Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Karen Heath received her Masters degree for Music Performance in Clarinet (2005) from Monash University studying under Peter Handsworth and Robert Schubert. Her research area led her to Europe where she received lessons from Wolfgang Meyer and Suzanne Stephens. Directly after completing her final thesis, Karen performed In Freundschaft at the annual Stockhausen Course in Kuerten, Germany, working with Stockhausen in rehearsal and in performance and won 2nd prize that year. Returning in 2007, Karen performed again at the Stockhausen Course, playing the heavily choreographed clarinet solo Der Kleine Harlekin, for which she won another prize. Karen has worked with a litany of Australian artists, ensembles and bands, across a very broad range of sonic languages – from more popular acts such as Lior to the more arthouse ensembles such as the Libra Ensemble.

What she will play for JOLT: Heath will perform the work In Freundschaft (1977) for solo clarinet, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, which attends to depicting various sections and interval relationships through musical gesture. Regarding this work Stockhausen said that 'music is the most sublime means of cultivating our spiritual faculties in a generally valid, abstract manner - that is, to perceive vibrations, relationships between vibrations, organisms and processes of vibrations and thereby to grow in awareness, intelligence, mental fertility, polyphony, emotional richness and sensitivity'

Golden Fur is a trio comprising Samuel Dunscombe (clarinet/laptop) Judith Hamann (cello) and James Rushford (keyboard/viola), with an ongoing and dedicated interest in classical, experimental and improvised music. Focusing on more obscure contemporary and 20th century music, Golden Fur's quest is to bring a refreshing sonic palette to chamber music, adding volume and volatility by means of amplification, built instruments, electronics, film and dramaturgy.

What they will play for JOLT: The band states: "Golden Fur will carve a disjunct textural terrain with strings, winds and electronics. They will avoid the commonly fluid aspects of improvisational structure by drawing on their familiarity with radical classical formalists such as Feldman and Xenakis."

Featured non-Australian music: Stockhausen

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

Featured artists

• Performer Golden Fur
• Performer Karen Heath