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2/6/13 Some Musical and Sociological Aspects of Australian Experimental Music : Feature Article : Australian Music Centre

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31 July 2007

Some Musical and Sociological Aspects of AustralianExperimental Musicby Warren Burt



Image: Ron Nagorcka at CHCMC, Melb © Warren Burt

Experimental music has played a huge role in shaping the history of Australian new music. WarrenBurt’s comprehensive overview of Australian experimental music from 1963 to 1993 (originallypublished in Sounds Australian, No. 37 1993) provides enormous insight into the aesthetics, problemsand political climate of this time. With artists continuously pushing the boundaries of music and sound,the genre has evolved significantly in the 14 years since Burt wrote this article. Yet practitioners – andthe community as a whole – still seem to be battling with many of the issues that Burt discusses. Andone can’t help notice that the current political climate isn’t exactly helping matters…

Introduction and definitions

That this article may largely be a litany of names needs no apology. This is the first attempt to survey arather large field and, as such, I feel it should be as inclusive and as non-evaluative as possible in orderto point the way for future researchers. Further, since much of the music I will discuss here hasdecisively broken with the notational traditions and conventions of Western music, conventions whichimply as much sociologically as they do musically, it becomes doubly urgent that this music becomesdocumented as soon as possible. We no longer have the luxury of perusing scores at leisure. Scores, forthe most part, if used at all in this music, form such a minor part of the activity that relying on them foreither documentation or evaluation would be largely erroneous. Audio and video recordings form amore valuable form of documentation, but even these are subject to vagaries of time, space, anddislocations of context.

Experimental musicians...are intensely aware of the history and aesthetics of the field...and usually viewtheir work as a conscious attempt to extend and redefine elements of that tradition.It is important todefine carefully what is meant here by ‘experimental music’. Like all definitions, this one is heavilydependent on context. If I were a young black musician in Harlem in the early 1940s, would harmoniesof the flattened 5th and incredible virtuosity with altered scale passages – bebop – constituteexperimental music for me? I think they would. If I were to deal with these same materials in Australiatoday, could they be experimental? Probably not, but I’m waiting to be proved wrong. By looking atseven ideas of experimental music from different times we can perhaps get a clearer idea of what wecan, and cannot consider as experimental activities.

One of the classic, and earliest, definitions of experimental music is, of course, Cage’s (Cage 1961). Hisidea of music the outcome of which cannot be predicted in advance dates from the early 1950s, andforms the basis for much experimental music activity up to the present day. Michael Nyman’s 1975book Experimental Music, (Nyman 1975) takes a mostly Anglo-American look at the subject, anddefines rather carefully the difference between two areas of activity he calls ‘avant-garde’, which herelates to Boulez’s beliefs, and ‘experimental,’ which he defines in relation to Cageian and post-Cageianpractice. In New York at this time, this same distinction was referred to as the ‘uptown-downtown’ split,with ‘uptown’ denoting composers of the avant-garde and ‘downtown’ those of a more experimentalbent. To some extent, Nyman’s distinction still holds, though some of the pastiche and quotational ideashe described as experimental have since become the basis for the contemporary reactionary neo-romantic style. A different tack is taken by Trevor Wishart in his 1985 book, On Sonic Art, (Wishart1985) where he talks about the difference between scribal, i.e. written musics, and oral musics, whichmay or may not use notation, but where notation is not the principal means of realising or preserving the



work. Wishart’s ideas are fascinating and important, and deserve much thought and discussion. KennethGaburo, in his 1971 The Beauty of Irrelevant Music (Gaburo 1976) is more technical, and inclusive,when he says experimental music,

explores such phenomena as electronics, lasers, computers, kinetics, perception, notation, biologicalfeed-back, linguistics, environments, meditation, timbre, acoustical resources, serious communication,artificial intelligence, sound-touch, awareness, and silence.

Experimental music today to a large extent still works in most of these fields, although not all work inthese fields can be considered experimental. Much ‘new age’ music, for example, uses electronics,lasers, computers and environments, but in its attempts at producing a commercially usable, easy tolisten to product, seems to depart significantly from what might be called the experimental attitude. Thisquestioning, exploratory attitude is summed up by Herbert Brun when he says ‘We’re interested in themusic we don’t like, yet,’ (Brun 1986) and is echoed by Chris Mann who says ‘experimental music isnot a problem-solving environment (that’s commercial music), but a problem-seeking environment’(Mann 1988). Larry Polansky, in notes to a 1986 concert, gives his idea of one kind of experimentalattitude when he says of his music,

so it is difficult to perform (and perhaps to listen to) because it intentionally avoids anything we mighttraditionally associate with notions of drama, entertainment, or even artistic form. Those things which itdoes are very important to me for my own evolution, though occasionally I don’t understand the resultsof my own ideas (Polansky 1987)

However, some experimental music very clearly works with notions of ‘drama, entertainment, of evenartistic form’, so Polansky’s thoughts can only partially cover the field.

In fact, to define a field which is as wide-ranging and sometimes conceptually anarchic as experimentalmusic requires a similarly wide-ranging non-exclusive definition. A series of ANDs, if you will. Onemight say that experimental music is a combination of leading edge techniques and a certain exploratoryattitude that places a high value on the integrity of the exploration of the idea as a good thing in itself. Inthis light, experimental music in 1993 could encompass such areas as Cageian influences and work withlow technology and improvisation and sound poetry and linguistics and new instrumental building andmultimedia and music theatre and work with high technology and community music, among others,when these activities are done with the aim of finding those musics ‘we don’t like, yet,’ in a ‘problem-seeking environment.’ To write a neo-romantic theatre piece using samplers for performance byamateurs in a community setting would probably not be an experimental music activity today, notbecause all the areas under consideration (neoromanticism, sampling, community music making) havealready been fairly thoroughly explored, but rather because the attitudes of those involved would mostlikely be aimed at producing a pleasing product rather than producing problematic new knowledges andsituations to deal with.

The Australian situation has given its experimental music certain characteristics. Three of these are

1. Experimental music in Australia usually sets out to develop its own contexts, as opposed toworking with already established musical contexts, and these new contexts are developed in sucha way as to be appropriate to the ideas embodied in the music.

2. Experimental music in Australia is socially and politically concerned. Experimental musicianstend to think carefully through implications of their placings of music into certain contexts, andtend to give their ideology a large role in the shaping of both the music and its environment.

3. Experimental musicians in Australia are intensely aware of the history and aesthetics of the field,both locally and internationally, and usually view their work as a conscious attempt to extend andredefine elements of that tradition. It would be highly unlikely to find an experimental composerin Australia today who would refuse discussion with a rejoinder such as ‘Well, you know, I don’tthink much about those things, I just write music.’



Grainger and Melbourne 1963-1972

The earliest musical experimentation by an Australian was probably done by Percy Grainger.Throughout his life, his work with ‘free music’ was frankly experimental, a delving into unknown andat the time, physically impractical, musical techniques. His work with engineer Burnett Cross in the late‘40s and ‘50s probably forms the earliest coherent body of musical experiment undertaken by anAustralian. However, Grainger’s experiments took place in the USA, mostly in his home in WhitePlains, NY, and dissemination of the results of his work in Australia have been extremely slow andpiecemeal, such that composers who have been clearly extending some of the principles of Grainger’swork have, until recently, been largely unaware of his activities (Cross 1989).

Perhaps the earliest body of experimental musical work carried out in Australia took place in Melbournebetween 1963-1972 with the activities of the Robert Rooney, Barry McKimm, Syd Clayton trio. Thehistory of this group is more completely documented by John Whiteoak, in his history of Melbourneimprovisation, and this summary of their activities is based on his work (Whiteoak 1989). In 1963trumpeter Barry McKimm was a member of the Heinz Mendelson Quartet, a group heavily influencedby Ornette Coleman’s free improvisational work. Soon after this, McKimm was joined by RobertRooney (piano) and Syd Clayton (bass), and occasionally by Peter Webster on reeds and Barry Quinnon drums in performances consisting largely of free improvisation. Rooney, a visual artist as well as apianist, introduced the group to the ideas of John Cage and also to notions of graphic notation, and in1964 the group performed his Synops, a graphic score. From 1966 to 1970 the group moved away fromits jazz orientation and into work with large improvising ensembles. In 1969, for example, Jean-CharlesFrançois conducted an improvising orchestra in a graphically noted score of McKimm’s. Syd Clayton’swork assumed a more and more theatrical bent, and between 1969 and 1972 he produced fourteentheatrical works at La Mama theatre in Carlton, many of which showed heavy Cageian influence andwhich crossed boundaries between music, theatre, and ritual. Of the members of this group, onlyClayton continues to be involved in experimental musical activities, in work which exhibits a strikingand elegantly ‘minimal’ approach. The others have gone on to careers in the visual arts, education, orcommunity music making.

Another notable event in Melbourne in this period was the return of composer, conductor, and pianistKeith Humble from Paris in 1966. Humble had run an alternative performance space, the Centre deMusique, in Paris, and brought back many ideas both of an avant-garde and an experimental nature fromEurope. Through his work at Melbourne University, he was responsible for training a number ofAustralian composers, and his Society for the Private Performance of New Music at MelbourneUniversity gave a number of performances of both avant-garde and experimental works (Whiteoak1989). From 1974 to 1990, Humble was the Head of the Music Department at La Trobe University,which has continued to be a centre for training of Australian composers, even though in recent years thedepartment has lost much of the experimental edge it had in its early days. [The music department at LaTrobe University closed at the end of 1999 - Ed.] Humble’s own work spans the range from hisSonatas, expositions of classical avant-garde techniques, to his probing and exploratory work withelectronics and improvisation in the group KIVA, which continues to the present day. Humble, in fact,disagrees with Nyman’s avant-garde/ experimental dichotomy, preferring his own belief that a ‘completemusician’ should fluently express himself in all of the currently used compositional idioms and modes ofthought. Another member of Kiva is French percussionist Jean-Charles François, who was invited byHumble to join him at Melbourne University, and, from 1969-1972, taught there and was highlyinfluential in the development of the next generation of experimental composers. As well, a number ofother musicians in Melbourne were active in this period, principally working with electronic music. Fourof these were the late Stephen Dunstan, who, in addition to his work in pop groups, producedwonderfully eccentric and fantastic sound sculptures using home-made electronics; Dr Val Stephen, aphysician who composed electronic music as a hobby; Bruce Clarke, whose jingle workshop may havebeen the first user of musical electronics in Australian commercial music, and who improvised andperformed in Felix Werder’s sometimes experimental ‘Australia Felix’ group for a number of years; andIan Bonighton, who produced a number of striking works at the Melbourne University studios.



Sydney 1968-1975

In Sydney, the start of an indigenous interest in experimental music was marked by the return of DavidAhearn, fresh from working with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Cornelius Cardew, in 1969. I am indebtedto Greg Schiemer and Ernie Gallagher for much of the information that follows (Gallagher 1989,Schiemer 1989).

In 1969, Ahearn approached Joseph Post, then head of the New South Wales Conservatorium, forpermission to set up a series of experimental concerts and workshops under the auspices of theconservatorium. Extreme resistance from faculty members inside the conservatorium, however, resultedin Ahearn transferring the series to the Boilermaker’s Hall, under the auspices of the Workers’Education Association, a Sydney adult education organisation. From 1969-1972, Ahearn was the co-ordinator of A-Z music, an organisation run along the anarchic lines of Cardew’s English ScratchOrchestra. A-Z music gave regular performances, and was a clearing house for many experimental ideasboth within music and across media. Among the members were Ahearn, Robert Irving, Greg Schiemer,Ernie Gallagher, Peter Evans, Dierdre Evans, Phillip Ryan, Roger Frampton, Geoffrey Barnard,choreogapher Phillipa Cullen, video artist Ariel, flautist Geoffrey Collins and others. One notableperformance of the group was the world premiere, in 1970, of Paragraph 4 of Cornelius Cardew’smagnum opus, The Great Learning. In 1972, Teletopa, a free improvisation quartet derived from the A-Z membership, performed at the International Carnival of Experimental Sound (ICES) in London. Thepersonnel in this group were Ahearn, Collins, Frampton, and P. Evans. At this time, according toSchiemer, a rift developed between what he called the ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ wings of the group.This led to its breakup over a two-year period between 1973-75, though, even in this period, the groupcontinued to be influential, with young composers such as Carl Vine, Cameron Allan and Allan Holleyjoining its ranks in 1973, and regular performances of the community-based free-improvisation orientedSunday Ensemble occurring throughout this period. By 1975, Ahearn’s personal problems resulted inthe demise of the group. Ahearn publicly produced little more after this, and died early in 1988.

Melbourne 1972-1980

The scene in Melbourne between 1972-75 was marked by the emergence of several composers whowould continue to play major roles in the emergence and acceptance of experimental music in Australia.Repelled by the continuous and bitter in-fighting that marked the Melbourne branch of the ISCM[International Society for Contemporary Music], a number of younger composers and performersbanded together to form the New Music Centre. Instigated by Chris Mann, whose major interest was inthe area between language and music, the early membership included such people as Dan Robinson,Ron Nagorcka, Peter Mumme, Simon Wettenall, and Jeremy Kellock. The group was to fare no betterthan the ISCM in terms of internal placidity. Despite this, it produced weekly concerts over a two-and-a-half year period in a variety of venues, and managed, briefly, to set up Melbourne’s first public accesselectronic music studio. Also active at this time was NIAGGRA, the New Improvisation Action Groupfor Gnostic and Rhythmic Awareness, which was active between 1972-74 and gave a number ofperformances mostly at La Mama theatre in Carlton. The personnel of the group consisted of IanWallace, Jeremy Kellock, Simon Wettnal, Bruce Woodcock, Dan Robinson, Steve Martin andoccasionally Chris Mann. Of this group, Wallace, Kellock and Wettenal eventually abandonedexperiment in favour of a bebop virtuosity of the most traditional kind. Woodcock continued along anexperimental path, plagued by health problems, until his death in 1982, while Robinson and Mannremain as forces within the Australian compositional community. In 1974-5, Nagorcka, Mann,Wettenal, and Kellock all left Melbourne for various overseas destinations, and both the New MusicCentre and NIAGGRA collapsed. By all accounts, this was a period of high energy and extremerancour, and, one day, one of the participants should record its events. One of the more interestingoutcomes of the era was the lessons it taught Ron Nagorcka about ways not to manage an alternativevenue, and these were lessons he put into practice on his return to Australia in 1975 in setting up thehighly successful Clifton Hill Community Music Centre (Althoff 1989).



In 1975, I arrived in Australia (on the same plane as Ron Nagorcka, who I had met and become goodfriends with in the US) to take up a teaching position in the Music Department of La Trobe University.At the University of California, San Diego, Nagorcka evolved the principles on which he, along withmyself, bass player John Campbell, and others, would found the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre.The principles on which CHCMC was successfully run were:

1. No money would ever be charged to an audience (thus they couldn’t say they hadn’t gotten their‘money’s worth’); no money would ever be paid to composers or performers; no equipmentwould be supplied. (In the last few years of the centre this was modified – in order to cope with anominal rent charge, an admission charge of $1 was requested). Advertising was to be mostly byword of mouth or by very inexpensively photocopied posters. The removal of economics from themusic equation was viewed to be of supreme importance in setting up a space with a trulyalternative set of values.

2. Access to the space was to be completely open. Anyone who wanted to perform was welcome to.No restrictions were placed on style or content. All one had to do was phone up the co-ordinatorand a date would be arranged.

3. The centre was to be anarchically run. One person elected, or was elected to be the co-ordinator.They were responsible for allocating the performance times, opening and closing the building andallocating the minimal publicity jobs. When one person tired of the co-ordinator’s job, they passedit on to another person. In this way, a sense of continuity and adapting to changing needs wasbuilt into the Centre.

...the music critic has ceased to exist as a meaningful entity for the Australian experimentalmusician...The Centre ran for seven years, giving five or six seasons of six weekly concerts each year. Itserved as a training ground for many younger composers, and as a scene of focus and ferment for muchof the experimental music activity in Melbourne. The co-ordinators of the Centre were, in chronologicalorder, Ron Nagorcka, myself, David Chesworth, Robert Goodge, and Andrew Preston. A listing ofcomposers who performed at the Centre would read like a who’s who of the younger generation ofMelbourne composers, but out of this list, Ernie Althoff, Graeme Davis, Brophy and Chesworth couldbe selected as examples of four very different composers for whose development the Centre provedcrucial. For all of its history, the Centre survived without government funding of any kind. It received itsfirst grant for operating expenses in 1983, just after it had closed its doors. None of the participants inthe Centre, who felt it had served its purpose and it was now time to move on to other activities, felt thatreceiving government funding was any reason to continue the existence of an organisation which hadrun its course, and the money was returned. This is perhaps an example which many other organisationsin Australia could take to heart.

The period 1975-80 was a very active one in the Australian arts in general, and the Melbourneexperimental music scene was filled with an extremely diverse range of activities. Although CHCMCwas, in a very real sense, one centre of activity, it was only one of a number of venues. In early 1976,Barry Conyngham, Nagorcka, myself, Les Craythorn, Jim Sosnin, and John McCaughey produced theGardens and Galleries international electronic music festival, a two-week event at the Why Not theatreand the Student’s Church, Carlton. Electronic and computer music continue, to the present, to be majorareas of activity at both Melbourne and La Trobe Universities. In 1977, LIG, the La TrobeImprovisation Group, evolved out of music department improvisation workshops, and in 1978 the groupevolved into LIME, Live Improvised Music Events, whose membership included Ros Bandt, NicholasTolhurst, Julie Doyle, Gavan McCarthy, and Carolyn Robb. LIME’s orientation was mostly minimalist,with occasional forays into theatre. Over ten years it gave a large number of performances both inAustralia and overseas, and recorded several albums for the RASH and MOVE labels.

In 1977 John Campbell founded the New and Experimental Music Show on Community Radio Station3CR. At the time, one of increasing Australian nationalism, 3CR had a policy of 50% Australian musiccontent. Most Melbourne composers of new music of whatever persuasion (avant-garde, experimental,crossover pop, etc.) were broadcast on the show. This helped establish a higher public profile for newmusic in general, and helped to legitimise the activity of experimental musicians by placing their work



within the broader context of new music activity.

A series of live radio forums were organised for the ABC at the Waverley Theatre, East Malvern, byFelix Werder. These featured performances by a group of musicians that later evolved into Werder’sown group, Australia Felix, a group which experimented with graphic notation, improvisation, and anoften misunderstood radical reinterpreting of the role of the traditional score. Werder, like hisgenerational colleagues Humble, Tristram Cary and James Penberthy, never really fully embraced theexperimental aesthetic, but felt free to move in and out of it as his needs demanded. The full history ofthis remarkable musician, whose career has spanned most of the styles of the late 20th century, has yetto be written. Like Humble, Cary and Penberthy, he ain’t dead yet, and we can be sure of continuingevolution from these four composers, the only four senior Australian composers who have consistentlymaintained elements of an experimental outlook throughout every stage of their careers.

La Mama also remained a centre for new music performances in the late ‘70s. New music performanceswere given there by Chris Mann and myself (Syntactic Switches 1977); electronics and percussionperformances by David Tolley, Dure Dara and friends; and multimedia events by Chris Knowles, JamesCalyden and David Wadelton; among others.

At the Victorian College of the Arts, British migrant Richard David Hames ran the Victorian TimeMachine, a student-based new music ensemble which gave performances of many experimental works,and his work and the work of James Fulkerson, an American trombonist/composer, who was a frequentguest at the College, greatly influenced a number of younger composers, such as Sarah Hopkins, LesGilbert and Herbert Jercher.

Some of the flavour of this era can be gained by looking at the three issues of the New Music

Newspaper, (Burt & Gilbert 1977-78), a publication put out by Les Gilbert and myself in 1977-78funded at first by La Trobe, and later by Melbourne University. A breezy, chatty publication, its aimswere, again, to cover the new music scene across the board, exposing the variety of activity occurringwith as little stylistic bias as possible. Of greatest value to the historian are the lists of events in eachissue, which provide many details as to names of performers, venues and pieces performed.

Other senior figures and radio

Mention was made earlier of Adelaide composer Tristram Cary, a British migrant to Australia in theearly ‘70s. Cary, even more than Humble or Werder, is the senior Australian composer who has beenmost consistently involved with experimental ideas and techniques for most of his life. One of thepioneers of electronic music from the 1940s up until the present day, his work has spanned the gamutfrom work with closed groove phonograph loops and test oscillators in the ‘40s, up to working withmainframe and personal computer systems in the 1980s. As well, a number of his instrumental worksresult from experimental methods. A notable example of this is his orchestral work Contour and

Densities at First Hill, which is based on tracing salient elements of photographs of the landscape of theFlinders’ Ranges onto score paper, and then orchestrating the results.

The computer work of James Penberthy must also be mentioned here. Penberthy’s experiments withcomputer assisted composition in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s mark the first use of computers inAustralian composition. Penberthy’s work, like Werder’s, deserves a study of its own.

During this period as well, experimental music began to make its first significant impact on nationalAustralian radio with the setting up of the nationwide ABC-FM network. In its first years of operation,ABC-FM was incredibly adventurous. One of the leaders of this spirit of adventure was AndrewMcLennan, whose weekly show, 360 Shift, not only gave wide exposure to overseas experimentalmusic, but also commissioned works from a number of Australians as well. Soon after its opening,ABC-FM became much more conservative, but producers such as McLennan, Jaroslav Kovaricek, andothers, fought an heroic battle against stiff management opposition, usually with some degree of success,



in keeping experimental drama, music and radio work very much alive on Australian radio.

Sydney 1975-80

Much of the energy, and many of the new developments in Australian music seem to be the result ofmigrant musicians, or of Australians returning home after extended periods overseas. In this regard, theactivities in Sydney in this period are no exception. The arrival in Sydney of American composer BillFontana in 1976 marks just such a turning point. Fontana, at the time married to Australianchoreographer Nannette Hassall, plunged into his new life in Sydney with incredible energy, organisingevents and stimulating performance of all kinds. In late 1976, for five months, he ran a Sundayafternoon performance series at the Recording Hall of the Sydney Opera House. Music, dance,performance art events all took place on this series, with both local and interstate performers. After theseries proved too adventurous for the Opera House management, it was moved for a while to theInstitute of Contemporary Art, at 1 Central Street, a private gallery run by Paul McGillick. Fontana’sSmall Spiral, for Japanese rin gongs, was premiered during this series of events, as was my own musictheatre piece, Stalin, for reader and three cassette recorders, as well as works by Greg Schiemer and anumber of other composers. As well, the Central Street Gallery played host to a number of internationalperformers, among them John Cage. Fontana’s work included a number of sound sculpture installationsin most of the Australian State Galleries, and a number of live and taped radio events. It is largely due tohis efforts, in fact, that sound sculpture has the profile it does in Australia today. By the time of hisleaving Australia in 1979-80, his activities had very thoroughly planted conceptual art based thinkinginto the centre of the Australian experimental tradition.

Other composers were also very active in Sydney at this time. Rising from the ashes of A-Z, GregSchiemer emerged as an organiser of events of great vision and energy (Schiemer 1977 and 1989). HisAshes of Sydney Festival, in 1977, was an afternoon and evening long event that took place on a ferryboat and at selected locations all around Sydney Harbour. The mix of events included folk andexperimental musics, dance, performance art, magic, and various other environmental events.Schiemer’s own description of the event in the New Music Newspaper shows very clearly the sprit ofdiversity and just plain fun that marked the event. Again, the event was put on without funding of anysort. Schiemer has continued to be a central figure in the Sydney music scene to the present.

Another figure who has been central to Sydney music is Martin Wesley-Smith. His work, frequentlywith Ian Fredericks, in the group WATT, has provided an ongoing focus for their own and others’ workin electronics and multimedia. Of special interest are the environmental events Wesley-Smith stagedwith sculptor/film-maker George Gittoes at Wattamolla Beach in the Royal National Park. Wesley-Smith’s work has not always been experimental. A large part of his work consists of very traditionalmusical theatre, but it is his experimental work, along with his teaching at the New South WalesConservatorium (where Schiemer also teaches) that has probably had the biggest impact on the Sydneyscene.

Another migrant who had an enormous impact, first in Sydney, then later in all of Australia, was Britishviolinist, improviser, composer and instrument builder Jon Rose. Rose’s indefatigable energy establishedfree improvisation as a major component of Australian experimental music. His enormous impact on thescene is as great, if not greater than Fontana’s. Over a ten year period (1977-86), he organised numerousperformances, several national and international tours with both local and overseas musicians as part ofhis ‘Relative Band,’ founded and kept going Fringe Benefit Recordings (now defunct), whose catalogueforms an invaluable document of Australian improvisation in those years, and gave encouragement tomany younger Australian musicians. Worn down by economic pressures, and a consistent lack of whathe regarded as adequate response to his efforts, Rose left Australia for Holland in 1986, where theeconomic climate and the level of artistic feedback were more conducive for him.

Also of note in this period are the early activities of Flederman, a group founded by Carl Vine andtrombonist, composer and improviser Simone de Haan. The early Flederman events always had a very



careful mix of avant-garde virtuosity and experimental performance but they evolved into a mainstreamavant-garde virtuoso group until their disbanding in the late ‘80s (De Haan 1989).

Experimental music activities since 1980

By 1980, experimental music was firmly entrenched as a major part of Australian composition. In theperiod from 1980-85, activity was so widespread and consistent that a city by city approach wouldprove fruitless. Indeed, experimental music had left its Melbourne/Sydney origins and now wasoccurring in every capital city, and a number of country centres. Despite the lack of official support,experimentalism, as a musical way of life, had established itself.

In Melbourne, the evolution of CHCMC continued. Leading figures in this period were Brophy,Chesworth, Preston and film critic Adrian Martin. Under Brophy’s and Chesworth's leadership, themagazine New Music (Brophy & Chesworth 1980-82) attempted to extend the principles of CHCMC tothe print media.

The magazines form an indispensable document of the period, with a number of Melbourne writers andcomposers joining in Brophy’s ‘have a go’ attitude, to produce a variety of kinds of dialogue.

Two events in the early ‘80s were indicative of experimental music’s increasing recognition by themainstream Australian musical establishment. These were the 1981 Victorian Ministry of the Artssponsored International Music and Technology Conference, held at Melbourne University, withauxiliary events at the Victorian College of the Arts and CHCMC, and the 1983 Paris Autumn Festival,which featured performances by nine Australian composers. The IMIC had many performances, papersand presentations, but the events which had the greatest impact were the experimental ones. Soundsculptures by Stephen Dunstan, Dan Senn, myself, Ros Bandt and Les Gilbert; performances of Love isa Beautiful Song by Graham Davis and Ernie Althoff; Way Back Beyond by Herbert Jercher; SevenRare Dreamings by Ron Nagorcka and Ernie Althoff; and Snodger Lip Lap by Chris Mann and myselfproved to be the most memorable events of the conference and served notice to the musicalestablishment that here was a new generation of composers with a unique and forceful identity.

