Bundanon again, with Ensemble Offspring

Terumi and I once again found ourselves at Bundanon. Our last time involved our participation in the Ten Trenches project and performance previously pictured on this blog here. This time we were here to lay the groundwork for just intonation works to be performed in Sept. by Ensemble Offspring, one of the leading New Music ensembles in Australia. Co- Director [w Claire Edwardes] Damien Ricketson and composer Amanda Cole will be the other two composers writing compositions with instruments the ensemble has commissioned. While we were there, Peter Garrett [former Arts Minister of Australia] stopped by as having a great interest in what happens there and Damien was able to entice him with our goings on while i accompanied him with the sounds of my vibraphone the ensemble will be using. [Photos by Terumi Narushima]

All the works will be based on a scale of mine i call Centaur.
which is a rare honor all its own. The instruments commissioned are 2 sets of 4 Clarini's [made by Linsey Pollack] to play subsets of the Centaur scale and a violin like instrument with 7 sympathetic strings called the Tarhui [made by Peter Biffin]. My 3 Octave Centaur Vibraphone will complete the tuned instruments. It is an exciting and wonderful opportunity to join with other talented composers exploring compositionally this newly created ensemble of instruments with its unique tuning.

Music for Trenches/in Progress

Ten Trenches

Digging for the Past, Unveiling the Future

A partnership between Bundanon Trust, University of Wollongong and Macquarie University
Funded by Arts NSW

Ten Trenches investigates the impact of sea-level rise on the Shoalhaven River in NSW. Auger holes and slot trenches reveal the flood behaviours of the river from up to 8,000 years ago – a period when the sea was about a metre higher than present – a level which is predicted to reoccur within the next 100 years.

Estuaries of the past; Centuries of dirt; We dive knife-in-mouth through tonnes of earth

A collaboration between a site-based artists and a river scientist: two brothers Michael and Tim Cohen. Ten Trenches is part of Bundanon Trust’s SITEWORKS project; a three year conversation between artists, scientists, historians, archaeologists and local people exploring the Bundanon site.

CREW: Tim Cohen, Michael Cohen, Sydney Bouhaniche, Oscar Garratt, Kraig Grady, Steph Kemode, Cecil McLeod, Katia Molino, Terumi Narushima, Brent Peterson, Craig Walsh.

UPDATE

By Day Two the crew of Ten Trenches were already 27 metres down, drilling through 15 metres of beautiful soft river sand to reach a particular time period known as Pleistocene, which dates from 10,000 years and older. The crew have discovered traces of an extinct species of tree.

On Day Three the seven-tonne excavator arrived and the digging of the slot trenches begun. To date, four trenches have been dug, positioned throughout the paddocks at Bundanon.