Clare Hood's vocal work in the edgy I give you back dazzled with its many shades of speech and song. Photo / Supplied
Karlheinz Company's annual concert is always a highlight of the year, and tonight's instalment showcased four decades of music that gleefully demolishes any attempt at boundaries or borders.
Eve de Castro-Robinson's Whiplash was a teasing launch pad, choreographing flautists Uwe Grodd and Grace Liu in a mutual stalk-out ritual with
sonic implications.
After John Elmsly's Here had violinist Elizabeth Holowell dealing out whimsy with fluttering tremolos and woozy chord slides, John Coulter's eerily effective Mouth Piece beamed down from a TV monitor.
A mouth, in merciless close-up, repeated a phrase that was eventually reduced to wordless pitch patterns; the delicious irony came when, as we were visually drawn into dental claustrophobia, the soundtrack achieved liberation in electro acoustic birdsong.
Kevin Field's People Factory explored post-cool jazz with a Cuban twist, with Roger Manins' roving saxophone dominating the quartet.