Recognition of the achievements of this group was made internationally by the Paris Autumn Festival in1983, when, at the invitation of Festival Organiser Josephine Markovits, a crew consisting of ChrisMann, Ron Nagorcka, David Chesworth, Ros Bandt, Sarah Hopkins, Leigh Hobba (an Adelaide-basedcomposer now living in Hobart, known for the elegance of his environmentally based works), Jon Rose,Martin Wesley-Smith and myself travelled to Paris and performed at the Centre Pompidou, and later, insmaller groups, in a number of other locations in Europe and America. In addition, Philip Brophy’swork was included in the multimedia section of the visual arts component of the Festival.

This was also a time of increased presence for experimental music on radio. In Sydney, AlessioCavallaro and Rik Rue produced major experimental radio performance series for 2SER and 2MBS.Cavallaro’s cntmprr ydtns series provided a major forum for live radio work, and the publication oftapes of these programs, in the sets Men of Ridiculous Patience and Lunkhod, served to distribute thework around Australia and internationally.

Perhaps the major effort in commissioning original works for radio in this period came from the PublicBroadcasting Association of Australia’s 1983 ‘Composing for Radio’ and 1986 ‘Hear/Now’ series.Instigated by me, these series involved commissioning original works for radio from fourteen composersor groups, eight in 1983, and six in ’86. Funded by the Music Board of the Australia Council andproduced in ’83 by myself and Simon Britton, and in ’86 by Britton alone, the series resulted in newworks by Vineta Lagzdina, Les Gilbert, ‘tsk, tsk, tsk’ (Philip Brophy 1980-82), IDA (Nagorcka, Althoffand Davis), Ros Bandt, David Chesworth, visual artist Aleks Danko and myself in 1983; and ElwynDennis, Rainer Linz, Sue Blakey, Peter Mumme, Alistair Riddell, and Herbert Jercher in 1986. Theseworks were then broadcast Australia-wide on the PBAA network of stations.



Experimental music will continue to remain peculiarly resistant to absorption by the musicalestablishment.Also of great importance during this period was the founding of NMA Publications byRainer Linz and Richard Vella. Vella’s later very important work in experimental music theatre tookhim to Sydney, where he became a major influence, leaving Linz to be the prime mover behind theorganisation which has become the major source for writing and recordings of Australian experimentalmusic. The journal, NMA (New Music Articles) (Linz 1981), the NMA tapes label, and occasional otherpublishing, such as Chris Mann’s The Rationales and John Jenkins’s definitive book 22 Contemporary

Australian Composers (Jenkins 1988) has made Linz and NMA an indispensable part of Australiancontemporary music.

Experimental music is (musically) in a very healthy state. The amount of activity happening across thecountry is too much for any one individual to track. Some small funding opportunities have alsoemerged, and, more and more, the music seems to be finding recognition and a series of small places insociety. The following is a brief mentioning of some recent pieces I regard as among the most significantresults of the current work.

Some of the most interesting ideas have been presented in recent creative uses of radio. Among thesemight be mentioned Chris Mann’s The Blue Moon Project. Blue Moon involved soliciting over 100versions of that hoary old standard from pop, folk, amateur, art, and experimental musicians and thenhaving them broadcast, one each day, at the same time each morning, on the light entertainment channelof the ABC. The project provided a framework for a day by day comparison of musical evolution thatwas quite hilarious, surreal and bizarre by turns. It also played quite outrageously with the idea of ‘radioformats’ and upset not a few people in radio management with its frequent violations of their sacredideas of ‘radio entertainment’.

Time and time again, during this period, the ABC proved itself malleable to new ideas, if problematic intheir implementation, realisation and continuity. Currently the ABC is once again encouragingexperimental work. Producers such as McLennan, John Crawford, Paul Petran, Stephen Snelleman andRoz Cheney are commissioning and producing a number of extremely interesting and innovative radiocompositions, such as the 1989 Prix Italia winner, Jim Denley’s Collaborations.

Another extremely creative use of radio as a performance medium was the Concert on Bicycles stagedby Greg Schiemer in Canberra in 1983. A concert of monophonic electric tape pieces was prepared forbroadcast on Canberra community station 2XX. This was broadcast on a pleasant afternoon, whilemembers of the public were invited to join in a bicycle ride around Lake Burley Griffin, each carrying atransistor radio on their bicycle. The phase shiftings and multiple doppler effects that resulted from themany single mobile sound sources, which were heard differently by every single participant in the event,whether mobile or stationary, formed an essential part of the music.

Rainer Linz’s PBAA – commissioned radio piece The Opera Crossed Purposes, was also one of themajor works produced during this period. He wrote it in the form of a documentary radio program,where the announcer described the action of an opera with a revolutionary political libretto and playedexamples from it. The difference here was that the ‘opera’ did not ‘really exist’ except as this radioshow. All the arias were elegant ‘fakes’, made by having two singer friends improvise in operatic stylewith found opera texts to tape loops taken from the existing orchestral repertoire. That this form ofartistic production is indeed as ‘real’ as any other is not to be denied, but what is charming about Linz’spiece is the way it challenges the conventions of operatic thinking, singing, writing and presentation.

Central to experimental musical thinking has been the search for new vehicles of presentation for thismusic. New ways of musical thinking demand new instruments, new modes of presentation. Composerswere extremely active in the field of instrument building during this time, and Issue 9 of the Australian

Music Centre Journal had a large article by me surveying the field as of 1985 (Burt 1985). Described inthe article were the music machines of Ernie Althoff, percussive devices activated by turntables; theAlemba, a set of tuned bass triangles made by Moya Henderson; Colin Offord’s gigantic mouth bows;Ros Bandt’s clay and glass instruments; Herbert Jercher’s educational sound sculptures; Greg



Schiemer’s Tupperware Gamelan, community electronic instruments; Sarah Hopkins’s work with cuttube Whirlies (Hopkins 1990); Rodney Berry’s work with electronically resonated tube instruments; JonRose’s many fantastic violin and cello like instruments; and my own work with constructing oversizetuning forks and semi-intelligent electronic performing instruments. Of the work that continues in thisfield, two current examples might be mentioned which continue, almost directly, the line of investigationbegun by Percy Grainger in the early ‘50s; Rodney Berry’s Percy’s Laundry Organ and Ernie Althoff’sBamboo Orchestra. Berry’s sculpture involves a washing machine, homemade organ pipes, a vacuumcleaner, and the wringer of the washing machine used as a drive for a thick sheet rubber loop used as aplayer piano type roll. The washing machine is partially filled with water, such that the ends of the organpipes are submerged. When placed into operation, the vacuum cleaner provides air for the pipes, whichare activated by the rotating rubber roll, and the sloshing of the water in the machine tunes the pipes,providing the gliding tones Grainger was so fond of. A wonderfully madcap contraption, Berry’ssculpture provides a loving and smiling tribute to Grainger’s work. The elegance and timbral refinementof Althoff’s Bamboo Orchestra brings a new level of sophistication to musical sculpture in Australia.The form the sculptures take is similar to Althoff’s other turntable and cassette recorder driven designs,but the choice of using only one sounding material, bamboo, and the numerous clever and sophisticatedways this material is used, place this work of Althoff’s clearly into the front rank of musical sculpture,worldwide.

