Defiance Gallery hosts an afternoon of music performance and art conversation with talks by current exhibiting artists, Pamela Honeyfield and Michelle Hungerford.

Chaos Collective - Isobel Archer (piano), Ben Lopes (composition, guitars), Saskia Shearer (percussion) and Maddy Briggs (composition, electronics, bass) - modern instrumental performance treading the line between Classical, Electronic and Experimental, morphs together electro-acoustic improvisations, new original compositions, and published chamber compositions.

Final gig of the year.

Hinano Fujisaki - EWI
Jordan Chung - Keytar and synthesizers
Sabine Tapia - Electric Bass
Jeremy Yong - Guitar, pedals and effects
Manson Luk - Fired

CHRIS CAINES & EMMA X ZHANG are artists working across installation, sound, and performance. Chris explores immersive media and spatial interventions, while Emma focuses on materiality, movement, and the sensory experience of environments.
MICHAIL MATHIOUDAKIS as MARCIA MANHUNTER artist and performer working through drag, screen, photography, and zine-making.
ŽIVA (Lucija Ivšić) artist, researcher, and lecturer working at the crossroads of music, sound technology, and cultural heritage. Her sound blends Slavic-pop, darkwave, and experimental electronica.

Peter Dasent - Piano
Phillip Johnston - Alto Saxophone
Playing With Monk’s repertoire traverses the music of jazz icon Thelonious Monk, the film composers Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, early jazz and blues classics, and their own compositions for film and jazz.

Traditional music from the borderlands of Iran and Afghanistan - music of Greater Khorasan.

Badieh is Spain’s Michel Gasco (rubab, oud) and Iran’s Mohammad Miraghazadeh (tar, setar).

Avaye Rood is a Persian-fusion ensemble rooted in traditional and folk music, integrating Iranian instruments like tar, barbat, setar, santoor, tanbour, kamancheh, and tombak with double bass, electric guitar, drums and Indian tabla.

With Special Guests Moussa et Malin: Moussa Diakite (Mali) and Malin Fode Sylla (Guinea)

Tokyo bassist and visual artist JUKE MUSHINO at Lazy Thinking performing with fretless bass. Mushino’s work is strongly influenced by surrealism and industrial music.

Completing the line up are Monoeater, Atavus Infectum, and Defektro.

Niki Johnson (percussionist, composer-performer) & Shervin Mirzenali's (composer, sound design) collaboration blurs the line between composer and performer, theatre and music, and experimental and conventional instrument design. This newest project involves using vibrating objects as methods of activating different percussive materials, and secret contact microphones as methods of listening small sounds.

From Thursday to Saturday, the installation opens to the public. The week culminates in a special ticketed solo performance by the artist, presented alongside their installation.

Julius Schwing (TAS) - solo guitar
Julius’s distinct improvising style and compositions are heavily influenced by the dramatic natural surroundings of his home on Bruny Island and a life lived in constant contact with this environment.

Alex Raupach & Jack Rosenzweig
Alex Raupach - piano
Jack Rosenzweig - drums

Keyboardist, synthesist and improviser Kurt Lam will be bringing together a new lineup of local Sydney musicians every week to explore the possibilities of collaboration and improvisation.  
Tully Ryan on drums
Daniel Pliner on keys & synths

Sulla Lingua is an Australian-Italian electroacoustic noise rock trio, featuring Anthony Pateras (tētēma/PIVIXKI) on electronics, Stefano Pilia (Zu, Rokia Traoré, Massimo Volume) on guitar and Riccardo La Foresta on drums and his own creation, the Drummophone.

Anthony Pateras is a composer, pianist and electronic musician. He works across many contexts including modern classical, acousmatic diffusion, film soundtrack, free improvisation, experimental rock, and various mutations of electronica. 

Tickets: Free, by ballot only

Hill/Hall/Raymond - Gabriella Hill (tenor saxophone), Henry Hall (double bass) and Daniel Raymond (drums). Playing Daniel’s compositions intertwined with their individual material.

Elsen Price is a solo double bassist who combines classical, jazz, folk and experimental music into short/long form performances. This performance will be a long form improvisation.

