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.
Mindy Meng Wang and Katie Yap come from very different musical worlds, but have shared heritage. It is this that they explored in the premiere of their piece, Migrant Swift. A 13-minute fully improvised work, it drew on the imagery of its direct inspiration, Judith Wright's poem of the same name. However, it delved much deeper, musing on the daring of all migrants, human and animal, and what it means to leave your home and cross seas for another. Migrant Swift was developed for Katie's Freedman Fellowship project, which she called Multitudes. This piece in particular explored her mixed Chinese and Australian heritage, something she did for the first time through her music. With Katie's viola in deep scordatura, the resonance from the two instruments was tremendous, and a true exchange of musical languages, with the instruments twining around each other, only to splash into searingly bright gestures. The middle section took them out of their usual pitched world, with each performer exploring the extremities of their instruments, Mindy taking out a bow to play her guzheng, and Katie playing so high that the only sound was of the movement of her bow against the shortened string. The final section brought together two tunes - Yanzi (Sparrow), a traditional Chinese folk song, and a medieval Christmas carol. Uncannily alike, it left us with a sense of risk taken, and a quiet hope.