Underwater singing, an orchestra of 49 clarinets and performers who don’t sing or play anything will feature at the fifth Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music.
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The festival’s artistic director David Chisholm launched this year’s program at the festival hub – Rocks on Rosalind – on Thursday morning.
“It’s a very different feel. Almost like (this year) we have gone back to our roots,” he said.
“We have scaled back in terms of size but gone more abstract and interesting rather than-type concert events.
“It is a blurred boundary between music and art.”
Juliana Snapper will be one of the many unique performers at the festival in September.
Snapper is a soprano singer who will sing in a tank full of water on The Capital theatre’s stage on Friday, September 1.
“She is pretty impressive. She exemplifies the types of artists that start with virtuosity and then go down an interesting path to push the possibilities (of music),” Mr Chisholm said.
Also on the first day of the festival will be a performance titled Plank Rodeo. It sees performers take on sound-driven choreography performed on amplified wooden boards.
The musicians do not play an instrument or use their voices.
“It is done by musicians who have learned a score like they would with other music but the instrument is their body,” Mr Chisholm said.
“What they do with feet is move across planks set on aluminium foil (in a choreographed style). The sounds picked up by microphones on the ground is treated through computer program.”
Mr Chisholm is also hoping to bring together 49 clarinet players for a performance in Sacred Heart Cathedral on Saturday, September 2.
Performing a work written for seven clarinets called Capricorn’s Nostalgic Crickets, the Argonaut Clarinet Orchestra will blow the number of instruments out by a factor of seven.
“We are giving people in the community who play clarinet a chance to play in the festival,” Mr Chisholm said. BIFEM is on from September 1 to 4.