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about
stevie wishart
__UK / Australia
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As a composer and performer on violin, hurdy-gurdy, voice and electronics,
Wishart's music explores medieval and contemporary extremes. Moving
between Austraila and Europe, her work also draws on these contrasting
landscapes and histories (bush/urban). Historical research and development
of her ensemble Sinfonye's
repertories (c1000 to 1400) have led to a discovery of female poet-composers
and music written for female voices and been the inspiration for
eight CDs of medieval love lyrics and related instrumental music,
and her ongoing series of the Complete Songs of Hildegard
of Bingen with a m utimedia program of Hildegard's
music and visions currently being revised following Sinfonye's
sell-out performances in the Adelaide festival and London's Queen
Elizabeth Hall.
Her most recent medieval project is the CD Plus RED
IRIS (Glossa Nouvelle Vision), and features the most virtuosic
instrumental music of the time in the form of the "istampite"
from 14th century Italy. It creates a medieval dreamscape effectively
mixing fresco images, audio fragments (bells, birds and Vespas)
and quicktime video. RED
IRIS LIVE is a "docuconcert" which brings together medieval
music and data and slide projection, sound-design and movement
in a unique, new media presentation. Together with a keen involvement
in improvised and electronic music, this has formed a compositional
style which frequently combines various forms of musical notation
and recorded sound. In live performance, composed and improvised
processes overlap in a collision of medieval and contemporary
sound-worlds.
During the 1990s composition commissions have included music to
Holy jig 'n caper for the choreographer Yolande Snaith
as part of the Ballroom Blitz series at the South Bank, London
and the Greenwich Dance Festival, UK. With members of the
Australian group Machine
for Making Sense, founded 1990, she also worked on the sound
and live improvisation for Tess De Quincey's Body Weather
Project at Lake Mungo and more recently worked in and around
Tibooburra on the Inland Sea project with the movement artist
Nikki Heywood and others which led to the radio composition
"West of West" with Jim Denley for The Listening
Room (ABC). In 1998 she completed an extended work SECRET
SPACES for the Oxford Girls' Choir which moves between
"songs" and more experimental forms of vocalisation. Recent commissions
with Machine
for Making Sense have included two multistaged events -
FESTA, which presented solo and group performances moving
between the confined studio spaces and vast foyers of the ABC Radio
building in Ultimo, Sydney, and SONIC HIEROGLYPHS which was
commissioned to celebrate the opening of the new Studio concert
hall of the Sydney Opera House and included solos performed
up in the outside "sails" of the SOH and projected accross
the harbour, with outside projections and an interactive foyer event.
Solo sound projects include the sound installation UT with
the artist Joan Grounds and was first shown at the Art
Gallery of NSW in January/Febuary 1998. As an interactive installation
which can also be presented as a live performance, UT plays
with juxtaposing three spaces: the medieval (c. 1000), the contemporary
(c. 2000) and the virtual ( ).
Wishart is currently working with the Belgian experimental theatre
group MALPERTUIS, on a new multimedia production of SLOW
LOVE by the Australian writer Richard Murphet (directed
by Boris Kelly, produced by Sam Bogaerts). Her music includes remixes
of songs from her latest CD Surface (AZERUZ), electronic
synthesis based on feedback loops, and site-specific soundscapes
based on the prerecorded voice-overs and found dialogues (radio,
film, TV ads) which is used instead of conventional live dialogue.
Ongoing projects for 2000 include UT, which is being developed
as part of a residency with STEIM and MONTEVIDEO
in Amsterdam for September 2000, a commission hosted by the British
Council (North Africa) for a new multimedia piece for the Moroccan
National Choir projected for Fez 2000. Recordings include
a solo CD for Split Records, and volumes 3 and 4 of the
complete works of Hildegard
of Bingen for Celestial Harmonies, USA. Her latest
CD of original songs with her new project, AZERUZ, has just been
released in Australia.
For more biographical detail, click
here.
recent discography
(1998-1999)
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RED
IRIS - music from 14th century Italy. Stevie Wishart fiddle,
hurdy-gurdy, Jim Denley and Pedro Esteban, percussion. A new format
CD-Plus with interactive designed by Kate Richards, produced by
Stevie Wishart. (Glossa Nouvelle Vision, SpainNov 97)
DISSECT THE BODY Machine
for Making Sense (Split Records 1997) new works by Denley, Mann,
Rue, Stewart, Wishart (Split Records 05, Australia)
CONSCIOUSNESS Machine
for Making Sense with Tony Buck and others (Split Records 07)
AURORA - The complete works of Hildegard
of Bingen, volume 2 with Sinfonye
(produced by Stevie Wishart, Celestial Harmonies USA)
AZERUZ - transgothic-trance - new songs by Stevie Wishart,
with Chris Abrahams, and Shane Fahey 1997-99. On the Endgame label in Australia only.
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recent concerts
(selective)
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SOLO Tour (Switzerland):
Le BOA Kulturcentrum, La Reithalle, Bern, Cave 12, Geneva
Germany: Jazz Theatre, Konstanz
15th aniversary LMC, at the ICA, London, SOLO
De Ijsbreker, Amsterdam, with LITTLE RED SPIDERS (Tony Buck, Andy
X, Joe Williamson)
STEIM Experimental Music Foundation, Amsterdam, SOLO
MOERS International Jazz Festival, Germany, Machine
for Making Sense
100 Femmes d'Ici et D'Ailleurs, Vevey, Switzerland. Two concerts.
SOLO, and with Sinfonye
(medieval and new songs)
FESTIVAL ECHI LONTANI, Sardinia. Two concerts with Sinfonye:
Three Sisters on the Sea Shore - songs from the 13th century, and
RED
IRIS - melodies from 14th century Tuscany (medieval fiddle,
hurdgy-gurdy, percussion).
ARS ELECTRONICA, Linz, Austria and MOUSONTURM, Frankfurt, Germany,
performances for Jon Rose's PERKS, with Rainer Linz.
Norwich and Norfolk Music Festival, UK double bill: Music From
RED
IRIS, and Three Sisters (Sinfonye)
NICKELSDORF FESTIVAL concerts with LITTLE RED SPIDERS, and SOLO/DUO
with Kaffe Matthews
MUSIC UNLIMITED, Wels, Austria. Machine
for Making Sense
CITY OF WOMEN, Ljubjana, Slovenia. "Music and Visions of Hildegard
of Bingen" (Sinfonye),
"SOLO/DUO" with Kaffe Matthews
HOUSTEN EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL, USA "Music and Visions of Hildegard
of Bingen" Sinfonye
1999
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, Sonic Hieroglyphs (Machine
for Making Sense)
SOUTH BANK EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL "Three Sisters on the Sea Shore"
(Sinfonye)
MOB PRODUCTIONS, Newtown Theatre, Sydney. "RED
IRIS" live, multimedia concert
MUSIQUE ACTION, Nancy, France (Machine
for Making Sense)
ITALIAN PALACE, Tangiers, Morocco, medieval and new songs
(Sinfonye)
BELLUARD BBI Festival, Fribourg, Switzerland, SOLO
JAZZ MULHOUSE (France) SOLO
THEATRE MALPERTUIS, Tielt, Belgium. SLOW LOVE (playwrite Richard
Murphet, music Stevie Wishart). On Tour October, November 1999
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joan grounds
: stevie wishart
: stevie's tour dates : press materials : contact
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