NEAL presents: Moths & Stars / Shadow Phase | Double Album Launch

Celebrated Australian musicians Aviva Endean and Peter Knight perform solo material from their new albums releasing this October on Room40.

Shadow Phase, Peter Knight

Moths & Stars, Aviva Endean

Aviva and Peter have a long musical association through a diverse range of bands and projects in Australia that also regularly tour internationally. Each has recently recorded solo albums for the iconic Australian label Room40, which is dedicated to singular creative expression. Both releases dive deep into the possibilities of extended instrumental performance and electroacoustic approaches. Aviva is a virtuosic clarinetist with an unmistakable solo language created with preparations and augmentation to her various wind instruments, including miniature speakers, pedals, pipes. Peter has developed a lush language for the trumpet that draws on the creative thread set in motion for the instrument by Jon Hassell. He uses delays, tape loops, and field recordings to create a distinctive world of sound. Shadow Phase was recently previewed in Headphone Commute, “A carefully curated exercise in reflective restraint, dreamy atmospherics, ebbing dynamics.

About

Perpetually curious, composer/trumpeter/sound artist Peter Knight’s practice exists in the spaces between categories, between genres, and between cultures. In recent years Peter has emerged as a significant international force in contemporary music, initiating commissions, collaborations, and performances with a diverse range of artists including recently, Anthony Braxton (USA), as a soloist with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Nicole Lizée (Canada), Amir ElSaffar (USA), Daniel Wilfred (Arnhem Land), Senyawa (Indonesia), Baliphonics (Sri Lanka), Hyelim Kim (Korea/UK), Paul Grabowsky (Australia) and Alvin Lucier (USA). He has performed his music at some of the most significant festivals and venues in the world including recently: London Jazz Festival, Pierre Boulez Saal (Berlin), JazzFest Berlin, Soundstreams (Toronto), and National Forum of Music (Wroclaw, Poland).
Peter has released 12 albums of his music on various labels and in 2022 a new solo album, Shadow Phase, is coming out on the iconic Room40 label. Peter has also been Artistic Director of one of Australia’s leading contemporary ensembles, the Australian Art Orchestra, for the last ten years. In addition, Peter regularly composes for film, sound installations, and contemporary theatre, most notably with acclaimed performer/director, Tamara Saulwick (Chamber Made).

Aviva Endean is a composer, sound artist and clarinetist. Her practise focuses on creating spaces for a deep engagement with sound, with the hope that attentive listening can connect people with each other and their environment. Aviva uses her mastery of the bass clarinet and an eagerness to extend and develop its potential to uncover new sounds and musical possibilities for the instrument, often working with instrumental modifications, extensions and lo-fi electronics. Described as ‘captivating’, ‘sophisticated’, & ‘trance-inducing’, Aviva has performed and presented her work worldwide, and has released solo albums on SOFA (Norway) and Room40 (Australia).

Aviva is also active as a performance maker and sound artist, creating immersive, participatory and unusual contexts for listening, as well as regularly composing for interdisciplinary projects, notably with Australia’s leading contemporary dance company Chunky Move, with her sound design for Token Armies winning a Greenroom award for best composition for dance in 2019. Aviva has won numerous awards and fellowships including being awarded composer in residence at the Peggy Glanville Hicks house in 2021, The Freedman Fellowship, the APRA AMCOS Art Music award and has been finalist for the Melbourne Prize and The EG music award for experimental performance.

Presented at Platform Arts by the New and Experimental Arts Laboratory (NEAL).