Curated by Jesse Budel. Nexus Arts. 1 Sep 2025
The combination of live performance with pre-recorded sound makes for a fascinating program in the first of two concerts, entitled COMA @ Nexus, curated by composer and sound artist Jesse Budel on the theme of acoustic ecology.
Budel has been working in the field of acoustic ecology for several years and undertook his PhD research in this area. It involves the recording of sounds from the environment and the manipulation of these recordings to produce sound art works, which are sometimes accompanied by live performance. In 2024 he won the Independent Arts Foundation’s Award for Innovation for his work.
The concert featured two works, firstly by the duo comprising vocalists and sound artists Georgia Oatley and Margie Jean Lewis, and then by Budel himself. Lewis composed and performed music for the current Art Gallery of South Australia exhibition Dangerously Modern.
Georgia Oatley and Margie Jean Lewis,
Nexus Arts, photo Chris Reid
Their composition entitled Soak comprised a blend of field recordings, mostly taken by Oatley from the Aldinga Beach Conservation Park during her Soundstream Emerging Composer’s Residency, over which they sang, and Lewis played violin. Their live elements responded to and were electronically mediated and mixed in with the field recordings to produce a complex orchestration of sound, such as the wind and waves washing on the shore, together with short samples of their vocal elements that were repeated and layered.
The sound was relayed through a public address system comprising an octophonic array — eight loudspeakers positioned around the perimeter of the auditorium so that audience members hear sounds emanating from all around them.
Being surrounded by these gentle, whispering sounds places the listener in a meditative but attentive state, as you focus on individual sounds and identify their origins. Such sound art recalls the work of the late American composer Pauline Oliveros, who encouraged the practice of deep listening.
Importantly, the use of field recordings draws attention to the environment, and Oatley, who was one of COMA’s emerging artists of 2021 and has an extensive catalogue of work, indicated in her talk that this work was a response to the drought affecting the Adelaide Hills. She also noted the impact of the algal bloom that has infested the waters off South Australia’s coast.
Prior to their performance, Oatley led the audience in a brief vocal work to put them into a suitably receptive state and to show how singing together creates a sense of community.
Jesse Budel, Nexus Arts, photo Chris Reid
For his performance, entitled Sanctuary x Mill, Budel performed at the piano in response to pre-recorded material relayed through the multi-channel, octophonic speaker array, so that there were nine sources of sound altogether — the eight speakers and the piano — each producing discrete sounds.
Budel indicated in his talk that the recordings were sampled from the playing of ‘ruined’ pianos located at the Murray Bridge Piano Sanctuary, which he founded some years ago, and a similar collection of such pianos at the Piano Mill in southeast Queensland which was established by the Clocked Out Duo, musicians and composers Vanessa Tomlinson and Erik Griswold. Both Budel and Griswold contributed to the recording in a musical exchange as part of an international project, the Weathered Piano Exchange.
The Murray Bridge Piano Sanctuary comprises several discarded upright pianos sitting outdoors in parkland and allowed to decay. Depressing the piano’s keys, plucking the corroded strings and tapping the body of such a piano produces sounds reminiscent of a well-maintained piano, but grossly distorted and out of tune. The sound of yellow-tailed black cockatoos, kookaburras and other birds can be heard in the background, bringing ambient environmental sounds into the mix.
In his performance, which comprises four movements, Budel improvised a response to the recorded material on Nexus’s grand piano, performing on the keys, tapping the piano’s case, and using small sticks to strike the piano’s strings directly.
The resulting orchestration of this diverse range of sounds was utterly absorbing, immersing the audience in a sonic world that situates the piano and its life cycle in the living environment. The sound is wondrous, but the message is also clear: the decaying piano may be seen as an allegory for human civilisation, with music as the transient, fragile expression of civilisation, and it obliquely recalls the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi — finding beauty in imperfection and impermanence.
