Louise Devenish.
Camera IconLouise Devenish. Credit: Supplied/Supplied

Louise Devenish hits solo note in Scattered Experiments at Studio Underground

Tanya MacNaughtonEastern Reporter

PUSHING the boundary of contemporary percussion to see how far she can take the art form is all in a day’s work for musician Louise Devenish.

“Percussion is so much more than music for drums; it can be rhythmic, beautiful, surprising and creative all at once,” she said.

“The definition of percussion is so broad, it includes so many instruments and techniques and it’s an ever-growing field with less than 100 years of history.”

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Devenish received an APRA AMCOS Music Award for WA Performance of the Year for Electroacoustic Music For One Percussionist on August 17.

She will follow the win with the performance Experimental Music for One Percussionist, the third in a series of solo concerts featuring music by living Australian composers, as part of Tura New Music double bill Scattered Experiments with James Hullick.

Devenish, who is head of percussion at UWA School of Music, commissioned three composers to each write a new 20-minute solo percussion work to premiere at the event.

“Working with composers as new works are made is something really special and music produced from this process is always richer,” she said.

“Cat Hope’s work Tone Being is for tam-tam and sub-woofer, and is notated using graphic notation in the Decibel Score Player, which is a digital music notation app for iPad designed by Cat and her ensemble Decibel (which I am a member of).

“Kate Moore’s work Coral Speak is for vibraphone, stereo electronic tracks and coral instruments designed and made by the composer.

“James Hullick’s work uses animated graphic notation and is very experimental in nature.”

Devenish said she was excited to share this new music in the first half of the concert.

The second half will feature Hullick’s own work Scatterman and the pair will tour Scattered Experiments to Melbourne and Japan later this year.

“It’s wonderful to be able to perform these new works multiple times in the year of their composition,” Devenish said.

“I’m looking forward to hearing audience responses from these different cities, as I’m sure they’ll be quite different.”

THE ESSENTIALS

What: Scattered Experiments

Where: Studio Underground

When: August 27

Tickets: www.ticketek.com.au