Oren Ambarchi - Musician
March 1, 2005
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Oren Ambarchi: "We started out for various reasons - the major one
being that we were ourselves young, experimental musicians with nowhere
to perform."
Two self-styled delinquents tonight launch their 10th festival, writes
Helen Razer.
Pain and ecstatic confusion might prove disagreeable to some. For the
curators of the What Is Music? Festival, these are a part of the job
and a measure of professional success.
"If I'm half elated and half inclined to jump out of the nearest window
screaming in total agony, I'm satisfied," says Robbie Avenaim.
Audiences will be able to test this key performance indicator from
tonight, at Melbourne's Horti Hall.
For more than 10 years, Avenaim and his co-conspirator Oren Ambarchi
have been plotting new possibilities in music. The annual festival has
grown into a well regarded and reliably odd locus for curious noises
from all corners of the country and the globe. It grew out of
necessity.
"In 1994, we started out for various reasons - the major one being that
we were ourselves young, experimental musicians with nowhere to
perform," says Ambarchi.
"We began the festival as a showcase for those artists we felt were
under-appreciated. And of course, at the time, that included the two of
us!" he says.
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under-appreciated within the ambit of improvised music. ABC's Radio
National commended their work as "a startling sonic exploration". New
York City's avant-jazz iconoclast John Zorn presented their reworking
of Hassidic melodies The Alter Rebbe's Niggun on his Tzadik label.
Together and individually, they have accepted invitations to a range of
prestigious events from Adelaide to Amsterdam.
Despite these accolades, as artists and curators, Avenaim and Ambarchi
strive to keep What Is Music? written in the margins: "I think we're
delinquents," says Avenaim.
"We take things seriously, but also irreverently: serious in our
appreciation of music, but always delinquent as fans in the sense that
we'd listen to a jazz great like John Coltrane and some disposable pop
in the same afternoon," he says
This anarchic fandom informs the shape of What Is Music?.
"We like to throw all sorts of things together," says Ambarchi.
The only thing artists sharing a stage might have in common is their
desire to "extend the language of their music or their instrument", he
says.
"For example, US artist Sir Richard Bishop plays solo acoustic guitar
sort of like a Middle-Eastern flavoured Django Reinhardt and he is on
the same bill as Kevin Drum, a relentless noise artist". It is
essential to keep the context of music fluid and volatile, explains
Ambarchi.
According to Avenaim, observers have been eager to situate the festival
in a single context, calling it "improvisational" or "experimental".
"And while we do have acts with their roots in those traditions, some
are equally indebted to the traditions of folk and pop," he says.
With an inclination to embrace anything arresting, What is Music? poses
a resonant question.
"It comes from everywhere. There's no specific origin and it's
important that it represents no specific thing," says Avenaim.
By these means, the multi-stranded festival seeks to mirror the shape
of music itself.
What Is Music? runs from tonight to Sunday March 6. For performance and
venue details, www.whatismusic.com