This concert was a delight but also deeply thought-provoking. The use of electronic technology greatly expands the field of musical composition and permits the composer not only to draw on a much wider range of sonic material and effects but also to draw in the symbolism of the sound sources. The use of live, mediated performance together with pre-recorded samples creates a novel musical form that generates a unique aesthetic and enables the composer-performer to highlight important issues. Both works in this concert gently but firmly reminded listeners of the precarious environmental situation confronting us.
These concerts were conducted under the auspices of COMA (Creative Original Music Adelaide), a volunteer-led organisation involving many musicians that fosters the development and presentation of new music in Adelaide. Most of COMA’s events are held at the Wheatsheaf Hotel, but for this series, Nexus Arts has made available its auditorium, which better suits the performance of the compositions in the program.
Chris Reid
When: 1 Sep 2025
Where: Nexus Arts
More info: coma.net.au
The second concert in Budel’s acoustic ecology series will take place at Nexus on 15 September
Jesse Budel, photo Chris Reid
Nexus Arts. 23 Aug 2025
Iranian musician Maryam Rahmani arrived in Adelaide several years ago and soon began performing in a variety of settings, sometimes solo and sometimes in collaboration, while working in the family café. Through her engaging performances on the santur, a small hammered dulcimer whose origins can be found in ancient Mesopotamia, the kamancheh, a bowed string instrument found across central Asia, and as a vocalist, she has gradually established herself in the Adelaide music scene, attracting a devoted following.
Rahmani has now recorded an album, entitled Kamand, in collaboration with David Moran (cello), Sebastian Collen (piano and electronics), Gustavo Quintino (double bass), and Rosalie Cocchiaro (Flamenco rhythm), and the album was launched at Nexus Arts on 23 August, where she performed with Moran and Collen.
“Kamand” is Persian for lasso, and her album represents her personal journey of adaptation to her new culture while retaining the precious cultural elements of her native country. The music is a dialogue between cultures — largely improvised and experimental, it combines classical Persian music, the poetry of 13th and 14th century mystics, Saadi Shirazi and Hafez, and eclectic and experimental western idioms.
The resulting music is unique and captivating, as Rahmani, who has a music degree from Tehran University, incorporates modern, experimental styles into her work, while her collaborators respond to her traditional music and imbue the performance with their own musical sensibility.
Rather than relying on a jointly or individually composed manuscript, the musicians respond to each other intuitively to create a compelling web of delicate, hypnotic sounds. Spontaneous improvisation requires extensive musical knowledge and experience to succeed, and it succeeds wonderfully, both on the album and in performance.
This musical linking may be seen as an allegory for the process of inter-cultural communication and acculturation which creates an idiosyncratic and original hybrid form without diminishing each performer’s identity and origins.
The much-anticipated album launch at Nexus was greeted with great acclaim — Rahmani, Moran and Collen gave an enchanting performance, creating complex and at times mesmerising music.
Sebastian Collen, David Moran and Maryam Rahmani, photo: Chris Reid
Collen performed on a prepared piano, occasionally using electronic devices placed on the piano’s strings to generate a quiet drone or inserting objects between strings, in the manner of John Cage, to change subtly the western tuning of the piano to correspond to the complex microtonal Persian tuning system of the santur.
Rahmani and Collen opened the performance with Rahmani playing the santur and Collen at the piano, and Rahmani sang passionately in a velvety voice the ancient poems of Persia. For the second work with Collen, Rahmani performed on the kamancheh.
Rahmani was then joined by Moran for two pieces for cello, santur and voice, with Moran drawing on all his repertoire of extended bowing techniques to create a magical blend of sound with the santur. For the final work, the three musicians performed together, to the delight of the enthusiastic audience.
In her book On Not Speaking Chinese – Living Between Asia and the West (Routledge, 2001), cultural theorist Ien Ang addresses the problem of the relationship between diasporic communities and their host communities, and she proposes a third or in-between space, a space of togetherness rather than difference, where the two communities mingle creatively as equals.
