Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

ACMI Studio 1

Chris Mann is a poet, performer and composer who says: Language is the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do (where 'I' is defined by those changes for which I is required).

Poet, writer, performer, improviser Chris Mann's works for voice are based on complex texts, freely composed to allow a play of wit and humor. Working in Compositional Linguistics , he explores the textures and gestures of speech, with its rhythms and qualities of color, pitch, intonation and emphasis. Mann's unique style of reading dense, parenthetical texts at a high speed has brought him recognition as a unique performer and recording artist.

Chris Mann has been deconstructed, interpreted and set by Tom Buckner, Herbert Brun, John Cage, David Dunn, Gary Hill, Johnny Klimek, Annea Lockwood, Machine for Making Sense, Larry Polansky, Robert Rauschenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen...

His commissions include: John Cage, Paris Autumn Festival, Australian Biennale, Berliner Festspiele, Radio France, Ars Electronica, National Public Radio, Radio Telefis Eirann, BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Harvestworks, Dance Works, Dance Exchange, Lingua, Abraxas, Foundation for Contemporary Performance, Goethe Institut, BBC, Taklos Festival, ORF, Adelaide Festival, Experimenta, Interpretations.

Though he performs widely in USA and Europe, this is the first time he is returning to his native Australia since playing at the Adelaide Festival, 2000.

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website

Featured artists

• Performer Chris Mann