Laurie Anderson: Duet for violin and doorjamb (1976)

The violin has been a key part of Laurie Anderson’s career as a composer and performance artist. Duet for violin and doorjamb is an early work that exemplifies Andersons wit and creative approach to technology. Pick up microphones are attached to the doorjamb that the performer is encouraged to ‘run into’ with the bow. The electric violin is played back though a speaker in the room on the other side of the door, and can only be heard clearly when the performer swingsopens the door with their foot.

American artist Laurie Anderson (b 1947) is known primarily for her multimedia presentations, but she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s and became widely known outside the art world in 1981 when her single O Superman reached number two on the UK pop charts. As a composer, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme. She has created pieces for National Public Radio, The BBC, and Expo ‘92 in Seville.

[image: Laurie Anderson performing Duet for violin and doorjamb in 1977].

Lindsay Vickery: Antibody (2009) World Premiere/Decibel commission.

Antibody explores a formal structure based on biological principles of mutation. Five musical cells, heard in their entirety at the beginning of the piece, are subjected to two layers of increasing “mutation” through the processes of deletion, duplication, inversion, insertion and translocation. In the first layer the score, read from laptop, is gradually reassembled, transforming the five cells into hybrid arrangements. The live performances of the five musicians are transformed electronically, employing analogous processes of mutation to create a second layer. 

Western Australian composer and performer Lindsay Vickery (b1965) has created a consistently innovative body of work, notably drawing on non-linear formal structures, interactive music and improvisation. As a performer he has played an important role in the Australian New Music scene as a founding member of Alea, Magnetic Pig, SQUINT and HEDKIKR and now Decibel. He has had significant collaborations with The California Ear Unit (USA), the MATA Ensemble (NYC), Scintilla Divina Ensemble (GER), Cat Hope, Jon Rose, Clocked Out, skadada and The Tissue Culture and Art group, performing at the Shanghai, Perth, Adelaide and Sydney International Arts Festivals, as well as Music at the Anthology (NYC), NWEAMO (Portland and San Diego) and the LA County Museum of the Arts Music series.

Rainer Linz: Walk on Parts (1980)

Walk On Parts is a work for multiple reeds where parts can be chosen to be played in different orders, instruments orgroups. DECIBEL have created ensemble parts using the sampling capability of the computer program Max5, which prerecords the clarinets in different parts of the performance space, and plays them back in others, allocating the computer scored parts as part of the live performance. 

Melbourne composer and sound artist Rainer Linz has a long involvement in radio, music theatre, instrumental and electronic music. Together with Richard Vella, Linz founded the NMA (New Music Articles) in 1982 with the aim of encouraging musicians, composers and sound artists to write about their work as a way of informing the general public, and creating wider musical debate. His recent collaborative work includes the stage piece Banalities for the Perfect House and the interactive gallery installation infonoise. New Listener is a series of computer programs where a music or sound composition can be adjusted to the listener’s preference. Linz was a recipient of the Australia Council New Media Arts Fellowship for 2002/3.

Ros Bandt: Four + Five (1979)

Four + Five is a piece for any instruments and uses the dynamic of the pulse and its relationship to rhythm to push the work forwards. The rhythmic patterns may be retraced and repeated, and the group decides the pitches beforehand. The work becomes quite complex as rhythmic patterns come up against each other and the performers control the dynamic and form. DECIBEL is playing this work at the same tempo as a human heartbeat.

Ros Bandt is a composer performer and sound artist based in Melbourne who is passionate about combining ancient and modern sonic practices. Her sound research has included building a medieval Pythagorean recorder and she directs the Australian sound design project on line at the Australian centre, The University of Melbourne. She was the first woman to be awarded the Don Banks Composers Award in 1990, and has won many international awards for installation, radio art and composition. Her compositions reflect different integrations of acoustic, live electronics and studio manipulation.

Cat Hope: Abe Sada: Sada Abe 1936 (2006)

This is a work that encourages embodied listening, where musical works are experienced by more of the body than just theears, and can only be experienced in live situations. The Abe Sada project is a series of works for multiple bass instruments in different locations and situations, published together in the Abe Sada Songbook Vol1. Abe Sada: Sada Abe 1936 is forperformer’s under raked seating, and uses bass frequencies to vibrate the seating structure and enable the audience to ‘listen’ to the music physically through the structure.

