Sydney's cutting-edge improvising collective Microfiche will make 107 home for four Mondays during March and April! Known for their ethereal soundscapes that brim with strong rhythmic outbursts and melodic catharsis, they will be collaborating with some of Australia's greatest improvisers and feature support sets from our city’s most forward-thinking artists.

ARTIST BIOS

Microfiche

Six-piece collective Microfiche tie improvisation and composition into serpentine knots and unravel them live in unexpected and cathartic ways.
The band initially formed in 2015 as a student jazz ensemble at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where they met weekly under the direction of Phil Slater and Simon Barker to explore the compositional processes of John Cage and Morton Feldman. After a year of reconceptualising those ideas into a body of original material they decided to document the music in the studio; this became their eponymous debut album under the name Microfiche.
Four years on and the ensemble embarked on a European tour in 2019, culminating in a performance at Copenhagen Jazz Festival. They have also recorded their second studio album to be released on Portugese label Creative Sources Recordings mid 2020.

Phil Slater (guest artist)

Phil Slater is one of Australia’s most accomplished jazz artists. He is the leader/co-leader of the Phil Slater Quartet, Phil Slater Quintet, The Sun Songbook, Band of Five Names and Daorum. He has been a featured performer with a wide variety of artists including the Australian Art Orchestra, Archie Roach, Sandy Evans, Missy Higgins, Lou Reed, Bae Il Tong, Katie Noonan, Vince Jones, Jim Black, Bernie McGann, Baecastuff, Genevieve Lacey, Andrea Keller, Jonathan Zwartz, PNAU, DIG, and many others. His work has been featured widely in Australian theatre, cinema and television productions. He has been awarded the National Jazz Award, the Bell Award for Australian Jazz Musician of the Year and Best Australian Contemporary Jazz Ensemble, the Freedman Fellowship and the Limelight Award and is currently a lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Clocks and Clouds (opening set)

Clocks and Clouds is comprised of core players and composers Kraig Grady and Terumi Narushima.
Their totally acoustic performances feature specially retuned vibraphone and pump organ. Often they are joined by like-minded musicians to include other instruments of their ensemble, such as the Mesotonal (meaning ‘between tones’) Marimba and thundering bass Meru Bars.
These unique instruments - with a pure 151 limit harmonic tuning - explore the beauty of room resonances via ancient sacred scales and multi-dimensional geometries. It is not uncommon for an audience to experience the sensation of harmonics sweeping through space due to the way in which sound waves from the instruments interact with the environment.