The Creative Music Intensive (CMI) residency, established in 2014, is conceived to provide a unique professional development program for musicians from Australia and internationally that explores this meeting of cultures and practices.
The 2018 Intensive builds on 2016 -17 with a continued focus on Arnhem Land manikay (song) and Korean approaches to melody and rhythm. In addition, to the regular faculty we are expanding our focus on female artists with a wonderful performer from Seoul, Ko Myungjin, and with the inclusion of women from Ngukurr in Arnhem Land.
They will join us in Tarraleah in the Tasmanian Central Highlands with the wonderful trumpeter Scott Tinkler, p’ansori singer Bae Il Dong (Seoul), vocal artist Sunny Kim (Seoul), Daniel and David Wilfred from Arnhem Land,musicologist and scholar, Sam Curkpatrick, drummer Chloe Kim (Seoul/Sydney), bassist Christopher Hale, and Australian Art Orchestra artistic director, Peter Knight.
The former hydro-electric town of Tarraleah in Tasmania will provide the setting for the Creative Music Intensive. Remote and steeped in history, the location is integral to the residency and is ideal for an immersive musical experience separated from urban distractions. Once the home to hundreds of hydroelectric pioneers, Tarraleah is now a unique estate nestled into the remote Tasmanian highlands. First scouted in the late 1800s, the site was initially cleared as part of the Hydro development in the area during the 1920s and 1930s. After thriving as an industrial town for half a century, the town closed altogether before it was purchased in 2006 and transformed. The Creative Music Intensive sessions will be based in Tarraleahs Great Hall and the original town church, and participants will stay in the original pioneer houses.
The twelve-day practice-based residency is made up of daily lectures, small ensemble workshops and open group practical sessions bringing together the extraordinary cultural traditions of Arnhem Land manikay (song) and Korean traditional p’ansori. These approaches to human voice sound very different but there is much that also links them: stories, improvisation, a focus on extreme refinement of vocal techniques, and repetitive/hypnotic rhythmic elements.
The CMI daily program is divided up into the transmission of specific information and skills development during morning workshops presented by the leaders, and the practical application of these skills in the context of music practice in the afternoons/evenings. These sessions will explore the meeting points of these two ancient musical traditions, and will encompass a diverse range of influences including Arnhem Land manikay, Korean p’ansori singing, live electronic processing of instruments, jazz instrumental and vocal improvisation, complex rhythmicide as and extended instrumental techniques.
The central objective we maintain is to facilitate and encourage collaboration through the development of new music, using tools and ideas discussed and taught during the course of the residency.
