History of the AAO
Before 1993, Australia did not have a band like the AAO. 19 musicians, stylistically divergent, each one a specialist either as an improviser or instrumentalist, each one willing to explore music as notation, improvisation and, above all, expression. The AAO was originally assembled for a particular project, a suite of pieces called Ringing the Bell Backwards which I composed between 1990 and 1993. The director of the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, the late Richard Wherrett, was enthusiastic about the concept of the suite, based on popular European songs of the 1930s and 40s. I regard him as a Founding Father of the AAO. I must also acknowledge the contribution of Leo Gmelch, a trombonist from Munich, who commissioned many of these pieces in their original form for a series of recordings made in Germany. Without those projects the whole idea of the AAO may never have happened.
Hearing the musicians together during that time was a remarkable experience. Australian improvisers have a natural tendency towards the unexpected, the irreverent, the passionate, the adventurous. Many of them have developed their skills removed in a sense from the perceived centres of jazz and experimental music, whether New York, Amsterdam, Tokyo or Berlin, while being aware of what is coming out of those places. This physical separation has resulted in a more delineated sense of individualism in Australian improvised music, less adherence to formalized styles of playing, and even an emerging sense of awareness of our own accumulating musical traditions.
In a newspaper article from late 1993, I expressed the need for an ensemble which would fill a seemingly obvious gap in the contemporary music scene. The dominance of European notation as the preferred language of music, and of musicians as interpreters rather than creators has been a fact not only in academic circles relating to the teaching of composition, but in publicly funded ensembles and their attendant infrastructures and even the architecture of their performance spaces. Whether the attachment to notation is simply a clinging to a notion of "home", as transplanted Anglo-Australians used to call the British Isles, or simply a rearguard justification for the priorities of musical education, is difficult to pinpoint, but the fact is that most contemporary music is based to a greater or lesser extent in various kinds of improvisation. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the most effective contemporary musicians, regardless of what kinds of music they play, can and must improvise well. It follows that an important, you might say the most important, ensemble to get behind would be one in which notated music and improvisation play important roles.
With these ideas in mind, the AAO slowly came into being. I settled on the name Australian Art Orchestra as a way of avoiding the danger of being pigeon-holed in the jazz or contemporary music camps. As a young musician active in Europe in the 80s, I was impressed by Matthias Ruegg, the Swiss-born founder and leader of the Vienna Art Orchestra, a group which set a very refreshing direction in its exploration of jazz from a distinctly Central European perspective. A board was established, and plans were made for our first tour, stories from which have gone into what folklore we possess, especially as the driver of our tour bus came quite close to earning the dubious reputation as the Grim Reaper of Australian music. If ever a band was going to not make the distance, or be written off as a "nice idea", it would have been then. However, what has happened within the AAO is the emergence of a sense of ownership of the idea by its protagonists.
In our initial charter, which remains the set of principles which underly our activities, the AAO has identified cross-cultural collaboration to be a core activity. The Into the Fire program, which began during our tour of India in 1995, has been an example of how such a collaboration grows with time. Our partner in this project is the mridangam master Karaikudi R. Mani. Working closely with Mani, we have developed a group of works which reflect various traditions, while arriving at diverse outcomes. To date, Adrian Sherriff, a former student of Mani, John Rodgers, Scott Tinkler and Niko Schauble have contributed. These pieces have been performed throughout Europe and Australia. New works by Daryl Pratt and Adrian Sherriff will be explored in workshops later this year, and "Into the Fire" will finally be performed in Melbourne in October.
New methods of presenting the AAO have been explored in Testimony, a setting of sonnets by American poet Yusef Komunaaka by Sandy Evans. Directed by Nigel Jamieson, the band is set up vertically on a scaffold, with video and still projection working with a score sung by a group of vocal soloists. The work has been a smash, as they say on Broadway, and will be seen in Adelaide in June. I am particularly excited by anything which successfully redefines the performance paradigms. Another such work is "The Mizler Society" by John Rodgers, an interactive installation work incorporating robotics, internet-based research and extensive sound design. We are currently in development on a new multi-media project "Bloodstream" that builds on the existing AAO collaborations (Ruby's Story and Kura Tungar) with singer-songwriters Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter on a project involving traditional and contemporary songs set around the place and idea of the river, both literally as the Murray-Darling system, and metaphorically, as a journey through space and time.
From being seen as my personal vision, with all the pitfalls implied by that, the AAO has become a force in Australian music driven by its membership, creatively directed by them, and with a strong sense of its place and identity. Our audiences continue to grow, and we have set our sights high. At our best, we offer one of the most thrilling experiences audiences will encounter, and at our worst we are pretty damn good.
