Peter Knight on ‘Diomira’

This strange sense of yearning and of trying to capture the essence of a memory and understanding that memory is fallible and you can never really re-experience something as it was, I was interested in that and interested in the way that music can communicate that gradual decay of memory. So the piece is kind of about patterns and the decay of patterns, it’s about memory and the beauty of decay.

Peter Knight: I live in Melbourne’s inner west and the Way Out West music is a response to that neighbourhood

“If you want to actually follow the tradition of jazz, you have to respond to your story and the place that you live in. Jazz has always been questioning and curious and absorbing other influences. And this is one of the most exciting things about being an Australian musician, being surrounded by lots of different cultures”.

Review: Of Deities and Demons – Australian Art Orchestra and Baliphonics, in ecstatic trance

Of Deities and Demons grew directly out of AAO Artistic Director Peter Knight’s meeting with drummer and Baliphonics leader Samudi Suraweera during a visit Knight made to Sri Lanka. The conversations and the friendship that grew between these two musicians led to the idea of meshing the experimental inclinations of the AAO with the yak bera (demon drum), and other traditional instruments of Sri Lanka.

CD Review: The Wide Alley – by Clocked Out

“This would have to be one of the most unique recordings that I have encountered in recent times – a listening experience that once heard cannot be forgotten.” Read this review by Gerry Koster of The Wide Alley, a new CD from ten-piece ensemble including five Chinese musicians and local names Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson, Robert Davidson, Peter Knight and Adrian Sherriff…