Cat Hope (b1966) is an accomplished composer, sound artist, performer, songwriter and noise artist whose practice is an interdisciplinary one that often crosses over into video and installation. 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 a classically trained flautist, self taught vocalist and experimental bassist who plays as a soloist and as part of small ensembles, such as Gata Negra, Lux Mammoth and Abe Sada. She tours often and her work is published worldwide. She is a lecturer in Composition and Music Technology at WAAPA, ECU.

Alvin Lucier: Still And Moving Lines Of Silence In Families Of Hyperbolas (1972)

Part 3, No. 12 Violin and 2 sine tone generators.

Part 1, No. 3 Flute and 2 sine tone generators.

Still And Moving Lines Of Silence In Families Of Hyperbolas is a series of works for instruments and sine tine generators. They are influenced by science and explore the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media. The instrumentalist plays against the two tone generators, which are set to specific frequencies not found on the tempered scale. The slightest movement of the listener’s body will change the way the sound is perceived. Lucier’s work is musically rich while simultaneously exploring the many acoustic phenomena and auditory perception.

Alvin Lucier (USA b1931) is one of the most innovative composers of his time, a pioneer and central figure in the world of experimental and electronic composition and performance. In conjunction with Robert Ashley, David Berhman, Gordon Mumma and others, Lucier helped form the Sonic Arts Union in 1966, one of the key experimental composition and performance groups of the late twentieth Century. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space.

Pauline Oliveros: Antiphonal Meditation (1979)

Antiphonal Meditation is an example of Oliveros’ Deep Listening idea, where she attempts to transmit the way she experiences sound, its sensual nature and the power of its release and change to the audience. Oliveros describes Deep Listening as “listening in every possible way to ever think possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of ones own thoughts as well as musical sounds” (Oliveros, 1990). Antiphonal Meditation is a piece that asks two groups of musicians to respond to each other in such a way as they will eventually intertwine, both musically and physically.

American composer Pauline Oliveros (b 1932) is an accordionist and composer who was a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music. Oliveros was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She has taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros has written books, formulated new music theories and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of “Deep Listening” and “sonic awareness”.

John Cage: Cartridge Music (1960)

Cartridge Music is an important piece in the history of electronic music as it is one of the first to deconstruct the turntable and use it as the only musical instrument. It employs a composition technique that is indeterminate, as the score consists of a number of transparent sheets that contain points, circles, a cured line and a series of circles marked with a stopwatch. These sheets are placed over each other and read in performance to instruct the performers when to ‘play’ the cartridges which may be filled with objects other than a stylus needle, or change their volume and tone, or make use of other objects. Cage also used this score to organise some of his public speeches. For Decibel’s version of Cartridge Music, the body is the surface played by the cartridges, becoming an integral part of the instrument.

John Cage (1912 –1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker, and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war  composers of the 20th century. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4!33″, the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of chancecontrolled music, which he started composing in 1951.

The Velvet Underground: The Gift (1968)

 The Gift appears on White Light/White Heat, the second Velvet Underground album, and features John Cale reading a short story written by Lou Reed when he was a college student. The narrative focuses on college love, poverty, sexual promiscuity and ends in decapitation. On the original release, this track was created with all the spoken word in one channel of a stereo mix, and the ‘band’ in the other, making use of an instrumental track that was originally developed from live band jams during the brief time in which Lou Reed was ill and unable to perform with the band. In the spirit of the original jam, DECIBEL recreates this track with a similar spirit and John Cale’s voice present in his original glory.

The Velvet Underground was an American experimental rock band formed in New York City, New York. First active from 1965 to 1973, The Velvet Underground first gained a degree of fame and notoriety in New York City in 1966 when they were selected as the house band for Andy Warhol’s Factory and his Exploding Plastic Inevitable events. The band’s music and lyrics challenged conventional societal standards of the time, and broke ground for other musicians to do the same. The band favored experimentation, and also introduced a nihilistic outlook through some of their music. Their outsider attitude and experimentation has since been cited as pivotal to the rise of punk rock and, later, alternative rock. Members and collaborators include John Cale, Lou Reed, Nico, Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison.