Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

An internationally recognised pianist specialising in new music, GABRIELLA SMART has performed extensively in Australia and internationally, premiering over 80 new works for solo piano by Australian and international composers in Australia, Europe and China, including at the Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide International Festivals, MONA MOFO, TURA (Perth) and in Europe and China (Forbidden Palace Beijing, Shanghai Conservatory, Lyceum Theatre Shanghai). In 2010, she represented Australia at the World Expo in Shanghai. She has been commissioned by the Australian Dance Theatre, the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Film Festival, Perth International Festival, ABC Classic and Art Zoyd (France). Gabriella also performs and composes on a range of MIDI and synthesiser keyboards, and the Electric Cristal, an instrument created by Dylan Crismani in 2021. Working across an array of electronics, acoustic instruments, samples and field recordings, she employs electronic means to fuse and distil the natural resonance of acoustic instruments. Gabriella is Artistic Director of Soundstream New Music and has close 50-year family ties to the Inarma Choir in the Titjikala community in the Northern Territory, conducting music workshops there since 2015. With Cat Hope in 2018 she established Summers Night Project, inspired by Anne Summers’ Women’s Manifesto (2017), and aims to grow the gender diversity of composers in music programs in Australia and support and mentor female and non-binary composers. For this event, Gabriella will perform "Witness" by Connor D’Netto and will premiere her own new work, "Nuance". TINA HAVELOCK STEVENS is an improvisatory drummer and works with moving and still image, sound, performance, painting and public art. Her sensibilities from playing music and as an observational documentary film maker fuse and mix to create intimate, immersive art experiences that forge connections between personal histories and public, often historic locations. Her sound works evoke atmospheric layers of social, cultural and environmental stories and spaces. From sturdy beginnings in the legendary post punk band Plug Uglies to solo spontaneous durational drumming, she was winner of the prestigious 65th Blake Prize (2018), and the 55th Fisher's Ghost Prize (2017). She featured in The National in 2019 at the MCA Sydney, drummed underwater for Submerge at MONA FOMA in 2013 and exhibited and live scored her large-scale film THUNDERHEAD for Dark Mofo and Performance Space in 2016), among many other installations and performances nationally and internationally. Her live improvised performances are rare and more often in duo form. Most recently Tina performed with long-time collaborator guitarist Liberty Kerr at the Volume Festival in 2024, supporting Kim Gordon in The Tank at AGNSW. For the Beechworth Biennale, Tina and noise bassist Cat Hope spontaneously composed inside an empty pool inside an empty gaol as a site specific artwork. In previous lives she was also in The Titanics and The Mumps, with stints in Crow and Chicks on Speed.

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website or by email to duxextra@gmail.com

Featured artists

• New work by Gabriella Smart
• Music of Connor D'Netto
• Jazz/improvisation by Tina Havelock Stevens