Sounding Together: Dunsborough with Annette Krebs & Jim Denley

JANUARY 8-14, 2020

Sounding Together is a workshop which immerses its participants in creating together over five days in regional Australia, with the guidance of visiting experimental musicians/sound artists Annette Krebs (Berlin) & Jim Denley (Sydney). Placing an emphasis on play & improvisation, Sounding Together is a space where folks with idiosyncratic approaches to making art are nurtured & encouraged, whilst having plenty of time to reflect on and discuss concerns & challenges.

Sounding Together has no fixed schedule, and no final outcomes are expected of the participants, who are simply encouraged to pursue curiosities together as they emerge. Annette, Jim and Tone List offer gentle facilitation, but the vision of the workshop is to see what grows organically out of the group in a focused environment. Artists of all backgrounds and disciplines are therefor encouraged to apply, and a sound-based practice is not a pre-requisite.

Following the project’s first manifestation in Koorda in 2018, Sounding Together 2020 is situated on Wadandi Noongar boodja in Dunsborough, saltwater country, around three hours drive from Perth. The project occurs in a house near the beach, on the border between the town and Meelup Regional Park. Tone List offers ground transportation to workshop participants both to travel from Perth to the residency space, and to get to interesting sites, including national parks, rock formations and caves.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

Applications for Sounding Together 2020 have now closed. Sign up to our newsletter to receive announcements for future editions of the project.

The Sounding Together 2020 showing concert will be on January 14, 7pm at St Paul’s Church, Menora.

“[Sounding Together] was an opportunity to, in a fun and low pressure way, explore ways of improvising music, together, in small and large (full) ensemble, incorporating all we know about music and actively forgetting it, agreeing to partake in a shared experience where distinctions between sounds of the world and our ‘pseudomusical’ contributions blur; the rich sounds of nature; the bush in Koorda in a handful of different locations; starting at dawn til late at night. Jim Denley was a wonderful mentor and seemingly perfect fit for this benevolently anarchic situation. Sounding Together gave me a sense of confidence that my odd endeavours with music are more and more important in our digitized, atomised worlds.

Stuart Orchard (2018 participant)

The opportunity to connect with other musicians and spend time in Koorda, listening and responding to the environment was one that rarely presents itself as a professional musician. It gave me the chance to reflect on my own practice, learn from those around me, and make new music with a group of diverse and experienced creatives. More valuable still was the lack of predetermined outcomes and the trust that we could choose the way in we used our time. With this mentality we were truly free to take in the landscape, people and the place.

Leah Blankendaal (2018 participant)

ABOUT THE MENTORS

Annette Krebs was born in Germany (Saarland) and has been living in Berlin since 1993. A pioneering member of the highly influential Berlin Echtzeitmusik scene, Annette continues to explore the relationship between form & material by playing guitar in a radically extended manner & building sonic sculptures in her series of ‘Konstruktion’ works. Her work has been documented on such labels as Erstwhile, Another Timbre & Slub Music, and her collaborators include Taku Sugimoto, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Magda Mayas, Toshimaru Nakamura and Andrea Neumann, as well as our other mentor…

Jim Denley, who has left a profound mark on the Australian experimental music landscape. Perhaps best known as an improviser on saxophone and flute, and for remarkable recordings made in the Australian outback, he also makes radio works, including the Prix Italia-winning Collaborations in 1989, and directs the SplitRec label, releasing extraordinary music from Sydney's rich and idiosyncratic scene. He has been a member of pivotal Australian improvising groups The Relative Band and Machine for Making Sense, as well as current groups Mural and the Splinter Orchestra, and has collaborated with some of the world's most well-known improvising musicians. His role as a voice of encouragement and inspiration for the Sydney scene, and Australian scene more broadly, is truly palpable and we're incredibly excited to have him as a mentor for this project for the second time.

Tone List acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we work: the Whadjuk Noongar people. We also acknowledge the Wardandi Noongar people as the custodians of the area on which Dunsborough now stands. We wish to pay our respects to them, and to elders of both nations past, present and emerging, and acknowledge their ongoing contribution to culture and life in the region. We acknowledge tens of thousands of years of ancestral law, & that sovereignty over the place now known as Australia was never ceded.

Sounding Together 2020 has been made possible through the generous support of Tura New Music and the Goethe Institut.