White Bone Country: Music for Piano and Percussion (a recording project)
This CD contains Andrew Byrne’s recent pieces for piano and percussion: White Bone Country for piano and percussion, Tracks for solo piano, Fata Morgana for prepared piano.

Music by Andrew Byrne
Stephen Gosling, Piano
David Shively Percussion
Anthony Burr, Producer

For more information including audio samples

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Melbourne-based visual artist Tom Nicholson and I have worked collaboratively on an instruction-based score, which develops some of the ideas explored in our previous collaboration 23.01.1901/12.07.2005. The project took as its starting point the list of instances of the creation of national boundaries, which Tom had employed in several individually produced works from 2004 onwards. On September 16, 2006, in 23.01.1901/12.07.2005, we developed as a score for six singers and a percussionist and was performed at the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery from Tom's list of national boundaries. The singers were assigned different parts of the list, which they read, intoning over three designated notes, as they moved around the gallery following pre-determined and individually different pathways. Their voices were recorded by four microphones, on stands situated at different points of the space, though this recording only occurred as the singers passed within the range of the microphones. A fifth microphone recorded the snare drum. The recordings of each of these five microphones were processed and accumulated through delays and reverberation over 30 minutes of reading and walking.

In Lines Towards Another Century, the list will again be he source material for the event. For this version, the intoning singers will be heard as recorded voices. The Elysian String Quartet and a percussion will perform live, developing material from the voices.

For more information including images of the 2006 performance at VCA, Melbourne.

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The Othersiders: New Australians in Paraguay
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
--Oscar Wilde

In 1893, three hundred brave souls set sail from Balmain, Sydney, to establish a utopian socialist paradise in the jungle of Paraguay. The settlement, to be called New Australia, was inspired and led by the charismatic political activist and journalist William Lane.

The Othersiders, a 40-minute work for voices and amplified ensemble, is musical meditation on this audacious experiment. Poems and songs published in the New Australian newsletter are used to capture the spirit surrounding this extraordinary episode in Australian history.

For more information