A Sense of Place: On Giacometti by Hania Rani

When offered the opportunity to create a score for director Susanna Fanzun‘s forthcoming documentary film on the life of Alberto Giacometti, Hania Rani took herself to the mountains of Switzerland to compose in the setting where the legendary painter & sculptor lived and worked. Much as she did in her score for Venice – Infinitely…

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A Sense of Place: Losing the Sea by Karen Vogt

Musician & vocalist Karen Vogt says that her new album is “about longing for the sea after spending many years living inland”. The inland location she refers to is Paris, her home for the past 15 years and half a world away from her native Australia where the sea was always in close proximity to…

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A Sense of Place: Bluets by Ah! Kosmos & Büşra Kayıkçı

Absence makes the heart grow fonder may have become a hackneyed phrase over the years, but it acknowledges a poignant truth that is at the heart of a remote collaboration between sound artist & composer Başak Günak, aka Ah! Kosmos, and pianist/composer Büşra Kayıkçı. Distance magnifies the people and things you miss most is the…

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A Sense of Place: Positano Songs by Will Ackerman

If you know the music of Will Ackerman, I’ll wager you will remember exactly where you were when you heard it for the first time. For me, it was in a record shop in Richmond’s Carytown where I was used to hearing much more energetic fare while browsing around. Will’s 1981 masterpiece Passage was spinning…

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A Sense of Place: Rift by Hugar

Known as The Land of Fire and Ice, few places contain more wonder per square mile than Iceland. The only part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that rises above sea-level, its central volcanic plateau is constantly erupting. For longtime friends Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson who make up the duo Hugar, there is musical inspiration to…

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A Sense of Place: Isolarii by Corey Fuller and Richard Skelton

Isolarii is a word with roots going back to the Renaissance age that means ‘island books’. It represents a distinctive literary form that fuses many place-specific components together into a singular narrative that encompasses maps, nautical charts, travelogues, and history blended with elements of myth and legend. Its mere description ignites the imagination and so…

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A Sense of Place: Do Not Move Stones by Rose Riebl

“Two States of Mind” is more than just the moving final coda for Rose Ribel’s Do Not Move Stones. It also the piece that is perhaps most emblematic of the rich dualities that animate the album. A classically trained professional concert pianist who studied in both Sydney and Vienna and who has performed at some…

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A Sense of Place: Haunts by Grasscut

In 2015, Brighton duo Grasscut released Everyone Was A Bird, an album author Robert Macfarlane tells us in his liner note essay was “born of footfall”. Its eight pieces explored places important to composer Andrew Phillips and writer/musician Marcus O’Dair from the north coast of Jersey or a fallow field in the South Downs of…

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A Sense of Place: Bylur by Eydís Evensen

Born in the remote Icelandic town of Blönduós, we are told that as a child pianist & composer Eydís Evensen would stand in the howling wind and stare out the wild Westfjords pretending to conduct the clouds. Indoors she was exposed by her parents to a breadth of music from very early on ranging from…

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