Speak Percussion

Speak Percussion has shaped the sound of 21st century Australian percussion music through the creation and presentation of ambitious arts projects. Internationally recognised as a leader in the fields of experimental and contemporary classical music, Speak is constantly seeking to redefine the potential of percussion.

Ranging from solo concerts to massed sound events, Speak Percussion’s “breathtakingly impressive” (The West Australian) work is presented throughout the world in concert halls, theatres, galleries and site-specific locations.
Speak Percussion has been responsible for over 130 commissions and premieres of new percussion works, contributing new 21st Century masterworks to the global percussion repertoire.

“virtuosic and adventurous”
New York Times

Touring various projects in the coming seasons (selection below).

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POLAR FORCE 


Imagine being on the Antarctic ice shelf, housed inside a temporary shelter where you are intimately observing sound research using the raw polar energies collected from outside.

In an investigation of extreme wind and ice, pristine Antarctic field recordings combine with live industrial percussion to envelope the audience in a visceral soundscape and performance environment.

New high fidelity field recordings including a 100 knot blizzard,sea ice and glaciers made in the Australian Antarctic Territory are augmented by custom built musical instruments made to manipulate pressurised air, water and ice.

Polar Force references climate change and global geopolitical tension including the exploration and exploitation of frontier territories. It is a sophisticated example of hyperrealism where recorded sound is choreographed with musical performance.

BEFORE NIGHTFALL

Before Nightfall is a series of new artistic encounters between Speak Percussion and invited guest artists. Each guest artist works with Speak artists intensively across one day, experimenting with a range of musical concepts. In the evening, these investigations culminate in an intimate live performance. 

MARCH STATIC

March Static is a contemporary marching work for massed wind, drum and percussion players by internationally acclaimed composer Thomas Meadowcroft (AU/DE), performed by an ensemble of local student and volunteer players from across the community and directed by new music luminaries Speak Percussion.

Ethereal chords wash gently over the audience, interrupted by fragments of marching percussion motifs.

The project reimagines the concept of a marching band, celebrating community and peace over representations of military might.

March Static is a site-specific work which can be performed indoors or outdoors, adapting to the unique architectural or environmental features of each performance location. Designed to activate a main street or site of community significance, March Static is a great festival work. Speak will work directly with the performers to create bespoke choreography, moving the performers around the audience or allowing the audience to move amongst the players to create unique listening experiences.

Thomas Meadowcroft / Composer (Berlin)

Hand to Earth

Hand to Earth expresses something of the here and now in music, and represents contemporary Australia at its best: sophisticated, inclusive, diverse, and forward looking.

Hand to Earth was developed during an Australia Art Orchestra residency in the remote highlands of Tasmania.

Yolgnu songman, Daniel Wilfred, and Korean vocalist, Sunny Kim, formed an effortless rapport that spans continents and cultures and yet expresses a deeply human commonality. Their vocal approaches are melded into the electronic atmospheres created by trumpeter and composer, Peter Knight, who draws on the minimalism of Brian Eno and Jon Hassell to create a bed for these beautifully contrasting voices.

Daniel sings in traditional language, and is the keeper of ancient Yolgnu manikay (songs). His is the oldest continuously practised music tradition in the world. Sunny sings in English and Korean, and intones wordless gestures that invoke raw elemental forces. Together they sing of the stars, of fire, and of the cooling rain, against the sounds of Peter Knight’s trumpet and electronic crackles and Aviva Endean’s improvisations on her collection of clarinets and other resounding objects.

Hand to Earth is a call to open ears: eluding genre, traversing continents and fusing ancient and contemporary. At its heart are Yolŋu manikay (song cycles), a 40,000+ year-old oral tradition from South East Arnhem Land, northern Australia. These songs exist across vast time and space, to continuously make the continuous – known as raki, the spirit that pulls all together, all performers all listeners.

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︎︎︎︎ trailer

At the Core

Arditti Quartet & Kenta Kojiri
 

To be performed on a chamber music stage, the programme features Japanese dancer / choregrapher Kenta Kojiri and the works he created for two quartet pieces by
Wolfgang Rihm:
Geste zu Vedova (11‘)
String Quartet No.3 Im Innersten (30‘) (‘At the Core’)

Ideally, these pieces with dance form the second half of a chamber concert, which can be paired with works by the Japanese composers Nishimura and Hosokawa.

Creation note:

The shock of hearing this music, String Quartet No.3 Im Innersten for the first time and the title of "At the Core" captured the curiosity in the back corner of my mind. In our daily lives, we prioritize controlling our emotions in order to maintain order rather than exposing them to the world. If those unreleased emotions exist in our hearts... I want to tell people that it is beautiful to see human beings exposing their emotions through dance (music and their bodies), because in today's society, emotionless media such as social networking sites have become commonplace. In Geste zu Vedova, [Gesture to Vedova] composed in 2015, I teamed up with a programmer to conceive a choreographic idea by creating notations in a modern way, creating a material body itself, in contrast to Im Innersten.

- Kenta Kojiri

︎︎︎︎ Excerpt from the premiere in Japan 2019

^{︎ Satoshi Aoyagi}

LIOR

Singer / Songwriter


LIOR is one of Australia’s most successful singer-songwriters, renowned for his beautiful voice and songs that radiate truth and sincerity.

After bursting onto the Australian scene in 2005 with his stunning debut album Autumn Flow, subsequent albums, tours, accolades and projects have raised his profile to one of Australia’s most recognised and respected musicians on the independent scene.

Compassion

Compassion is a symphony of songs that unites the soulful power of Lior's voice with the radiance and drama of Nigel Westlake's orchestral style. It is based on seven ancient Hebrew and Arabic texts, each offering a perspective on the namegiving concept. The work achieves the seemingly impossible: a uniting of cultures in a joyful celebration of compassion and its ability to bring people together.


Commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and premiered at the Sydney Opera House in 2013, Compassion has since been performed with orchestras throughout Australia and in the USA.

Lior has now created with Westlake a chamber sized version which premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2018, offering the opportunity to take this enchanting work to a wide range of venues in collaboration with local chamber musicians.

︎  La Yuminu
︎ Avinu Malkeinu

︎ artist website

^{Lior and Compassion composer Nigel Westlake with Sydney Symphony Orchestra}