Rahmani and her collaborators have perhaps created an in-between musical space where there is mutual respect for, and the expression of, divergent cultures within an innovative musical form. Rahmani stated at the concert that she now feels at home in Adelaide, and her acculturation has spawned a unique and compelling oeuvre. And in bringing Persian traditions to Australia, Rahmani has done much to demystify those traditions and promote understanding and appreciation.
The Kamand album is available at Bandcamp: maryamrahmani.bandcamp.com
For the track entitled Encanto, Rahmani has produced a YouTube video that combines imagery of Iran with that of her daily life in Adelaide to create a delightful and life-affirming montage. The video may be seen at youtube.com
Chris Reid
When: 23 Aug 2025
Where: Nexus Arts, Lion Arts Centre
Bookings: closed
Kamand album cover
by Kaspar Schmidt Mumm
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 15 Aug 2025
The term ‘rhapsody’ has its meaning rooted more in emotional response than it does as a formal label for a particular musical structure. But it’s an apt term, especially for particular compositions. Tonight’s program didn’t include any pieces that go by the title of ‘rhapsody’, but one in particular evoked an emotional response that is easily described as ‘rhapsodic’, and that was Ma Vlast: Vltava better known as The Moldau, composed by Smetana. The entire program was very much enjoyed by the Town Hall audience, although many of them left humming various iconic themes from The Moldau.
The program’s centre piece was Prokofiev’s Concerto for Violin No.2 in G Minor, Op.63, and the soloist was Kate Suthers, who is the ASO’s very own concertmaster. Suthers is a fine musician who can elicit the most sublime sounds from her 100-year-old Italian-made instrument. She is lyrical, dignified, and occasionally showy in contrast to her self-effacing demeanour. Tonight, she was onstage surrounded by her friends from the orchestra and superbly supported by Portuguese guest conductor Nuno Coelho. Between them, Suthers and Coelho brought meaning to the composition’s shifting contrasts, and they purposefully built and released tension while allowing the lyricism and passion (especially in the andante assai second movement) to come through. Coelho’s expressive left hand shaped and moulded wonderful articulation from the orchestra, particularly from the flutes, woodwinds and horns. At the concerto’s end, the audience brought Suthers back for three bows, and she and Coelho warmly embraced. Her unexpected encore with Sharon Grigoryan and David Sharp (celli) was just so sweet, as was Suther’s final acknowledgement to the audience shyly offered from the wings as if to say ‘what’s all the fuss about!! (Kate, you should be fussed over!)
The concert began with Dvorak’s Othello Overture, Op.93 B.174, which is not often performed. Dvorak uses musical motifs to represent the key characters in the Shakespearean play and armed with that information we can sense how the various character arcs play out, as suggested in Dylan Henderson’s comprehensive program notes. Coelho controlled the pace and passion of the piece but loosened his reigns on the orchestra at the overture’s intense climax. It was exciting! One might ascribe the label of ‘programmatic music’ to the composition, but knowing (or not) the story of Othello has little bearing on how it is enjoyed.
The second half of the program began with the ever popular The Moldau. Whereas Dvorak’s Othello Overture might not immediately (or at all!) evoke a programme and bring Shakespeare’s narrative to mind, Smetana’s The Moldau most certainly conjures mental images of a majestic river weaving its way through a dramatic landscape. One simply thinks water! Again, the flutes were at the top of their game, and Coelho took the whole piece at fair pace with acute dynamics to expose its drama.
The concert rounded out with another composition that is not frequently performed. Janacek’s Taras Bulba is a three-movement composition that looks at dramatic and tragic aspects of the life of the fictional 17th century Cossack warrior Taras Bulba (who is likely to be a composite of several historical personalities). Like its subject matter, the music is intense and is scored for a large orchestra, including a wide percussion section, harp and organ. Without knowing the music’s ‘programme’, it is unquestionably rhapsodic, and one clearly senses its drama. There are musical expressions of savagery, nationalistic pride, love and betrayal, despair, and deep sorrow. It has it all. Coelho carefully balanced the forces of the ASO to ensure musical expressions of violence did not dominate, especially in the horn and brass sections. Above all, nobility shone through.
