Wednesday December 11
Doors 7pm
Music from 7:30
DRIFTWOOD (Aviva Endean + Nick Ashwood) ROOM40 Album launch show.
With supports from JUDITH HAMANN (solo) and JIM DENLEY (solo)
Tickets: ‘Pay what you can’ Donations over $25 will receive a limited edition Driftwood Scroll (!) with a download code for the album.
DRIFTWOOD is the new duo project of Nick Ashwood and Aviva Endean. Performing face to face, with back to back organs, Driftwood meets in a microtonal, buzzing, blurring landscape. Their unique instrumental line up features two re-tuned antique pump organs, which create a resonant backdrop for their primary instruments of clarinets (Aviva) and guitars (Nick). Their slowly evolving music draws influence from minimalist, drone and folk traditions to create a generous and shimmering sound, inspiring a hypnotic and transformational quality of listening in their audiences, who are momentarily immersed in this harmonic expanse. Their debut album is out on Room40, November 22 2024.
JUDITH HAMANN is a composer/performer born in Narrm/Melbourne, and currently based in Berlin. Described as an “extraordinary Australian cellist” (the Guardian), and as a composer who “destroys the fiction of the musician who lives and works outside conventional parameters and puts in its place a series of compositions that are fundamentally humane” (WIRE), their work encompasses performance, electro-acoustic composition, site specific generative work, and micro-tonal systems in a process based creative practice. In recent research, Hamann examines the acts of shaking and humming as formal and intimate encounters; interrogates ‘collapse’ as a generative imaginary surface; and considers the ‘de-mastering’ of bodies, both human and non-human, in settler-colonial heritage instrumental practice and pedagogy.
JIM DENLEY born Bulli, Illawarra Australia 22/1/57. His work with wind instruments emphasizes eco-musicality, spontaneity, and co-creation with Place and Musickin (human and more-than-human). From 1989 to 2003 he worked with the text/music group Machine for Making Sense. He’s deeply involved with the Splinter Orchestra, an improvising ensemble defined by its radical inclusivity. In Weather Volume 1: The Hidden Valley (splitrec 31) documents his engagement with the Budawang Mountains, south of Nowra, With Weather Volume 2 Gadigal Country (splitrec 32) is intra-play with locations around Sydney Harbour. As Weather Volume 3: Budawang Mountains returns to Yuin Country, and was released this year.