Decibel CV (as of July 2010) Download it here

• 3 full solo concerts to date, Tape It!  and they Sydney Liquid Architecture 2010 concert recorded by the ABC Classic FM.
• Tour to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra in 2010 (Australia Council Funded)
• 2 live to air, ABC FM, including interviews with director, Cat Hope in Perth and Sydney.
• Nominated in top 5 concerts of 2009 by Jason Kenny in Drum Media magazine.
• Featured at the Createworld Apple Mac conference, 2009.
• 8 composer commissions to date ( including Vickery, Burt, Thorne, Hope, Rushford, )
• ECU research grant to record an album of American composer Alvin Lucier’s work.

PRESS QUOTES

“Steeped in the form and ritual of classical music, Decibel certainly displayed its share of edge and attitude.” Adam Trainer, Drum Media, November 2

“A completely wonderful immersive evening from Decibel, who are filling a vital niche in the Perth music scene” Rosalind Appleby, The West Australian Newspaper, November 2009.

“Decibel is not about defining or demagogically fixing a unified approach to sound, music, playback and performance. It remains an open project, an exploration. Hope and her peers continue to argue that noise art, concrete approaches to sound and to the sample, together with instrumental composition, graphic scores and rules-based ideas, are not incompatible.” Jonathan W Marshall, Realtime Magazine, December 2009.

 “An incredible combination of great instrumental performers and intuitive electronic musicians.” Ben Hamblin, Resonate Magazine, September 2009.

MEMBER BIOGRAPHIES

Cat Hope – Musical Director, Flute, electronics

Hope is an accomplished composer, sound artist, performer, and songwriter and noise artist whose practice is an interdisciplinary one that crosses over into video and installation. Her work has taken her on numerous tours around Australia, the USA, Japan and Europe, and her music recordings are distributed and published worldwide. She has written soundscapes for dance and theatre companies as well as completed commissions to write music for film (winning the Pandora’s Box Film Festival Best Score award in 2000) and pure music works.
Cat is an active researcher and has conducted extensive funded research into communication technologies, audio recording in forensics, noise notation and surveillance techniques for use in performance, and maintains an active interest in challenging the relationship of image and sound. She is part of the sound art research collective Metaphonica, (http://www.metaphonica.com – currently exhibiting as part of BEAP 2007) and curates new music events Sound Spectrum and the Guerilla Sessions. She runs a music label and production company, Bloodstar. (http://www.bloodstarmusic.com) and is the founder of the Totally Huge New Music Festival Conference and editor of the associated proceedings, Sound Scripts.
Cat lectures at WAAPA, ECU in music technology, 20th century music history and composition and continues her work as a composer and performer. She is featured in an upcoming book on Australian Women Composers written by Rosalind Appleby.

Lindsay Vickery  – saxaphone, clarinet, compostion, electronics

Vickery is an active as a composer and performer across Europe, the USA and Asia.  He is also a highly regarded performer on reed instruments and electronics, touring as a soloist and with ensembles in many parts of the world. He was a founding member of Alea New Music Ensemble (1987-92), Magnetic Pig (1992-), GRIT (2001-), US-based multimedia group SQUINT (2002-) and most recently HEDKIKR (2002-). He has been a visiting artist at STEIM (NLD), HarvestWorks (NY), the MATA festival (NY), CEMI (U of NorthernTexas), University of Illinois, Kyoto Seika University, San Diego State University, Audio Art Festival (Krakow), the DC International Dance and Improv Festival and RPI (Troy). Projects for 2004-5 include the presentation of LASALLE-SIA college of the arts’ inaugural New Directions Music Festival, performance of a number of new works and presentations in Beijing and Jena (Germany) and a Retrospective concert in Perth (Australia).
He is also known for his composition and performance with interactive electronics – particularly the MIBURI wireless MIDI Jump suit – including [de]CODE me (Sydney Fringe 1998); 5 over 3 (PICA, 1998)  and your sky (REV01 Brisbane PowerHouse 2001, Totally Huge Festival 2001); InterXection (Bienialle of Electronic Art Perth 2002 and DC Dance and Improv Festival 2002). He Lectures in music at WAAPA, ECU.