Rhapsody was an unusual concert in the way it was programmed. Some favourites, and some less frequently played gems, with the might of the ASO on full display and with an exciting guest conductor at the helm.
Kym Clayton
When: 15 Aug
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Illuminate. Lion Arts Factory. 11 Jul 2025
Full house of fans and newbies aged 20s to 60s soaked up a brilliant night of four acts sharing one ethos across forms and styles. Break the rules. Leave any expectations at the door (unless you’re already a fan.)
Nidia and Valentina Magaletti know how to deceptively lure an audience into thinking they’re up for something in the house drone realm. It’s a gentle intro to their set, all peaceful, cruising waves until that gets solidly shifted into discordant hard notes in totally off cut slams and beats waking you up fast to the reality you better follow close.
Their set develops into rich battling phrases of live percussion and cut and thrust swarms of techno, house with attendant nips of drone that kept you swaying on your feet. The mix for the set was perfect, allowing gentlest live notes from cymbals and drums to come through.
It’s hard to say what makes this act so wonderfully addictive. The challenge of melding live percussion using the lightest instruments with full on electro is massive. The set would be great even if those elements were played out separately. Combining them has created something incredibly exciting in live performance. Those percussive beats don’t follow any old standards. In a western sense. More towards Japanese Taiko. Alive, vigorous, confident. Intertwined with the electric score working with and against those beats, you get a sound so urgently fresh corresponding to nothing out there, now or the past.
Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia-Crompton presents Los Thuthanaka are one wonderfully bizarre act, most particularly in using a keytar. Yes, that ubiquitous standard of 80s New Romanticism found its way into Unsound! So did the Mexican Band look, featuring blue band tops and hat.
What a wild set, largely based on the off-beat, at first with guitar against an effects pedal keyboard score. It was guitar voiced as violin at a million miles, singing against a sonorously cacophonous tech orchestration where the on beat never featured once. There’s definitely a dash of jazz sensibility to it. The set was absolutely the better for it. It kept the audience hooked into every moment.
The keytar was not used as traditionally expected. This being the moment the set totally changed tack, got harder, faster. No, the keytar was played as a keyboard proper, sans effects. Richer, deeper tones evolved, a greater harmony with the tech score. In effect a classical foundation was shredded, blended, diced, crushed and rebuilt into something completely new.
Aya presents Hexed was easily the slickest set of the night and the only one focused on incorporating voice and body in performance, heavily allied with video.
Transfixing sums the set up. Aya is resolutely bold in using the table holding lap-top and controls,as an extra stage, as well as microphone stand. The voice is commanding, part rap, hard, harsh, melding perfectly with an ardently dark, pensive, yet hypnotically rapid bpm score that soaks its way into your bones.
Pushing the voice into, rather than accompanying, the score is the thing to this act. It amplifies the themes of nightmare, confusion, rage spanning the set, enhances the sense of a bad spell hanging over life. A spell transfixes. A hex curses. Hexed will probably stay in the minds of the audience for quite a while.
Yellow Swans, last here 20 years ago, were delighted to discover fans who saw them then in the 2005 audience reckoned to be about five people. This night’s full house gladdened their hearts.
Yellow Swans are a guitar and electro duo definitely in the drone genre. Two long numbers formed their set in which guitar is sequenced, distorted in rippling waves of alternating bass and in case of first number, lyrics.
Coming in at 30 minutes, the first piece had you rooted to the ground or finding a groove that got you moving. No in between. You could have relaxed in a lounge and let it all wash over you.
To understand the full scope of Yellow Swans approach is to hear the second song’s beginning.
