Artists

austraLYSIS

An international music and intermedia ensemble, creating, performing and
producing new work, composed and improvised.
Director: Roger Dean

austraLYSIS incorporates Lysis, the former European contemporary music group, also founded by Roger Dean (double bass; keyboards; composer; computer interaction) and Hazel Smith (violin; text-creator). austraLYSIS has premiered and/or commissioned more than 100 compositions from many countries. It has performed in most parts of the world, including Europe (UK, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany ), Asia (Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Malaysia), USA, and Australasia (firstly at Sydney Opera House for the ABC). austraLYSIS has made more than fifteen commercial sound recordings, intermedia cd-roms and web-pieces, and its broadcasts have been heard all over the world. It is committed to both composed and improvised new music and intermedia. austraLYSIS presented a concert devoted to Stockhausen on the South Bank in London in 1980, in association with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the composer himself; and it has given many performances of his works elsewhere. It has similarly focused on the work of Xenakis, Cage and Reich.

austraLYSIS places particular emphasis on compositions from Australia and the UK. It has gained the collaboration of some of the most imaginative performers involved with contemporary music in Australia, including Simon Barker, Tony Buck, Ken Edie, Nick McBride and Daryl Pratt (percussion); Anthony Chesterman (oboe/cor anglais); Laura Chislett (flute); Elliott Dalgleish and Sandy Evans (saxophones, flute); Peter Jenkin (clarinets); Georges Lentz (violin); Stephanie McCallum (piano); Georg Pedersen (cello); Ian Shanahan (recorders); Greg White (computer interaction; sound design). Having originally been primarily a performance group, austraLYSIS is now primarily a creative group, focusing on electroacoustic and computer-interactive music and polymedia. Other agendas within austraLYSIS' work include the presentation of works from elsewhere on the Pacific rim.

austraLYSIS also creates jazz and improvised musics and especially sound, text and performance art; and music related to other artistic media, such as the visual arts [for example compositions by Tom Phillips (UK), collaboration with Alan Davie (UK), and music related to the painters Fred Williams and Michael Johnson (Australia), and Frans Widerberg (Norway)]. It has been involved in developing music/movement works such as 'TimeDancesPeace' with Kinetic Energy; in the presentation of a radio documentary programme by Roger Dean on improvisation; and in ABC sound and text commissions, such as 'Nuraghic Echoes' (1993), and 'Poet without Language' both by Hazel Smith and Roger Dean, the latter of which was nominated for the Italia Prize. austraLYSIS' breadth of style is illustrated on its several recordings and on the many previous recordings by the member musicians. An unusual double cd comprising two 60 minute improvisations, 'The Next Room' is available on Tall Poppies (TP 050) joining the earlier 'Moving the Landscapes' (Tall Poppies TP 007). In addition, 'Windows in Time' (TP 039) represents a range of austraLYSIS' work, with music from Xenakis to Cresswell, as well as by members of the group. austraLYSIS has also contributed to Hazel Smith's sound and performance-text cd, 'Poet Without Language' (Rufus RF 005). Amongst its most recent releases are 'Walking the Faultlines', chosen for inclusion on the International Computer Music Association 'Cyberquilt' cd-rom; 'Hope', chosen for cd-release and installation presentation at the 1998 Inter-Society for Electronic Arts conference in the UK; and 'Wordstuffs : The City and The Body' commissioned by the Australian Film Commission for their Stuff-Art site. One of austraLYSIS' recordings was listed as a Record of the Year, by Records and Recordings, UK; and several have been nominated for ARIA awards.

The austraLYSIS Electroband is our unique forum for computer-interactive networked improvisation, using both acoustic and electroacoustic sound, compositional patches written in MAX, and sound processing live and mediated by such patches. The Electroband, a trio of Roger Dean, Sandy Evans and Greg White, is developing both as a single 'hyperinstrument' (in the terminology of Tod Machover), and as a polymorphic trio with orchestral and industrial sound capacities. The first austraLYSIS Electroband CD, 'Present Tense' (TP 109) was released in late 1997.

austraLYSIS undertakes engagements for arts centre, festival, broadcasting and recording work and for international touring. It has given seven batches of overseas performances since 1990, and in 1992-3 performed all over Australia. In its most recent foreign tour, it was featured in three events at the leading new music festival in UK, Huddersfield, and on BBC Radio 3. It has the support of the Australia Council for some of its future promotions and much of its work is recorded by the ABC. austraLYSIS is also concerned with educational work and other means of fostering appreciation.

Website: http://www.australysis.com