NOMINATION: Performance of the Year - Jazz / Improvised Music
NOMINATION: Performance of the Year - Jazz / Improvised Music
For the performance of a single Australian work, showcasing the performer(s)’ success in improvisatory creation or collaboration. This may entail entirely improvised work or significant improvisatory input such as solo passages.
A work is defined as a single complete musical composition, or expression. This includes music with movements or sub-works (i.e. song cycles), installations, and real-time compositions (improvised music).
If you believe your performance to be nominated in the wrong category or the details of your nomination to be incorrect, please contact the AMC via email at awards@australianmusiccentre.com.au before proceeding with the nomination.
Ligeti's Goat, composed by Martin Kay, is interesting on many fronts. It sets out to create a tightly knit structure from which improvisation emerges. The material of the structures is based on a tone row by Messiaen. The opening states a lopsided (goatly) gait with a 7:4:3 polyrhythm. Each section, electing vastly different characters, features each instrumentalist in turn, through solo cello punctuated by sound, a riff which grinds like the goat eating carrots, a reggae section with atonal strut, and finally a metal inspired truncation of the opening riff, an apocalyptic stance. What is interesting is the cohesiveness of the free improvisational and the composed materials, with uncanny emergences blurring compositional frames and improvised statements. Ensemble Sooon sits in the third stream tradition, as a nexus point melding individual voices from diverse backgrounds. With Ligetis Goat, there is great care to create a composition where each voice, with due consideration, may contribute to the fabric of the composition itself, bringing to life a taut structured frame. Whereas the notational logic draws on contemporary classical and popular forms, the ethos of spontaneous composition owes a debt to the African diaspora exemplified by Ellington and Mingus, foregrounding the individual voice within a collective notion. All knitted together by an amusing story about a day in the life of a goat, which creates a surprising accessibility for an audience. Ligetis Goat represents an original Australian voice forged through years of experimentation.