Elision began life performing at the Footscray Community Arts Centre in Melbourne circa 1986.
With a 16-strong membership that includes some of the world’s leading musicians who have defined contemporary instrumental technique with their recordings and publications.
With 30-plus years experience, the ensemble has focussed its practice on exploring musical form with cross-art form and transcultural perspectives, providing inspiring models of collaborative practice that has had an impact on succeeding generations of artists.
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Three-plus decades have passed since the Elision ensemble first began performing… no doubt that time has flown; how was the group evolved since the days at the Footscray Community Arts Centre?
[Daryl Buckley, Elision Artistic Director] Goodness. The membership now consists of 16 players who live all over the world.
Our contrabass player hails from Perth, our clarinets live in Cologne and Bern respectively, our cellist is in Paris and a bunch of us are in Melbourne. I have become a travel agent.
The ensemble has developed a serious level of international respect and regard for several close-working relationships it has with composers such as Liza Lim, Richard Barrett, Aaron Cassidy, Timothy McCormack, Brian Ferneyhough and others. Over a period of time this has blossomed into a rich performance practice that has become influential for many different composers and performers around the world.
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Can you pinpoint a particularly memorable show/ tour from the past 30 years that sticks in the memory bank?
That is hard. One that doesn't stick in the memory is Trondheim. Either we were abducted by aliens or had too much aquavit to drink.
On our very first tour in 1991, there was a close-call with members of our ensemble hopping into unmarked vehicles at an airport in Sardinia. We have had instruments arrived smashed or shipped off to the wrong city. And had amazing performing experiences in Moscow, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin.
The ensemble is about to give two concerts for the very first time in mainland China at the Shanghai New Music Festival. I'm really looking forward to that.
Elision is known for pushing physical boundaries in search of certain kinds of visceral, expressive experiences; has it ever turned negative with a crowd or audience member in the past?
Yes! There were fisticuffs among some Brisbane audience members attending the opening night of the Navigator opera at the Judith Wright Centre in 2008. I think Kosky's production was to overwhelming for them.
Certainly at the time Barrie was very much into the display and fetishisation of near-naked aged bodies and the assault of time, the effects of gender blurring and mortality upon the human form. I believe that an audience member seeking something reassuring along the lines of Phantom of the Opera might have been quite disturbed.
What do you have planned for the show at RPAC in Brisbane for the Cleveland Contemporary Music Event?
My particular highlights would be Aaron Cassidy's 'The Wreck Of Former Boundaries' and Richard Barrett's 'World-Line'. I love the sonic extremity of both of these works.
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How does an ensemble remain relevant for so long as well as maintain healthy relationships within the group to continue performing together?
A very profound sense of shared purpose. Elision now has some of the most amazing instrumentalists and musicians that can be found anywhere. But what is important is who we are when we are together. It is that attitude of being a family of musicians.
The achievements of the group's ensemble is world-class with links to a host of Australian and international arts bodies and a host of commissioned works… how integral has Elision being to opening doors for other Australian acts in the arts field?
We have helped a very long line of people now. I can think of conductor Simon Hewett (currently in Hamburg), clarinettists Carl Rosman (with Musikfabrik) and Richard Haynes (ensemble Proton in Bern), composers Liza Lim, saxophonist/composer Timothy O'Dwyer, composer John Rodgers and on and on and on.
It's been wonderful to see a lot of these people recently referred to in a history book of the field since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Entitled 'After The Fall', this book by Tim Rutherford Johnson contextualises the impact of Elision and its artists on the genre. Very gratifying to read.
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When creating new works, what do you look for with the musical material?
It is all about the spirit of inquiry and the relationship between the ensemble as a group of idiosyncratic musicians and the composer. Out of that the work then grows.
How long usually does it take to master a new body of work or a performance pieced?
Some works such as Richard Barrett's world-line, which is a major part of our RPAC programme, are still being mastered! I've worked on sections of this composition now for over five years and am just getting to a comfortable level of control.
Part of the challenge is that my part has been written for the electric laps-steel guitar. So the composition is interrogating the possibilities of that instrument and defining what it can be capable of at a very high level indeed. It is giving birth to something new and creating a new performance practice and technical vocabulary. That is not done overnight.
In your travels you've no doubt stumbled across some unique instruments; any that particularly standout?
At the moment we are about to work again in Shanghai with Wu Wei who is a master of the 37-pipe Sheng. This is an instrument that is played through breaths from the nose.
The pipes require regular moistening by being sat in a bowl of boiled water. The instrument is so amazingly flexibly in its sonorities. Absolutely stunning. And I love the expression that Wu Wei brings to the Sheng.
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Is Elision's music strictly for fans of experimental, jazz music? Or do you encourage people who haven't explored the world of jazz to experience something a little different?
Like any form of experimental art our music requires a degree of openness and curiosity from the listener. The hardest, most challenging demand to fling at any audience member nowadays is the challenge to listen. We are immersed in a saturated and rapid-fire visual environment.
I would describe our art form as contemporary classical, experimental classical. I've also heard it called art music. Perhaps it is not too far, certainly in its improvised aspects, from the work of people in the experimental jazz area such as Peter Evans or Evan Parker.
How would you describe Elision's performance style to an alien?
Welcome home; here is something that will sound familiar! AND have we met before? In Trondheim?
