WORLD PREMIERE

Composer Michael Pisaro (USA)

Director Eugene Ughetti

Guest Artist Greg Stuart (USA)

Sonic pioneers Speak Percussion return to Melbourne Festival with an ambitious work for 100 percussionists.

Last seen at Melbourne Festival in 2013 with its cosmic avant–garde masterpiece The Black of the Star, innovative Australian ensemble Speak Percussion delivers a startling, monumental new work.

In this rare, deep listening experience the audience sits among the performers to experience the music as if part of an ocean of sound. Colossal percussive waves are created by layers of imperceptibly soft sounds— sandpaper on stone, seeds falling on glass, bowed bells—forming a textural landscape bristling with detail.

A wave and waves is a work of monumental scale, experienced with intimate immediacy—as countless tiny moments of friction, gravity and vibration heave into life like a single, pulsing organism.

Performers Matthias Schack–Arnott, Louise Devenish, Kaylie Melville, Greg Stuart and 96 guests