Listening Session no.6

'The Listening Sessions’ invite the audience into the collective musical mind of a group of musicians to experience an extended improvisation. This process focuses on really listening, an essential element of creating music in the moment. The audience is invited to listen in the same way and experience this creative journey that the musicians are making together. The musicians will create 80 minutes of new music by listening deeply to each other while improvising over a drone. Nothing will have been written or rehearsed beforehand. Nothing will have been discussed about the unfolding music except to choose the pitch of the drone that will be the foundation upon which the musicians build their music. It is this ‘Process' of creating the music rather than the ‘Product of the completed composition that is given precedence. In this way 'The Listening Sessions’ redefine music as a process rather than a commodity.

The 3 musicians are: Leo Dale (Tenor sax), Tunji Beier (South Indian and other percussion) and Linsey Pollak (bass clarinet and self created woodwind instruments).

Leo Dale: Leo is a musician and an audio and video producer. He collaborates with musicians in Australia and India to produce recordings and videos for the concert series From Now OM. His videos have been viewed over 10 million times on Youtube and his chill out recordings under the name Mantra LIVE are listened to over 400,000 times per year. He travels in Australia and India presenting concerts and working with musicians of many cultures. He is also an accomplished improvisor and for this reason he has been invited to travel from Melbourne for Listening Session no. 6.

Tunji Beier: At the age of ten Tunji was studying Yoruba drumming in Nigeria. Six years later he travelled to Bangalore in South India to study percussion for three years at the Karnakata College of Percussion under the mentorship of Mr TAS Mani. This intense period of study enables Tunji to bring his mastery of the mridangam, kanjira, ghatam and morsing to a huge variety of projects with musicians such as: Charlie Mariano, Bill Cobham, T.A.S.Mani, R.A.Ramamani, Trilok Gurtu, and Zakir Hussain.

Linsey Pollak: Linsey is well known all around Australia as a musician, instrument maker, composer, musical director and community music facilitator. He has toured his solo shows extensively in Europe, Nth America and Asia since 1996. He established The Multicultural Arts Centre of WA and has co-ordinated five Cross-cultural Music Ensembles in three different States. He has also performed at most major Festivals around Australia and recorded over 40 albums (solo & with various groups). Over the years he has created many musical projects with 'The Listening Sessions being the most recent.