Mitch Elliott - To celebrate the release of his new EP 'A Spring-Flood Overflows the Still Horizon,' the Sydney-based musician and composer Mitch Elliott will be joined by Hinano Fujisaki and Jasper C-A. 

Mara plays the viola and collaborates with her laptop to create live performances and recorded pieces for film, dance, and gallery spaces.

Liam Keenan is currently exploring the sonic depths of improvised acoustic guitar feedback in real time.

The Mesos Trio are a Sydney based modern folk-jazz ensemble featuring Susi Bishop (violin), Elsen Price (double bass) and Maharshi Raval (tabla). 

The group pulls together modern jazz, European folk and Indian classical music.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Reiniger, 1926)
With original music by Phillip Johnston
Phillip Johnston: alto saxophone, composition
James Greening: trombone
Alister Spence: keyboards
Casey Golden: keyboards

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) is a silent silhouette animation by Lotte Reiniger, considered by many to be the first feature-length animated film.

Atunement is a live sound collaboration between Panos Couros and Mx Robert Frost, Blending field recordings, ambient textures, musique concrète with analogue and digital synthesis.

Supported by Shooshy. Electronic musician: Using synths, made instruments, mashed loops and processed vocals, inspired by airports, train depots and the natural world.

YuNiOn - Taiko
Wadaiko Rindo Sydney - Taiko
Ryuji Hamada - Taiko and Shinobue
Ren Yano - Japanese Calligraphy
Sandy Evans - Saxophone
The Satsuki Odamura Koto Ensemble - Koto

Matthew Ottignon - tenor, alto, and baritone saxophones
Lauren Tsamouras - piano
Hannah James - acoustic bass
Hayley Chan - drums and percussion
While embodying the spirit of giants such as John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, Volant is a modern quartet, delivering compositions and improvised dialogue.

Launch of an experimental archive project by Ira Ferris, including a sound montage created with musician and sound artist Alexandra Spence. Part of a program of events celebrating two decades of choreographic innovation at Critical Path. The event will include a short conversation on new approaches to archiving, a music performance by Alexandra Spence and a dance performance by Ryuichi Fujimura. Free event, RSVP essential.

ELENA KATS-CHERNIN (ARR. J. AGOSTINO) Dance of the Paper Umbrellas
RICHARD CHARLTON Port Jackson Suite*                                  
VINCENT LINDSEY-CLARK Magnetar (From Celestial Suite)
P. BELLINATI Baiao de Gude
GUSTI NGURA ADI PUTRA (ARR. T. DRACOULIS) Melasti
JALAL AHMED Dream Walking* (Premiere)
MANUEL DIEWALD Celestial* (Premiere)
JULIA VLAHOGIANNIS Notion* 
LUIGI BOCCHERINI (ARR. J. SPARKS) Introduction and Fandango     

Tickets: Free, by ballot only

Nigel Is No More is Aidan Wong (tenor saxophone), Alex Tucker (electric guitar) and Daniel Raymond (drums). A spontaneous barrage of riffage, drum grooves and tenor screams.

Through a long form performance, the band attempts to find sonic detail within the ensemble that encompasses something larger than “noise metal”.

The Red House welcomes for his only Sydney performance…

Bruce Russell is an inveterate improviser and practitioner in sound. Since 1987 he has been a member of the Dead C. He also performs with Alastair Galbraith as A Handful of Dust (since 1984). His solo guitar mixes rock, electro-acoustics, noise and improvisation in equal measures; reconfiguring the blues as a form of improvisational auto-destructive protest.

PLEASE REPLY TO THIS EMAIL FOR NEW ADDRESS AND FURTHER DETAILS AND TO CONFIRM YOUR ATTENDANCE

ALEXIS WEAVER (she/her) is a composer, sound artist and educator based in Sydney, Australia. At Local Edition, Alexis will create a site-specific work that celebrates the character and wonder of the artefacts within the store. Alexis will highlight certain objects and their makers, drawing out unique sounds and creating a shifting sonic constellation for visitors to dwell in.

From Thursday to Saturday, the installation opens to the public. The week culminates in a special ticketed solo performance by the artist, presented alongside their installation.

FORMA ENSEMBLE is an Australian percussion collective creating, performing, and collaborating on new and experimental music. Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Joshua Hill, Niki Johnson, Gabriel Fischer, Caleb Colledge, Shu-hsuan Wang.

Michael Gordon’s Timber is a meditative, hour-long work scored for six wooden planks.

Tickets: Free, by ballot only

Keyboardist, synthesist and improviser Kurt Lam will be bringing together a new lineup of local Sydney musicians every week to explore the possibilities of collaboration and improvisation.  
Hinano Fujisaki on saxophone
River Langford on drums

DAN FORREST: Adonai, Adonenu (Psalm 8); Words of Paradise; Requiem for the Living 

Collegium Musicum Choir and chamber orchestra
Sonia Maddock Choral Director and Conductor  
UNSW Soloists: Adina Herz, soprano; Emma Davidson, mezzo; Oliver Brundson, tenor 

Operantics concert of music set to Emily Dickinson poetry.

The program will include works by Aaron Copland, Andre Previn, Lori Laitman, Libby Larsen, Anne Cawrse and Ian Ricky Gordon.

Featuring: Laura Scandizzo, Elena Marcello, Sarah Cherlin, Katie Miller-Crispe and Nathaniel Kong on piano.

For one night only, thedieyoungs and Julien Mier unveil Pluto’s Exchange Program—a secret music project they’ve been crafting since 2017. Improvised collision of percussion, piano runs, and otherworldly textures that fuse jazz, electronica, drum & bass, neo-classical, and spacecore.

 Joining them are live acts ilex and Kid Fiction, plus a DJ set by Postponez.

MEOW MEOW Casio - an experimental collaborative project of Elke Rae and Rowan Yeomans. Based in improvisation and chaos, meeting at the crossroads of ambient, synth wave and doom.
Manticora - Harsh noise enthusiast | Living on stolen Dharawal land
Withdrawe (Jasper Craig-Adams - guitar, Mitch Elliott - electronics)

Illiteration:
Gabriella Hill - tenor saxophone,
Eric Tsai - guitar,
Henry Hall - double bass.

The Cloud of Unknowing:
Alex Tucker - drums,
Sam Dobson, double bass,
Jim Denley - alto saxophone and flute.

Ronan Apcar - Piano, Lamorna Nightingale - Flute, Jason Noble - Clarinet, Benjamin Ward - Double bass, Niki Johnson - Percussion

New works by: Klearhos Murphy, Georgina Bowden, Callum O'Reilly, Beth Roche, Louis Wishart, Thomas Meadowcroft

A pre-concert talk will take place from 2.15pm

This concert will feature performances by the four finalists for this years Freedman Jazz Fellowship: Holli Scott (vocalist, WA), Niran Dasika (trumpet, VIC), Sam Gill (saxophone, NSW) and Wilbur Whitta (piano, NSW).

Norwegian supergroup fusing traditional music and contemporary evocations of the north. Benedicte Maurseth is the hardanger fiddle’s great contemporary player. 

Benedicte Maurseth - hardanger fiddle
Morten Qvenild - piano
Mats Eilertsen - bass
Håkon Stene - percussion

Lee Dionne - piano

UNSUK CHIN Etude No. 1 ‘In C’ (1999/2003) 
GYÖRGY LIGETI Etude No. 6 Autumn in Warsaw (1985)
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN Scherzo No. 4 in E Major (1842)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Partita No. 6 in E Minor (1730)

Tickets: Free, by ballot only

ARCHIVE: A new collaboration between Andrew Fedorovitch and Chantel Cabrera.

MAD BAG (Gabriella Hill + Aidan Wong). The maddest saxophone duo around.

Maissa is a multi-disciplinary artist, creative producer and experienced vocalist. Maissa has been part of the contemporary Arab Australian arts community for over twenty years.  She is the Creative Director and one of the lead vocalists in ATS’s musical project Ensemble Dandana.

From Thursday to Saturday, the installation opens to the public. The week culminates in a special ticketed solo performance by the artist, presented alongside their installation.

Keyboardist, synthesist and improviser Kurt Lam will be bringing together a new lineup of local Sydney musicians every week to explore the possibilities of collaboration and improvisation.  
Goose on live electronics
Gabriel Haslam on drums

Alister Spence has been playing the Fender Rhodes electric piano since the 1970s. Within Without is Spence’s debut album for solo Fender Rhodes.

Alexandra Spence is a sound artist/musician whose aesthetic favours field recordings, analogue technologies and object interventions.

Chloë Sobek is a composer-performer based in Naarm. This installation presents an experimental archive of the violone, composed of sound and artefacts that resist conventional models of documentation and preservation.

From Thursday to Saturday, the installation opens to the public. The week culminates in a special ticketed solo performance by the artist, presented alongside their installation.

Marlene Claudine Radice - Composer |{ noise ♡ drone }| Performer
Making Out - Indonesian musician working on Ngunnawal/Ngambri land
Black Metal 3 - Hinano Fujisaki (saxophone) + Mitch Elliott (electronics) + Jasper Craig-Adams (guitar)
Manticora - Harsh noise enthusiast | Living on stolen Dharawal land

Inspiritus - explores free improvisation under the guidance of images of the natural world.

Led by Shane Carpini (drums/percussion), Inspiritus features some of Sydney’s finest experimental improvisers, such as Kenya Wilkins (piano/flute), Josh Shipton (electric bass), Lachlan Kerr (keyboard/synthesiser), and Liz Cheung (zhonghu/flute).

Marlené Claudine Radice (ACT) composer who specialises in notated electroacoustic composition by exploring how art and sound complement one another.

Making Out (ACT) (Rosa Bassett) composer, performer, sound artist and organiser, works across noise, free improvisation, new music, and punk and hardcore.

Daemon Silk is a multidisciplinary artist and composer, everything from noise to modern classical, drone, free improvisation and electro acoustic improvisation.

Vivisection solo project of Rhiannon Evans Mostafa uses white noise, obsolete technology, situationally harvested samples through her DIY improvisations.

Second celebration of microtonal and mesotonal music in 2025.

The Yak Herders perform ‘The Space In Between the Things Between The Spaces’. Andy Milne principal composer on lumatone, Farrah Sa’adullah on violin, Brad Gill on malletKAT, Christina Laki on Ubass and fretless electric bass.

Clocks and Clouds ‘Artesian Fountains’. Kraig Grady and Terumi Narushima on Meta-slendro vibraphone, meta-slendro reed organ.

Michael Hugh Dixon’s ‘Ours is Simply the Way Back’, ‘Rejoin’, ‘Stillness' of unceasing activity’ and ‘Door of Many Mysteries – Reopened’ performed by Wendy Dixon (soprano), Kathryn Bennets (recorder), Greg van der Struik (trombone) and Dixon (horn).
Matthias Sebastian Krūger's ‘Residual’ for recorder and horn.
Praveen Venkataramana's ‘Reflection III’ for horn and trombone.

Composer Samantha Wolf and pianist Alex Raineri present a performance for piano and live electronics, featuring new, existing, and revised works from their 15-year collaborative history.
Samantha Wolf blends the classical, contemporary, acoustic, and electroacoustic worlds, while being grounded in the notated tradition.
Alex Raineri is active throughout Australia and Internationally as a piano recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, harpsichordist, composer, writer, producer, and educator.

Tickets: Free, by ballot only

Laura Altman celebrates the launch of her debut solo CD ‘Holy Trinity’ on Relative Pitch Records.

Laura Altman (clarinet, tins, feedback, tapes, objects, voice)
m.h. (lyres, tape, feedback, objects and obscured vocalisations)
Inside/Outside: Melanie Herbert (violin, singing bowls) and Jim Denley (flutes, gumnut, voice)

FUKNO https://fukno.bandcamp.com/
HEDONIST https://hedonist.bandcamp.com/
DF0:BAD https://soundcloud.com/skint-1
GUNDERMAN https://gunderman.bandcamp.com/
PETER https://soundcloud.com/caine-stone
XYLOFUNT https://thestableofcrap.bandcamp.com/
NIMBY https://reubeningall.bandcamp.com/music
ABRE OJOS https://abreojos.net/
DJ CHARLES

Joseph Rabjohns & Lachlan R. Dale are a guitar duo exploring the intersection of post-rock, ambient, and contemporary classical music.

BoNo is Bonnie Stewart (Voice/effects) and Novak Manojlovic (Piano/effects) rifling through their sonic libraries and running the findings through a slew of pedals and extended processes in pursuit of stillness.

Francisco Sonur creates improvised ambient music that drifts between fragile, intimate moments and vast, immersive walls of sound.

Delays Have Dangerous Ends a duo creating cinematic ambient science fiction music through improvised guitars, keyboards and effects celebrate the release of their 9th long form single ‘Seven Nights Nine Times Nine’.  

Special guests will be electro underground legends Scattered Order, complete with live visuals from LIVING SCIENCE Dept.

Both Genevieve Von Black and Matthew Syres from Delays Have Dangerous Ends will play rare solo improvised sets to kick off the night.

Ariel Bart, Israeli harmonica player and composer, appearing for one night only at VJs in Chatswood. In her Australian debut, Ariel will be joined by two outstanding local musicians — Lauren Tsamouras (piano) and Freya Schack-Arnott (cello) — for an evening of intimate, boundary-crossing music.

Melodic Fictions is a contemporary choral, improvised layered work by vocalist Merinda Dias-Jayasinha. For this performance, Melodic Fictions is crafted live by Merinda in collaboration with vocalists Hannah Cameron, Imogen Cygler, Hannah McKittrick, and Ebony Tait.
Luke M de Zilva, as LMDZ, presents live mixes of mostly Australian musicians, collating, sampling and abstracting their work to create a series of new ‘collaborations’.

Tickets: Free, by ballot only

The third annual Christmas concert of Sydney's hardest working free jazz quartet. Featuring Lauren Tsamouras and Tom Avgenicos performing music from their newly released album on ABC Jazz 'For Judy' as well as their own inimitable compositions.

BELIEVE: Laurence Pike, drums; Novak Manojlovic, piano; Clayton Thomas, double bass; Peter Farrar, saxophones and percussion

Lauren Tsamouras, piano and Tom Avgenicos, trumpet

Mx Robert Frost
Bosun
Most Ominous Mystic
Atavus Infectum

Jetsets Christmas Extravaganza gig at the new home of The Living Room Theatre, 21 Shepherd St, Marrickville.

Special guest Austrian bass clarinetist Anna Koch. Specialising in contemporary and improvised music with performances as a soloist and chamber musician at festivals like Wien modern, Bang on a Can (USA), Auckland Arts Festival (New Zealand), Impuls Graz, SiMN Festival Curitiba (Brasil), Klangspuren Schwaz, Cut Paste Play Festival (Australia), Styriarte, Imago Dei and Expo Shanghai (2010). https://annakoch.org/videos/

Plus, IBID Duo - Keyna Wilkins (piano/flute) and Shane Carpini (drumset). Stream of consciousness improvisations and their own compositions inspired by philosophy, astronomy and human behaviour. http://www.keynawilkins.com/ibid.html

Berlin-based musician and composer Jules Reidy has created a musical accompaniment to the 38th Kaldor Public Art Project 38, Thomas Demand: The Object Lesson. Jules Reidy uses materials such as guitars, voice, percussion and found sounds, deconstructing and augmenting them through non-standard tuning systems, polyrhythmic structures, electronic processing and spatialisation.

Wednesday 7 January 2026 3–3.30pm

Wednesday 7 January 2026 7–7.30pm

Chloe dedicates the final year of her 20s to a deeply personal and creative journey. Throughout 2025, she will focus each month on learning, growing, and creating, sharing her process through monthly performances.

These performances are RSVP only. To reserve your spot and receive event details, please email chloekim12months@gmail.com

Chloe dedicates the final year of her 20s to a deeply personal and creative journey. Throughout 2025, she will focus each month on learning, growing, and creating, sharing her process through monthly performances.

These performances are RSVP only. To reserve your spot and receive event details, please email chloekim12months@gmail.com

For almost five decades now, Tokyo based artist Merzbow has held the undisputed position as the iconic forefather of noise music. His work catapults the listener into an utterly unfamiliar but wholly compelling cosmos of sound, a full spectrum eruption, a pyroclastic cloud of sound.

Lawrence English is known for work that tests at the edges of harmonic ambience and low energy sound pressure.