Stuart James – piano, percussion, composition, electronics.

Stuart is widely considered to be Perth’s main authority on the interactive programming language, MaxMSP, which he teaches at WAAPA in the Music Technology course there. Stuart has a Masters in Creative Arts involving research into correlations between sound and video using methodologies relating to Wave Terrain Synthesis. Stuarts more recent compositions and performances have also stemmed from this research and also other areas including granular and frequency domain synthesis. He has performed in a number of new music ensembles, most recently in the Cloud Orchestra, which performed a concert of Lindsay Vickery’s works at Scale Variable in June 2008. Stuart has also had commissions from Tetrafide Percussion, the ABC, and has had performances of his work by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, WASO New Music Ensemble, and Michael Kieran Harvey.
As a performer he has been featured in Silky Krusher and the Sex, Jonathan Mustards ensembles, and a range of self produced concerts of his own works and piano performances.

Tristen Parr – Violoncello

Tristen Parr has had a long affinity with the cello. Commencing lessons at a young age and continuing through his schooling life to commence and complete studies in classical music performance at the W.A Academy of Performing Arts.

As a cellist Tristen has recorded for the ABC, premiering new works of young Western Australian composers. At present he is a core member of the Perth music scene as a live performer, string arranger studio musician composer/collaborator and teacher.   Tristen is a member and creative partner of two prominent Perth groups; Schvendes, who have just released debut album Sweet Talk Your Enemies and Fall Electric whose debut album Measure and Step will be out later this year.  This has seen Tristen receive a nomination for Best Instrumentalist in the W. A Music Industry Awards in 05 and receiver of the award in 06, 07 and 08. Outside of these main projects Tristen has been involved in writing and performing music for dance, film, theatre and performance art. Recent composition and performance engagements include Get Yourself Some Art (dance) and Gertrude The Cry at the Blue Room and Deathtrap (theatre) at PICA.

Aaron Wyatt – Violin/viola

Aaron is an accomplished violist who appears regularly with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. While classically trained, he maintains an avid interest in other genres and greatly enjoys being involved in new music projects. While a student, he played with the Döggöx Art Orchestra, an eighteen piece jazz/funk ensemble that showcased new works written by some of its members. He also directed the Resonator Quartet in a performance of
Michelle Van der Aa’s Quadrivial for the 2008 Totally Huge New Music Festival. More recently he played for the premier of local composer Chris De Groot’s new work Ménilmontant – music for the 1927 silent film by Dmitri Kirsanoff – and looks forward to continuing to support the work of local, Australian composers.

Dr. Malcolm Riddoch – electronics, percussion

Malcolm has been actively involved in electronic music and new media artists since 1990 and is currently lecturing in Music Technology at WAAPA, Edith Cowan University and also works in the multimedia industry specializing in interactivity for the internet as well as digital audio production.
He has created soundtracks for a range of projects, including the BRUN: RUSSIAN SPACE SHUTTLE exhibition in Sydney, ANAMPRPHOSIS Butterfly exhibition at Perth Zoo and a series of performances as ENERGIA; most recently DEMOLITION SEQUENCE at the Alphabet City Artrage Bakery Program
He was an early member of Perth art noise group Thou Gideon where he plays industrial percussion. He is a skilled web master and is pleased to offer these skills to the DECIBEL project.

Rob Muir – Sound Design

Rob Muir has been working on the Perth new music scene since the early 1980’s. He creates sound installations (most recently a series of public artworks with sculptor Stuart Green) and consults on sonic environments for a variety of artist and commercial projects. He has collaborated on recordings and sound environments with Ross Bolleter (eg. The Night Moves on Little Feet (1999) but has also created a significant body of compositions, such as For example in New Teeth for the Mrs (2003), premiered at the Perth International Arts festival that year, that investigates the use of archival recordings in different physical spaces. In 2002 he collaborated with Alex Hayes on a work entitled Project 44, temporarily installed at Mount Magnet, WA. The piece featured 20 44-gallon drums fitted with speakers that resonated with a range of field recordings and sound art referring to the containers’ histories.