Showing posts with label Glass Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glass Music. Show all posts

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Our first Artist in Residence!


The Festival of Glass is delighted to introduce its first Artist in Residence - glass artist Mark Eliott. Mark will run two sculptural glass workshops at the 2015 Festival of Glass:
·      One-day workshop: Monday 16th February
A short introduction to flame-work. We will use rods of clear and coloured borosilicate glass to make abstract forms, pendants and an animal; and we will also blow a bubble with a glass tube. The class is suitable for beginners, but experienced students will be given more advanced projects.
·      Three-day workshop: Tuesday 17th to Thursday 19th February.
An introduction to glass sculpting. We will use rods of clear and coloured borosilicate glass and blowing with hollow tubing to make glass ornaments such as figurines, animals, vessels, pendants and abstract sculptures. The class is suitable for beginners, but experienced students will be given more advanced projects.
Bookings are essential: markeliottglass@gmail.com

Introducing Mark Eliott

Mark Eliott was born in New Zealand but grew up in Sydney, where he now lives. His primary medium is flame-worked borosilicate glass (pyrex), which is stronger and less likely to crack when the temperature changes; and his work is inspired by – among other things - plants, animals, marine organisms and people.

As a teenager, Mark delighted in digging up old bottles and this led to an informal apprenticeship at the Minson scientific glass company. Subsequently, he had various jobs, played saxophone in numerous bands and studied Jazz at Sydney’s conservatorium. He returned to the world of glass but continues to play music and incorporates other media into his work.

In 2010, Mark collaborated with animator Jack MacGrath to produce Dr Mermaid and the Above Marine - a 6-minute animated video about a marine biologist who communicates with fish.


In April 2012, Mark and Jack collaborated again in a workshop at Waverley Woollahra Arts School, Bondi, in which participants made improvised forms from flame-worked glass. (“Glass Flame-ation Bondi – the workshop.” [Jack McGrath] http://vimeo.com/49953912)

Mark’s continuing “Music in Glass” project brings together two of the main creative streams of his life. The project draws on his experience of synaesthesia in which sound is simultaneously perceived as colours, forms and textures. Mark has described the experience as follows:
“One piece of music may appear as a monotone wash of grey or brown while another might appear as a broad landscape full of strange forms such as fuzzy red-brown blobs for base notes and banks of stratified patterns for piano accompaniment with shifting tonal colours according to the chordal movement. A saxophone solo may appear as a jagged streak of yellow-blue lightening or a curvaceous meandering form in deep gold, red and purple.”



Monday, February 3, 2014

Glass on radio

On Tuesday 4 February, 2014 Festival of Glass committee members Doug Carson and Patrick Hughes are on Vision Australia Radio (Geelong) between 2.00 and 4.00 pm on 99.5FM.

Doug and Patrick will talk with Graham Rawlins on the station's regular 'Tuesday Magazine'. They talk abut the Festival's origins and aims, they highlight features of the 2014 Festival and hint at some future developments.

Graham ends the segment with 'a suitable piece of music'; as you guessed, it was Blondie's 'Heart of Glass'. Here are a couple of other tracks he might have chosen:
'Glass' by Joy Division (1978) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z55MK7oemME)
'Glass' by Gang of Four (1979) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKc0fox1wEY)

Vision Australia Radio
The Vision Australia Radio Network incorporates nine community radio stations across Victoria (e.g. 179AM in Melbourne, 88.7FM in Bendigo), southern New South Wales and South Australia. The Network - second only to ABC Radio in its reach - offers a 24-hour 'sustaining' service, into which local stations such as Geelong can slot their local programmes.  Created to meet the particular needs of people with impaired vision, the network is attracting increasing numbers of listeners from across the general population attracted especially by each station's local focus. (For more, see http://radio.visionaustralia.org/)



Sunday, February 2, 2014

Music under a Harvester Moon

The Bottleneck Guitar evening that starts the 2014 Festival of Glass on 15 February has an added attraction - an exhibition of guitar slides in all their variety.
Some slides on a 'resonator' guitar


The evening marks the second year of a partnership between the Festival of Glass and Harvester Moon Cafe, 2320 Portarlington Road - so it's nearly a tradition! Dinner and music is $65.00 per person; the music alone is $25. Dinner starts at 7.00pm; the music starts at 8.00pm. Bookings essential: (03) 5259 3200.

The fine wining and dining
This comes as a 3-course dinner:
Starter: Tomato, basil & bocconcini bruschetta
Mains: Marinated chicken breast with potato rosti, asparagus and hollandaise sauce 
            OR
            Minute steak with red wine sauce, shoestring fries and salad
Dessert: Chocolate and ricotta panettone pudding.
(N.B. Vegetarian and gluten-feee options are available.)

The fine music
... is courtesy of Mr. Black and Blue, aka Michael Pollitt and friends
(www.mrblackandblues.com). In 2013, the band recorded an album with Chris Wilson 'Blow These tracks: live on the Blues Train' - on the Blues Train, out of Queenscliff.

A selection of tracks from their 2012 album 'The Morning Light' is on their MySpace page:
https://myspace.com/mrblackandblues/music/songs
It includes several fine slide guitar tracks - and a version of 'Fever' that would turn Peggy Lee green with jealousy!

The very fine glass collectibles
These are donated by exhibitors at the Glass Expo - the centrepiece of the 2014 Festival of Glass - which runs all day Sunday 16 February at Christan College, 40 Collins Street, Drysdale. Many of the exhibitors have won awards for their work and the auction is a chance to  buy award-winning glass art at very reasonable prices. Successful bidders at last year's auction went away with some real bargains!

.... and the exhibition of guitar slides
Davis Music Centre - the oldest music shop in Australia (est. 1901) - is supporting the 2014 Festival of Glass by presenting an exhibition of guitar slides as part of the evening of bottleneck guitar. Guitarists use slides to ... well ... slide between notes, creating a continuous sound, rather than a series of distinct notes. The earliest slides were used by blues singers in America's deep south and were literally bottlenecks - the broken-off necks of bottles. Hence the connection with the Festival of Glass.  Subsequently, guitarists have made slides from various materials, including metal, plastic or resin.

Here are some examples of bottleneck guitar playing:
Bob Brozman playing Highway 49 Blues using a glass bottleneck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzfgagmrBk&feature=related
 
Roy Rogers playing Walkin' Blues using a plastic bottleneck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW08Rc802MQ

Bonnie Rait (with John Lee Hooker) playing I'm in the mood using a resin bottleneck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQxgyVydKy8&feature=related



Friday, January 17, 2014

Extraordinary musical instruments!

The 2014 Festival of Glass will offer a glimpse of the extraordinary work of Canadian instrument-maker Nicola Mainville.
'Dragon song' xylophone


Nicola deploys his skills and imagination to create exquisite, hand-crafted musical instruments made of wood and glass. They include glass xylophones inspired by (and tuned to) the Javanese/Balinese gamelan, glass drums inspired by drums of Mali and Senegal and glass didgeridoos inspired by the wooden didgeridoos of Northern Australia's Aborigines. 

A short video showing a selection of Nicola's glass musical instruments will be part of 'Glass on Film', a selection of short films about glass that is a new feature of the Festival. 'Glass on Film' exploits the features of the 200-seat auditorium at the Festival's new, cool venue - Christan College, in central Drysdale.

Nicola's web site has photos of his instruments, several of which have sound clips:
http://www.nicolamainville.com/index_eng.html