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ut
at the sydney opera house

at the sydney festival 2000


biographies, performance dates & contact details

about stevie wishart
__UK / Australia

 

 

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)

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.

recent concerts
(selective)

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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