asamisimasa

New music adventurers ensemble asamisimasa take on the challenge of three brand new international commissions, each featuring musical machinery and the machinery of music. 

Mirela Ivicevic’s Exhale Stardust involves the use of a specially built percussion machine featuring metal gears and levers with mallets attached. Operated by a percussionist, the machine’s movements are contact miked and amplified. 

Another invented mechanism forms the centrepiece of Annesley Black’s Orrery Songs. It is a percussion instrument based on the ‘orrery’ (a device from the 1700s for demonstrating the movements of the solar system),. 

Instrument builder Thomas Meixner has constructed an orrery percussion instrument and an orrery conductor, controlled by a crank handle. The movements of the major planets are channeled back to earth via music. 

Mathias Spahlinger’s faux faux faux bourdon is based on the idea of the fauxbourdon (false burden), originally a medieval music concept that transgresses accepted rules about compositional organisation. Chords are transposed without taking into account notes related to each scale, and the bass clarinet plays ‘wrong’ melodies.