Jonty Coy - Tactus

NOMINATION: Performance of the Year - Notated Composition

NOMINATION: Performance of the Year - Notated Composition

For the performance of a single Australian work, showcasing the performer(s)’ success in revealing the nature and intention of a composition with clear notated instructions for the performer. Works with significant improvisatory aspects should instead be submitted for Performance of the Year: Jazz / Improvised Music. 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.

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Nominee

Jonty Coy

Nominee email

jonty.coy@hotmail.com

Title of the work

Tactus

Composer(s) of the work

Kate Milligan

Performance Date

19/4/2024

Venue

WA Museum Boola Bardip

Nominator Statement
Jonty Coy is one of Australias most exciting performers of historical flutes and as a bass singer. His brilliance does not manifest in the commonly understood definition of instrumental virtuosity. Rather, as a musician of historically informed practices, his virtuosity is quieter, and his mastery of his craft measured by the style and features of the Renaissance period (16th century). I am submitting this nomination for Jontys remarkable ability to bring these historical skills to a new composition, an unprecedented merging of renaissance and contemporary performance practices.

Jontys technical and interpretive mastery were on display in his performance of 'Tactus', an audio-visual work that he co-created with myself (Kate Milligan, composition/sound design) and Olivia Davies (video design), presented by Tura and the WA Museum Boola Bardip. His two-fold performance practice was evident in this 25-minute work for solo renaissance flute, film, and musique concrete, the latter for which I collected recordings of a vocal quartet in which he is the bass singer. This holistic approach to performance-making is a hallmark of both contemporary and historical stylestotal immersion in collaboration, and the breakdown of performing boundaries such that his vocal and instrumental practices are merged. Jonty executed a flawless performance of 'Tactus': X-Press magazine described it as a kind of magic.

Another remarkable element of this performance is Jontys command of the instrument itself, a flute that was discovered on a shipwreck on 2017, and is approximately 500 years old. The unique technical features of this flutepre-standardisation, making it unlike others from this periodmeans that Jonty is developing a totally new (albeit ancient!) performance practice, and breaking new ground with an instrument that poses extreme and unforeseen technical challenges. This innovation in performance practice was evident in 'Tactus', and should be considered internationally significant for both historical and contemporary music-making.

'Tactus' celebrates the many ways in which historical and contemporary performance practices are unitedby probing into the past and future respectively, in each direction the unknown, they seem to circle back in a shared ethos. Jontys performance of 'Tactus' was world-class and ground-breaking. I cannot overstate how worthy he is of this nomination for Performance of the Year.

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