The tuba player Robin Hayward, has been based in Berlin since 1998. Through a combined conceptual and empirical approach he has radically extended the tuba’s potential in both the areas of noise and microtonality. His compositions for other instruments reflect a similar medium-specific approach. As an interpreter his specific playing ability has been utilized by leading composers such as Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff and Peter Ablinger. He has toured extensively both solo and in collaboration. His research to date has been documented in his solo CD Valve Division and numerous collaborative releases. Active in many contemporary music ensembles including Phosphor, Ictus and Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, in 2005 he founded Zinc & Copperworks for continued research into brass instruments.
Anthea Caddy is an Australian cellist who applies a distinctive and idiosyncratic set of techniques to her instrument. Exploiting the cello’s textural, spatial and dynamic capabilities she draws reference points from electro-acoustic and contemporary compositional approaches to inform her practice. Interested in the relationship between electronic and acoustic sound, she seeks to consolidate both the conceptual and practical aspects of these two media, articulating techniques and concepts indigenous to digital spatialisation in her performances and recordings. She has toured nationally and internationally performing in festivals and series solo and in collaboration within a diversity of contexts.
Newton Armstrong is an Australian composer and performer working mostly with electronic instruments. In recent years his work has focused on the development of enactive and situated approaches to performance with self-built digital instruments. He has collaborated with a diverse group of musicians, writers, dancers, choreographers, and sound, film, video and installation artists, and has toured and appeared at a number of festivals across Australia, Europe and the United States. He currently teaches in the Electroacoustic Music program at Dartmouth College.
As a part of New York’s downtown community in the early ‘90’s, David Watson came to a fork in the road and took the less traveled. He set aside explorations on the guitar to create a new music language for the highland bagpipe. He has worked with many musicians, notably Lee Ranaldo, Tony Buck, Shelly Hirsch, Ikue Mori and Chris Mann. This year has seen two new releases that have been considerable time in the making. “Throats,” his CD of bagpipe music with two guest vocalists, released in April on Ecstatic Peace, and “Fingering an Idea,” a double CD released in August on XI. Both have been met with acclaim, and possibly a little surprise. This concert at ISSUE Project Room celebrates their life in the world.