Listen…

Apparently, as a toddler, I used to ask my parents if they could hear the music in the cars. Experiencing the environment as music provides an endless wellspring of inspiration that permeates all of my work. Whether performing, directing massed performances, building instruments and installations, leading a workshop or composing, I aim to open ears and eyes to the joy, beauty and power of music.

Excerpt from soundtrack to ‘The Corridor’, 2005 Dance-Music-Theatre work by David Wells, with music by GL. String cans, drum samples and tambourine.

A Jackdaw on the Amplified Fence, an Eco Opera instrument-installation, 2020

Music or Noise?

The difference between music and noise… says the 50’s American scientist on the Physics of Musical Sounds tape …is whether we like it or not. ​I am fascinated by how we judge sound as either pleasing or jarring to the ear and by the fact that over time we become more accepting of ‘jarring’ sounds. Beethoven’s audience stormed out of first performances of his works. Beatles fans were appalled at the newest releases. Today’s audiences are still appalled at Schoenberg 100 years after he re-wrote the rules of harmony. There is melody, harmony, dissonance, noise, discord, rhythm and myriad other musics playing all around us when we stop and listen.

Girgarre Junkestra string-can rehearsal 8 Feb 2018
String Cans: Des Crichton, Val Maudsley, John Warde and GL

Instruments

String Can, St Albans 2016

We need new acoustic instruments. