Returning From Berlin, JUDITH HAMANN & JAMES RUSHFORD Bring a Brand New Project to the RED HOUSE.

Two of the most admired Australian musicians on the European new music scene are returning to the People's Republic in a few weeks with a stunning new project.
Don't miss this unique chance to experience a major new work in the inviting ambience of the Red House and spend time with two of our most brilliant young composers...

SUNDAY December 15th at 7 p.m. [doors at 6.30]

Midmeste is a collaborative project by Australian composer-performers Judith Hamann and James Rushford. Meaning ‘the midmost point’ (from Old English),
Midmeste threads a unique and multi-layered web of relationships between cello, organ and acoustic space.
The project incorporates late-Medieval musical texts in an expanded microtonal framework, which were given further historical context and significance through the unique opportunity to work with the organ of the Valère basilica in Sion, Switzerland, where the piece was developed in 2023 - the world’s oldest playable organ. 
Each performance adapts to the host space, tracing multiple strands, outlines and connections in which original and found musical materials, notions of performative embodiment and psychoacoustic remnants recur.

Judith Hamann is a composer/performer born in Narrm/Melbourne, and currently based in Berlin. Described as an “extraordinary Australian cellist” (The Guardian), and as a composer who “destroys the fiction of the musician who lives and works outside conventional parameters and puts in its place a series of compositions that are fundamentally humane” (WIRE), her work encompasses performance, electro-acoustic composition, site specific work, and micro-tonal systems. Judith has studied contemporary classical repertoire with renowned cellists including Charles Curtis and Séverine Ballon, as well as developing a strong practice in improvisation and sonic arts through collaborative projects both in Australia and internationally. She has worked with Marja Ahti, Pascale Criton, Sarah Hennies, Yvette Janine Jackson, Anike Joyce Sadiq, Éliane Radigue, and La Monte Young, among many others.

James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer, whose work draws from concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist musical languages, staking out an idiosyncratic stylistic space that has been described as ‘electro-acoustic experimentation with a beating heart’ (Boomkat) and ‘haunted Jacobean ASMR’ (The Wire). He has longstanding performance practices on piano, synthesizers and electroacoustic devices, and portative organ, bringing to all of these a delicacy of touch and a harmonic sensibility in which unorthodox tunings coexist with influences from fin de siècle Impressionism, the 20th century avant-garde, and many strains of popular music. James has worked with Klaus Lang, Annea Lockwood, David Behrman, Tashi Wada, Haroon Mirza and Dennis Cooper, also working regularly with Golden Fur (his trio with Sam Dunscombe & Judith Hamann), Joe Talia, Ora Clementi (with crys cole), Oren Ambarchi, François Bonnet, Will Guthrie, Graham Lambkin and Francis Plagne, among many others.

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

THERE IS NO ADMISSION CHARGE FOR PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC EVENTS - PLEASE DONATE GENEROUSLY ON THE NIGHT KNOWING THAT EVERY CENT GOES TO THE ARTIST

PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS A CASH-ONLY EVENT SO PLEASE BRING ALONG PLENTY OF THOSE QUAINT COLOURED RECTANGLES

OUR EVENTS ARE B.Y.O. please bring along any beverages you wish but no food is allowed