Crystal clear upper range guitar chords are offered. Slowly, they are distorted and subsumed into effects talking them into territory beyond an electric guitar’s capability in a standard effect pedal set up. All operated by hand, not foot, offering capacity for an output wider, richer, and extremely asynchronous.
David O’Brien
When 11 July
Where: Lion Arts Factory
Bookings: Closed
Glyn Lehmann
Adelaide Hills-based composer Glyn Lehmann is a songwriter and an arranger for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble, theatre and television. He is also a poet and in his seven-movement song cycle As The Universe Expands, Lehmann sets to music his own meditative poetry in which he considers the nature of life amidst the evolution of the universe.
His composition As The Universe Expands, for bass voice, oboe and piano, was commissioned in 2024 by Chamber Music Adelaide for performance as part of its Perspectives series of concerts for voice, and it was premiered at the Adelaide Town Hall on the tenth of May of that year.
It is often the case that new work, no matter how attractive or significant, is only ever performed once or twice and is then neglected, and so the subsequent recording of this worthy work for release as a CD is most welcome. The CD was recently recorded at UKARIA Cultural Centre, the perfect venue for such music, and it is scheduled for official release on 26 June.
For its 2024 premiere, As The Universe Expands was performed by bass Pelham Andrews, oboist Celia Craig and pianist Penelope Cashman, and the same excellent ensemble was engaged for the recording. Oboist Celia Craig is a former principal oboe with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and has performed nationally and internationally with orchestras and smaller ensembles. In 2024 she was the soloist in Anne Cawrse’s brilliant new concerto for cor anglais The Rest is Silence, with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
Celia Craig, Glyn Lehmann, Penelope Cashman, Pelham Andrews, Photo: Jason Mildwaters
Bass Pelham Andrews is a regular performer with State Opera of South Australia and performed in the 2022 premiere of the operatic oratorio Watershed – The Death of Dr Duncan in the Adelaide Festival.
Pianist Penelope Cashman, who is also a vocal coach, is a well-known collaborator and is especially known for her work with singers.
In its seven thoughtful movements, As The Universe Expands reflects on the emergence of life through the coalescence of atoms and becomes active before it ultimately returns to a primal atomic state.
The first element of the work is Prelude, which opens with a slow, quiet, rather mournful oboe passage with twinkling piano highlights before it develops into a steady rhythm. Celia Craig creates a mesmerising, unworldly sound with the oboe, suggesting a feeling of endless space and transporting the listener into a state of receptivity.
In the first stanza, entitled As the Universe Expands, the phrase ‘As the universe expands’ is simply repeated several times. Pelham Andrews voice is clear and powerful and the oboe swirls around his voice, with the gentle piano evoking dancing atomic particles.
In the second stanza, Atoms, the piano’s steady dotted notes suggest pinpoints of light while Andrews sings:
Atoms scattering
Atoms gathering
Becoming
Single Breath opens with an exquisite oboe phrase before Andrews sings:
With a breath
A single breath
A beating heart
Becoming
With a breath
The Universe expands
Within a life
Becoming
The work continues until the final stanza, Still, becoming:
With a breath
A final breath
A silent heart
Still, becoming
Atoms scattering
Atoms gathering
As the universe expands
In depicting life forming, growing and eventually dissolving back into the cosmos from which it emerged, Lehmann sees life up close, from a very personal and emotional viewpoint, and also sees life in a detached, philosophical way, as if reconciling himself to the inevitability of life and death.
In developing the work, Lehmann was evidently affected by the passing of his mother, and he was influenced by the writings of novelists Kurt Vonnegut and Alan Lightman, physicist Richard Feynman and cosmologist Carl Sagan, thus witnessing her life, and all life, within the evolutionary mechanics of the universe.
Andrews, Craig and Cashman create magic with Lehmann’s beautiful composition and the production of the CD is of the highest standard. Musically, these brief pieces are delightful gems and the story they tell so concisely is compelling.
Chris Reid
The CD is available at Bandcamp: glynlehmann.bandcamp.com
More info: glynlehmann.com