Take a listen to my new ambient, piano, spoken word piece ‘sound of everything’ HERE

I am dancing, drumming, singing and performing my new piano piece ‘Kandinsky’ at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra this week. The seeds first appeared in May last year through working with dancer Suraya Hilal. It has since been further developed on my own and then with dancer Sarah Hamilton. I am excited to show it and excited by the prospect of working with a bigger musical ensemble to bring it to life down the track.

Some highlights from the Suraya Hilal Dance Company & the Mozaic Dance Company performance at Casula Powerhouse May 2009 featuring Suraya Hilal, Sarah Hamilton and me on piano and frame drum. The beautiful Oud piece is a recorded piece by Joseph Tawadros and the rest was played live by me.

IMAGO is definitely the most demanding live show I have attempted. I am in training mode with piano, accordian, frame drum, Egyptian tabla and just incase i thought that was too easy I am dancing a complex group choreography as well! This is me working on a new section of the piano piece. See post below for more info on IMAGO – to be performed 6th of December 2008.
[QUICKTIME https://mariantheloucataris.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dancing-fingers-short.mov 146 120]

Some days I think I must be mad to attempt all of it, but then I remember that the integration of dance /music/sound/form/movement is infact what has always driven and inspired me. Training in the dance means I understand the choreography and movement language and can better respond to them as a musician. It also means I am fitter than I have been for decades! Most “traditional” cultures have art/music/dance/ritual/theatre as vital components of their existence and they all by and large do not make the same divisions between where one thing starts and the other begins.

It is in the intersection of these things that the complex patterns of the universe become more fully realised. See info on the Mandelbrot Set and I just found this wild video of mandelbrot set imagery.
 

All of the live music pieces are a combination of quite complex repeatable/composed structures and improvisational interludes. It requires an enormous amount of focus to move between modes. The transitions between sections are in turn prompted by dancer or musician or a little of both. I think this is one of the valuable things about the work we are doing. It necessitates a presence of mind which engages both hemispheres of the brain in an integrated and balanced way. Positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes this state as FLOW.