Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Set under the stars in Fremantle Arts Centre’s evocative Inner Courtyard, Soft Soft Loud is a highly intimate way to experience the best in progressive, post classical music. The series is presented as part of the Perth International Arts Festival program and has a reputation for pairing cutting edge, boundary-pushing compositions with an ensemble of WA's best musicians.

In 2014 we feature acclaimed Brooklyn composer Bryce Dessner. A Yale graduate and guitarist in The National, Dessner has emerged as one of the most exciting talents in new music today. Beyond his role in genre-defying music ensemble Clogs, Dessner’s collaborators include luminaries such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, David Lang and Sufjan Stevens. In November the composer released Aheym, a critically lauded album performed by the Kronos Quartet.

Works hand-picked by Dessner from his catalogue will be performed by the SSL ensemble and as a rare treat fo Perth audiences, the composer himself will perform his work for solo guitar, Feedback Counterpoint. The evening will also include a work composed by cutting edge New York composer Nico Muhly, a prodigious talent and contemporary of Dessner.

In another coup, this year’s Soft Soft Loud will include the premiere of a work by WA composer James Ledger. An APRA Art Music Award and ARIA winner, Ledger was resident composer for the 2013 Australian Festival of Chamber Music and has recently toured his acclaimed song cycle, Conversations with Ghosts with Paul Kelly, to a rapturous response nationally.

Featured non-Australian music: Dessner, Muhly

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website or by phone on (08) 6488 5555

Featured artists

• New work by James Ledger