CLOCKED OUT : OUT OF TIME
FRIDAY 18 October, 6:00pm |
Hall
Ian Hanger Recital
Performed by: Erik Griswold – piano Vanessa Tomlinson – percussion
One of Australia’s most influential ensembles return with all new material in “Out of Time”. Drawing on 20 years of warped grooves, shimmering textures and arresting colours, this new work explores a kaleidoscopic approach to composition. With the piano preparation and percussion setup as the starting point, each work explores different facets of the sonic potential – opening new energy fields and new temporal dimensions.
Professor Vanesa Tomlinson (Griffith University) is a percussionist-composer working in a solo capacity, as one half of Clocked Out, and in collaboration across artforms. Her work orbits broadly around extended approaches, site-specific investigations, minimalist reductions and a sense of embodied play. With a long history in experimental and improvised music she has toured the world for three decades, creating contexts for improvisation, premiering hundreds of works, performing at major international festivals, and sharing her knowledge as a teacher, mentor, director and arts advocate. Vanessa can be heard on Innova, Immediate, Room40, Etcetera, Jazzhead, Mode, Tzadik, Hathut and Clocked Out labels, and her articles appear in Leonardo, Contemporary Music Review, Intelligent Arts, URO Press and World Forum for Acoustic Ecology among others. She was a member of Australian Art Orchestra (2000 – 2022), founding member of red fish blue fish (1993 – 2000), co-artistic director Early Warning System (2011 – 2021) and has played with most contemporary ensembles and orchestras across Australia. She was Director Australian Percussion Gathering, Transplanted Roots International Percussion Symposium (2017), Tyalgum Festival and Brisbane New Music Now. She was Head of Percussion (2003 – 2021), Director Creative Arts Research Institute (2021 – 2024) and in 2025 returns to work as Professor of Music, Griffith University.
“Restlessly creative”1 composer, pianist and sound artist Erik Griswold works across contemporary classical, improvised, and experimental forms. For over thirty years he has explored the outer limits of percussion and piano, in projects such as Ecstatic Descent (“powerful music that connects with both the natural with the spiritual”2), Time Crystals (“a kaleidoscopic exploration of timbre, texture and rhythmic interplay”3), and 84 Pianos (“joyous and brilliant”4). Recently he has
1 Utility Fog
2 Sequenza 21
3 Resonate Magazine
4 Limelight Magazine
concentrated on works addressing climate change via data sonification and sonic future imaginings. www.erikgriswold.org
His music has been performed in Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Cafe Oto, Chengdu Arts Centre, Melbourne Festival, OzAsia Festival, and Brisbane Festival, among others. He is a recipient of an Australia Council Fellowship in Music, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and numerous individual grants. He has collaborated with musicians Steven Schick, Margaret Leng Tan, the Australian Art Orchestra, Decibel Ensemble, Zephyr String Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Jon Rose and many others. Recent recordings include Anatomical Heart (with Chloe Kim and Helen Svoboda) and Un-named Road (with Jon Rose – to be released in early 2025). His music can be heard on Mode Records, Innova, Room40, Move, Cold Blue, Clocked Out, Harrigans Lane Collective and Immediata.
For over 20 years Clocked Out has created and produced innovative music, interarts, and intercultural events that extend experimental traditions in engaging and thought-provoking ways.
Starting in Melbourne in 1999, the duo of Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson crafted their trademark warped grooves and evocative soundscapes, using a colourful array of instruments including prepared piano, percussion, found objects and toys. Drawing on a wide variety of influences from experimental, jazz, and world music, Clocked Out has since played everywhere from Sydney Opera House to Roulette (New York) and Super Deluxe (Tokyo).
From the beginning they have been community-minded, initiating collaborations and organizing concert series, festivals and tours. Their early projects Dada Cabaret (Two Green Room Awards) and Virtuosic Visions (concert series at Melbourne Museum) brought together experimental musicians from punk, jazz, and classical traditions to present their work in new contexts. After moving to Brisbane in 2003, Clocked Out continued to push boundaries in projects like “Dream, Spill, Fear, Percussion” (collaboration with Speak Percussion), the international Festival of Toy Music, and the cutting edge “Trilling Wire” concert series. They cultivated an interest in music of Sichuan province, studying and collaborating with master musicians, and eventually touring their project “The Wide Alley” around the world.
From 2008-2020 they were Ensemble in Residence at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. During their residency they hosted over thirty national and international artists and ensembles, produced more than 30 world premieres, and brought to life over 1,500 minutes of never-before-heard music. Details of the Ensemble in Residence Series can be found in Resonate Magazine.
Recently they have focused on site-specific, environmental and architectural works, initiating a number of large-scale projects dealing with issues of cultural heritage (Sounding the Condamine), environment and extinction (Sonic Dreams), and acoustics (84 Pianos, Vibrations in a landscape). This body of work has reached a culmination of sorts with the Piano Mill (APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for “Excellence in Experimental Music,” World Architecture Festival Award in “Cultural building” category), a copper-clad tower in the forest of New South Wales purposebuilt to house 16 vintage pianos.