Just as not all experimental music does not involve electronics, so, too, not all electronic music isexperimental. Among those composers whose recent work with electronics does partake, to a greater orlesser degree, of an experimental aesthetic, are Rik Rue, who has emerged as a major force in theSydney compositional scene over the past few years; sculptor, environmental activist and composerElwyn Dennis; Schiemer, whose work with interactive computer-based performance devices continues;David Worrall, who is investigating the applications of fractal mathematics and chaos to computermusic, and whose ‘Dome Project’ is providing a portable unique performing environment forelectroacoustic music and multimedia; Ian Fredericks, Martin Wesley-Smith and Graeme Gerrard, whoare all investigating high-end synthesis on personal computers; Alastair Riddell, whose work withalgorithmic composition and computer controlled pianos is clearly among the most interesting workbeing done in Australia today; Ernie Althoff and Rainer Linz, who continue to produce elegant workusing very low budget technology; and my own electronic work, which explores interesting nethergrounds between algorithmic composing, interactive processes, improvisation, timbral and polyrhythmicinvestigation and good-natured bad taste. My 84-minute long Samples III for Computer ProcessedOrchestral Sounds which I write about in NMA number 6 (Burt 1989), is a good example of recentAustralian work involving electronics.

Recent efforts in music theatre worth mentioning are Brothers, a play and music by Syd Clayton, whichcontinues Clayton’s extremely refined and minimalistic theatrical work of the early ‘70s; the manytheatrical productions of Richard Vella; David Chesworth’s video opera, Insatiable, made up almostcompletely of musical found objects; the theatrical presentations of the Pipeline ensemble, founded bySimone de Haan, which became an extremely important part of contemporary music making inAustralia in the 1987-89 seasons; the dance/music presentation Skysong by composers Sarah Hopkinsand Alan Lamb, choreographer Beth Shelton, and dancer Ian Ferguson; Dialogue of the Angels, adance/music collaboration between composer Caroline Wilkins and choreographer Susie Fraser; and the1988 Arena theatre production of The Rainbow Warrior which featured music and dance collaborationsbetween Andrée Greenwell and Darrell Pellizzer.

Environmental musical interaction is, of course, one major field of experimental music, and some of themore interesting efforts in this field have been Leigh Hobba’s video compositions of Tasmanian rivers;Les Gilbert’s installations of environmental sounds and images; Alan Lamb’s continuing investigationsof aeolian music produced using very long wires; Syd Clayton’s nine-hour keyboard composition,Lucky Number (a gradual deceleration to one short note every three minutes and back again, where thenotes become ripples spreading through the environmental sounds) performed in February ’88 at theAustralian Centre for Contemporary Art Melbourne; Ros Bandt’s Aeolian Harps project for the Red



Cliffs, Victorian community; Ron Nagorcka’s recent elegant tape compositions using environmentalsounds, Lovregana and Soundscapes from Wilderness; my own Responses and Compressions, a radiowork commissioned by the ABC involving members of Pipeline interacting with various environments;and the collaborative radio Bicentennial-commissioned radio soundscape Words and Sounds in the

Australian Landscape composed by Les Gilbert, Walter Billeter, Kris Hemensley, Chris Mann andmyself.

Chris Mann’s recent works in compositional linguistics are an extremely important contribution to worldcontemporary music. His 1988 of course is a major work, a merciless harangue of the bankruptcy ofcontemporary business ideology, set electronically by him and myself. Two other figures who continueto make unique and powerful voice-based poetic musics are Jas H. Duke and Amanda Stewart. Duke,in his early 50s, is one of Australia’s major poets, and his sound poetry performances form a directhistorical link with the Dada performances of Kurt Schwitters and Raoul Hausmann. Stewart, in herearly 30s, has refined performance poetry techniques to a point of musical refinement equalled by few.

Improvisation continues to form a major part of experimental music in Australia. Some of the leadingpractitioners of this art are Jim Denley and Rik Rue, both individually and as part of the groupMind/Body/Split in Sydney; vocalist, composer, and improviser Josephine Truman; Colin Offord,whose folk-based improvisations on unique instruments have great charm; the work of the Evos musicgroup in Perth, including composer/improvisers Ross Bolleter, Nathan Crotty and Tos Mahoney; and, inMelbourne, a number of groups of younger performers, such as the Melbourne Improvisers Association,GongHouse, and the Shrieking Divas are trying out a variety of improvisational practices in a number ofdifferent venues.

Interactivity is a term very much in vogue in arts criticism these days. Two recent Australianexperimental music projects which exemplified this were Fair Exchanges-Hear the Dance-See the

Music, a five-way collaborative music-dance project involving composers Ros Bandt and myself, andchoreographers Sylvia Staehli, Jane Refshauge and Shona Innes, using inventor Simon Veitch’s 3DISvideo-to-MIDI interface (Burt 1990); and the performances at the 1989 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz,Austria, which featured specially commissioned interactive works from Rik Rue, Jim Denley, AmandaStewart, electronic sculptor Joan Brassil, Chris Mann, David Chesworth, Les Gilbert, Alan Lamb, RossBolleter and myself (Bechtloff, ed. 1989).

In Melbourne, currently, the three leading arenas for the presentation of experimental music are theLinden concerts, presented at the Linden Gallery, the St Kilda City Arts Centre, by Brigid Burke andmyself; the concerts of the Melbourne Improvisers Association, which has evolved into one of the majorpresenters of improvised music in the country; and the events of the Australian Computer MusicAssociation, led, until 1992, by Graeme Gerrard. In Sydney, two events of note are the founding of theTall Poppies CD label by Belinda Webster, which has featured experimental work by Roger Frampton,Roger Dean, Jim Denley and others; and the activities of the group Machine for Making Sense, withChris Mann and Amanda Stewart, voices, Jim Denley, winds, Stevie Wishart, strings, and Rik Rue,electronics. In Perth, the Evos group has evolved to become one of the major presenters of new music inthe country, presenting a wide-ranging program of concerts and events. A higher public profile forexperimental music has been recently given in a number of festivals of experimental art, such as the1991 Sounds Culture festival in Sydney, the 1992 Third International Symposium on Electronic Art(TISEA), Sydney; and the 1990 and 1992 Experimenta festivals in Melbourne, sponsored by theModern Image Makers’ Association. Internationally, Australian experimental music was represented byThe White Room a ten-day-long installation at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, as part of the1992 ISCM World Music Days. This installation was by Vineta Lagzdina, Ros Bandt, Ernie Althoff,Alan Lamb and myself. Finally, we note with sadness the death of Melbourne sound poet andimproviser Jas H. Duke, in 1992, one of the truly outstanding voices in contemporary Australian soundarts.

