble M.I.M.E.O., Tilbury recorded The Hands of Caravaggio, inspired by the painter's The Taking of Christ. In this live performance, twelve of the members of M.I.M.E.O. were positioned around the piano in a deliberate echo of Christ's Last Supper. The thirteenth M.I.M.E.O. member (Cor Fuhler) is credited with "inside piano" as he interacted and interfered with Tilbury's playing by manipulating and damping the instrument's strings, essentially doing piano preparation in real time. Critic Brian Olewnick describes the album as "A staggering achievement, one is tempted to call The Hands of Caravaggio the first great piano concerto of the 21st century."

Another notable recent recording of Tilbury's was Duos for Doris (like The Hands of Caravaggio also on Erstwhile Records), a collaboration with Keith Rowe. It is widely considered a landmark recording in the genre of electroacoustic improvisation.

MARCUS SCHMICKLER

While rooted in electronic music, Schmickler has a background in contemporary composition, having studied under the prominent Stockhausen collaborator Johannes Fritsch. Schmickler has created solo in a variety of different styles under the Wabi Sabi, Sator Rotas, and Param pseudonyms, as well as five techno-oriented CDs as Pluramon. In addition, he has long-standing collaborative projects, most notably with synth wiz Thomas Lehn, guitarist Keith Rowe, and pianist John Tilbury.

MAGDA MAYAS

Magda Mayas is a pianist and curator currently based in Berlin, Germany.

Mayas studied jazz and improvisation at Universität der Künste, Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2001 under Misha Mengelberg and completed a diploma at Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler under Georg Graewe in 2005.

During this time she began developing a specific set of techniques for inside- piano performance. Mayas has concentrated her musical investigations on the piano and its sonic possibilities, utilizing extended techniques, amplification and preparations as a process of abstraction, whilst focusing on the physicality of both internal and external parts of the piano. As a continuation of this research Mayas founded the festival Tasten-Berliner Klaviertage featuring contemporary and innovative approaches for the piano. (www.tasten.org)

Mayas performs internationally in a variety of roles as interpreter, solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers: in a duo with Tony Buck, in a Duo with Christine Sehnaoui, the Quartet Mayas/ Nutters/ Olsen/Galvez and as part of the Amsterdam based N-Collective.

Over the years Mayas has performed and toured in Europe, the USA, Australia and Lebanon with many leading figures in improvisation such as Andy Moore, Annette Krebs, Andrea Neumann, Axel Dörner, Michael Zerang, Johannes Bauer, Christoph Kurzmann, Thomas Lehn,Tristan Honsinger and Frank Gratkowski.

Buck/Mayas duo on Myspace
Magda Mayas website

TONY BUCK

Tony is regarded as one of Australia's most creative and adventurous exports, with vast experience across the globe. He has been involved in a highly diverse array of projects but is probably best known around the world as a member of the trio The Necks.

Following studies and early experience in Australia he spent time in Japan, where he formed PERIL with Otomo Yoshihide and Kato Hideki before relocating to Europe in the mid-nineties.

Some of the more high profile projects he has been involved with include the band Kletka Red, and touring and recording with, among others, The EX, The Exiles, and Corchestra, and involvement with most of the international improvisation and new music community and festivals.

He also creates video works for use with live music performance and has had pieces shown in Tokyo, Belfast, Berlin, New York and Sydney.

Current projects include long standing duos with Axel Doerner and Magda Mayas; New York based trios "Glacial" (with David Watson and Lee renaldo); "The Fell Clutch" (with Ned Rothenberg, Stomu Takeshi and Davd Tronzo); Berlin based "Heaven And" and "Asiplusband (with Asi Foecker and Andy Moor) and "project/TRANSMIT" (a guitar driven post-rock project based in Sydney and Berlin)

Project Transmit on myspace
The Necks website
Heavenand on Myspace

"....Improvised duos have lots of pitfalls to avoid: levels of alertness and/or talent can be too disparate, the speed of interaction may never sync, one person can try too hard to push the music in a certain direction, etc. But from the very first sounds they made and all the way to the final tones of the encore, these two were in perfect balance throughout. Tightly intertwined at the level of both the sonic material they pursued and the rhythmic pointillism with which they went about their journey, they stunned me into wide-eyed, open-mouthed attention." -Konfrontationen 2007 By Andrew Choate

“There’s just 36 minutes of music here, but every second of it is interesting. Pianist Mayas plays chunky, bell-like clusters that seem to observe a slowly evolving musical logic, neither obviously melodic nor conventionally harmonic. Drummer Buck for the most part works a parallel path, working busily but delicately round his kit. The opening minutes of “mercury machine” are full of light, skittering figures on the metal parts and big, damped clusters on the piano, some of them hand-damped inside the sound box, I suspect. It opens out thereafter, but there’s no attempt here to emulate the iconic piano and drum duos of the past – Coltrane and Ali, Taylor and Roach. Mayas and Buck create their own intimate languages and in the process deliver something very special and exactly the right length.” - THE WIRE Reviewed by Brian Morton April 09, Magda Mayas & Tony Buck / Gold