Elision Celebrates Twenty Years

by Michelle Phillips-Schork | June 2006

This month, Australia's premier contemporary music ensemble celebrates its 20th year. Committed to the performance of new modes of composition, and favouring cross-disciplinary applications, the Elision ensemble have played a major role in the development of international careers for some of Australia's most sought after composers.

Elision consists of twenty-one members and has premiered the works of composers such as Liza Lim, Timothy O'Dwyer, Chris Dench and John Rodgers and entered into collaborations and partnerships with the Ensemble Modern of Germany, the ICTUS Ensemble of Brussels and the Cikada Ensemble of Norway.

Most recently, on commision by the Festival d'Automne and following its premiere in Paris at the Cité de la Musique, Liza Lim's work Mother Tongue was performed at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane, in partnership with the Ensemble Intercomperain. The performance was a celebration of twenty years as an ensemble of lasting significance for a history which has crossed electronic sound with media applications, poetry readings, installations and traditional and created instruments.

As part of a collaboration between Elision and visual artist Domenico de Clario, the ensemble performed Haft Peikar in 2000, a sensory meditation housed in an abandoned factory amongst light installations. As spectators and listeners roamed in and out, absorbing the atmosphere throughout a fourteen hour day, Elision musicians played on oboes made of ice. The sounds of the oboes, melting as they played, created squeeks, splutterings and cracks, as they fell in drops.

In addition to visual elements, Elision's performances involve traditional notation as well as improvisation and electronic sound, a merging of performance arts to enhance the realisation of artistic ideas. Elision director Daryl Buckley told Iain Shedden of The Australian, "In Australia, there have been perceived polar opposites, in that there are people who work with notepad and music and are trained at the conservatorium and work at the experimental end of that, and there are others who work with various technologies ... Being able to read music is one tool. Being able to use certain software is another tool".

In Lament of Desire, a collaboration between Elision and Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Timothy O'Dwyer's improvisation accompanied the narrative flow of the artists voice and media projections of Rasdjarmrearnsook reading her work. Often concerned with the ethereal and intangible, Lament explored the idealised concepts of love as expressed in a traditional Thai literary work.

Elision are well-known for their presentation of new composition and stunning visual performances, but one of the most resonant aspects of their projects is the poignancy of their ideas. Incorporation of multi-media and poetry have drawn disparate audiences in and exploration of complex and difficult subjects inspire thought long after their concerts are over. Liza Lim's Mother Tongue is concerned with the story of an Aboriginal elder, one of the last native speakers of the Yorta-Yorta in Australia. The impending loss of the mother tongue and all of the knowledge systems contained within prompted the composition, which heavily references the cycle of life and death. After their 20th anniversary concerts, Lim told ABC Classic FM, 'What also interested me ... was the actual words themselves: what words does one retain at the end of one's life? In fact they were very fundamental words: terms of endearment, of kinship, mother, father, basic nouns and expressions.'

At the end of two decades of dedication to innovative performance and composition, Elision continue to expand their horizons. Critical acclaim for Elision reflects the strength of their impact, critics noting, 'You don't go to a concert by the Elision ensemble for relaxation. You go to be stimulated, challenged and knocked about by sound'.