Conclusions



In all of this activity spanning a quarter of a century, one notices several things. First, there is always a

sense of ‘do-it-yourself’ about the music and the composers. There is also a sense of being outsiders to

the musical establishment. Of all the wings of the Australian establishment and media, only radio seems

to have recognised the continuing existence of the experimental side of Australian composition and

consistently supported it. Most of the music has also been done, until recently, on either no, or a very

restricted, budget. This has profoundly affected its aesthetic. In addition to fostering an ethic of

affordability in the material used to make the music, it has also fostered an identification with the

problems of poverty in the composers. The experimental aesthetic in Australia has evolved a position

where, largely, its composers feel the music should be democratically available to both poor and rich

alike. The idea of a new music concert as an $18 a ticket middle class amusement would be repellent to

most of the composers included in this survey. The sense of being outsiders is also fostered by those

institutions which have been receptive to the music. Since the time of Rooney, McKimm and Clayton,

visual arts institutions have generally been more receptive to experimental music than have musical

institutions, although this acceptance has generally occurred when having sound events in galleries

suited the purposes and fashion consciousness of the current curators. More than once, a change of

curatorial interest has meant the exclusion of one group of composers or another from gallery

performances. These outsider conditions have fostered a social and sometimes overtly political

conception of musicians and their role and an analysis of how social conditions affect one’s role and

how one reacts to those conditions. For experimental musicians here, the question has not been ‘how

does one fit oneself to the existing institutions,’ but rather, ‘how does one try to change the institutions to

fit one’s needs’, or even, ‘how does one make one’s own institution?’

This, despite the sustained high level of activity, also highlights many of the difficulties currently faced

by Australian experimental music. It is largely ignored by the press. Faced with a lack of any critic in

Australia who has both an understanding and a sympathy with the aesthetic, the music critic has ceased

to exist, by and large, as a meaningful entity for the Australian experimental musician. The same can

also be said of the musicological community. Nearly all the historical writings on Australian

experimental music are by the composers themselves, or by sympathetic non-musicians, such as John

Jenkins. The efforts of Australian musicology are largely irrelevant to the concerns or the issues raised

by their experimental colleagues. The commissioning policies of the various incarnations of the

Australia Council have consistently shown themselves uncomprehending of the nature of musical

experiment. What assistance there has been has largely had to be obtained by showing how the music

conformed to the ‘Gebrauchsmusik’ ethic of the various and changing commissioning policies.

Promotional bodies, such as Sounds Australian (formerly the Australian Music Centre) have often been

bewildered as to how to promote this music, which often does not produce the hard copy of scores and

hi-fi recordings they are best equipped to deal with. Experimental musics proposing that each piece

proposes its own context and its own modes of judgement has largely been misunderstood, when not

rejected outright, by the gatekeepers of the musical bureaucracy. Then too, the attrition rate among

experimental musicians has been enormously high. This is perhaps understandable when one considers

that Australian society is extremely conformist and materialist. Producing a non-conformist music for

very little material gain in such a society has often been too difficult a task for those initially attracted to

it.

One should not be overly pessimistic, however. The situation, at least in some cases, is slowly

improving. Whether these improvements are permanent or temporary remains to be seen. In summary, I

would like to make four speculations on the future of Australian experimental music.

1. I believe that experimental music today is the leading edge of Australian musical thinking, and

will probably remain in that position for a number of years. It pushes ideas, both new and old,

farther and examines the social implications of musical acts in a way that other groups of

Australian composers are just not willing or able to do.

2. Experimental music will continue to remain peculiarly resistant to absorption by the musical

establishment. Quite simply, if one makes work which questions the viability of an institution,

usually that institution will be little inclined to show the work. And this lack of absorbability may



be one of the music’s strong points. A recent cautionary tale might be the decline of theadventurousness in the New York postmodern dance scene which occurred in almost directrelation to the absorption of the work by the American and European dance establishments.

3. Paradoxically, much experimental music has become, and will continue to be a bit of a popularartform. Consider the extremely experimental work presented on the popular ABC-FM AndrewMcLennan/Roz Cheney produced Listening Room program, or the approximately eight millionvisitors who participated in assembling my computer-music interactive sound sculpture in theSensus technological playground at Expo 88 in Brisbane, or the many composers in thecommunity projects that have involved experimental composers such as Herbert Jercher, RosBandt and Sarah Hopkins as cases in point. This mode of public interaction may indeed prove tobe a more fruitful avenue for exploration than the established musical institutions, which areyearly becoming less and less relevant to the needs of the society around them.

4. However, the very nature of musical experiment will mean that it will always, to some degree,remain an outsider’s music. Consider the careers of the four composers over the age of 60discussed in this paper, Keith Humble, Felix Werder, Tristram Cary, and James Penberthy. Theyremain the four senior composers in Australia whose work has been least absorbed in the currentbout of Australian nationalism, and this lack of absorption has been in direct proportion to theirinvolvements in experimental thinking. Other factors can also account for this, of course, but thelinking of working with experimental ideas and a lack of establishment acceptance, even forcomposers such as these, is strikingly clear.

The recent rise of various conservative styles and performing groups shows very clearly that there arestill plenty of composers who are willing to not challenge sociologies of musical behaviour and continuethe line of conservative academic 20th century musics. But Australian experimental music continues todevelop its own identity – more politicised than its North American counterpart, and less accepted as apart of a ‘fringe’ than in Europe. A concept of historical parallelism is developing in Western classicalmusic, of which experimental music is forming both one of the branch streams and one of the majorsources.

References

Althoff, E. 1989, ‘The Clifton Hill Community Music Centre: 1976-1983’ New Music Articles, vol. 7pp. 39-43.

Bechtloff, D. (ed.) 1989, Kunstforum International 103 which contains articles by Warren Burt,Andrew McLennan, Amanda Stewart, David Chesworth, Heidi Grundmann, Jon Rose, Allan Lamb,Jim Denley/ Rik Rue, Sally Couacaud, Joan Brassil, and Peter Callas about Australian participation inthe 1989 Ars Electronica.

Brophy, P. (ed.) 1980-82, New Music (5 issues), tsk, tsk, tsk, Melbourne.

Brun, H. 1986, The quote is from a conversation with the author. More of Brun’s writing can be foundin Brun: My Words and Where I Want Them. London: Princelet Editions, 1986.

Burt, W. 1985,‘Instrumental Composition’ Australian Music Centre Journal, vol. 9 pp. 3-5, 14-15.

_____ 1989, ‘Sample III for Computer Processed Orchestral Sounds’ New Music Articles, vol. 6 pp. 7-14.

_____ 1990, ‘Fair exchanges’ Writings on Dance, vol. 5 pp. 38-44

Burt, W. & Gilbert, L. 1977-78, The New Music Newspaper (3 issues), La Trobe University andMelbourne University Unions, Melbourne.

Cage, J. 1961, Silence, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown.



Cross B. 1989, ‘Collaborating with Percy Grainger’ New Music Articles, vol. 7 pp. 3-4.

de Haan, S. 1989, ‘Flederman - a retrospective assessment’ New Music Articles vol. 7 p. 27-29.

Gaburo, K. 1976, The Beauty of Irrelevant Music, Lingua Press, Iowa City.

Gallagher, E. 1989, ‘AZ Music’ New Music Articles, vol. 7 pp. 9-14.

Hopkins, S. 1990, ‘Whirly Instruments’ Experimental Musical Instruments, vol. VI,3 pp. 11-13.

Jenkins, J. 1988, 22 Contemporary Australian Composers, NMA Publications, Melbourne.

Linz, R. (ed.) 1981, New Music Articles (10 issues to date), NMA Publications, Melbourne. Issue no 7of this journal is entirely devoted to an oral history of Australian Experimental Music with articles byBurnett Cross, Helen Gifford, Ernie Gallagher, Geoffrey Barnard, Jon Rose (as Igor Lipinski), JohnWhiteoak, Simone de Haan, Greg Schiemer, Ernie Althoff, Ron Nagorcka, and Caroline Wilkins.

Mann, C. 1989, Conversation with the author. See also The Rationales, NMA Publications, Melbourne.

Nyman, M. 1975, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, Dutton, London.

Polansky, L. 1987, Buy One for Spare Parts, Frog Peak, Oakland.

Schiemer, G. 1977, ‘The Ashes of Sydney present The Ashes of Sydney Festival’ The New MusicNewspaper, vol. 2 pp. 14-16.

_____ 1989, ‘Towards a Living Tradition’ New Music Articles, vol. 7 pp. 21-26.

Whiteoak, J. 1989, ‘Interview with Keith Humble’ New Music Articles, vol. 7 pp. 21-26.

Wishart, T. 1985, On Sonic Art, Imagineering Press, York.

Selected discography

John Jenkins’s 22 Contemporary Australian Composers has excellent discographies covering muchAustralian experimental music up to 1988. The following is a selected discography of some Australianexperimental recordings released since then.

Althoff, E. 1990, Music for Seven Metal Machines. Cassette. Pedestrian Tapes (Sydney) PX037.

Althoff, E. 1992, Thirty More. Cassette. Ernie Althoff (Burnley).

Anthology of Australian Music on Disc vols 4,5,6,13. One compact disc each volume. Canberra Schoolof Music CSM: 4,5,6,13. 1989 (volume 4 has among others, works by Riddell and Gerrard; volume 5,Worrall, Tahourdin, Cary and others; volume 6, Burt, Milsom, Althoff, Mann, Mumme, Chesworth;volume 13, de Haan, Schiemer, Wesley-Smith and others).

Austral Voices. Compact disc and cassette. New Albion Records (San Francisco) NA028. 1990. (worksby Bandt, Burt, Hopkins, Riddell, Bolleter, Pressing, and Lamb)

Bandt, R. 1989, Stargazer. Compact disc. Move Records ( Melbourne) MD 3075 and Vox AustralisVAST 0042.

Best Seats in the House! Cassette. NMA Publications (Brunswick) 1991. (with improvisations bySalmon Chanted Evening, Hazeldine, Freeboppers, Rose, Shrieking Divas, Bent Metal, Johnson,Campbell and Leak, Puppenspiel, Back to Back Zithers, Althoff, Committee Band, Musiikki-oy,



Beavitt and Dargaville, Cogan and Everleigh, Burt and Lagzdina, Kim Farbach Quartet and Zocchi).

Bolleter R & Ratajczak, R. 1990, Jinx. Cassette. Pica Press (Perth) Audio 1.

Burke, B. & Zocchi, R. 1992, My Favourite Sonata. Cassette. Sounds and Visions (Elsternwick).

Burt, W. 1990, Chaotic Research Music. Cassette. Scarlet Aardvark (St Kilda).

Burt W. 1992, Some Kind of Seasoning (The Demo Tape). Cassette Scarlet Aardvark (St Kilda).

Coates, B. 1991, 31 Note Music3 Cassettes. Bill Coates (Blackheath).

Contemporary Australian Piano, Larry Sitsky. Compact disc. Move Records (Melbourne) MD 3066.

1988. (has recordings of Humble Sonatas 1 and 2.)

Denley, J. 1992, Dark Matter, Compact disc. Tall Poppies (Sydney).

Denley, J. & Vennonen, K. 1989, Time of Non Duration. Compact disc. Split Records (Sydney) 002.

From the Pages of Experimental Musical Instruments, vol.5. Cassette. Experimental Musical

Instruments (Nicasio) Vol V.

Gilbert, L. 1991, Kakadu Billabong. Compact disc. Natural Symphonies (Camden).

Hazeldine, R. 1992, Alter. Cassette. Red House (Burnley).

Hopkins, S. & Lamb, A. 1990, Sky Song, Compact Disk and Cassette. ABC Records (Sydney) 838-

503-4.

Jackson, R. 1992, Marine Lives. Cassette. Robert Jackson (Burnely).

Further links

Australian Composer Biographies (www.amcoz.com.au/composers)

© Australian Music Centre (2007) — Permission must be obtained from the AMC if you wish to

reproduce this article either online or in print.

Subjects discussed by this article:

Ros Bandt

Percy Grainger

Robert Rooney

Barry McKimm

Syd Clayton

Keith Humble

Ian Bonighton

Stephen Dunstan

David Ahern

Geoffrey Collins

Roger Frampton

Greg Schiemer

Chris Mann

Ron Nagorcka



Bruce Woodcock

Dan Robinson

David Chesworth

Felix Werder

Richard David Hames

Tristram Cary

James Penberthy

Bill Fontana

Martin Wesley-Smith

Jon Rose

Carl Vine

Flederman

Simone De Haan

Philip Brophy

Ernie Althoff

Sarah Hopkins

Richard Vella

Rainer Linz

Rodney Berry

David Worrall

Rik Rue

Elwyn Dennis

Alistair Riddell

Alan Lamb

Amanda Stewart

Jas H. Duke

Jim Denley

Warren Burt

Warren Burt is a composer, performer, instrument builder, video artist, sound poet, and writer. After

almost 30 years in Melbourne, he moved to Wollongong in 2004, where he is now a research fellow at

the University of Wollongong and also teaches audio engineering at the Illawarra Institute of TAFE.

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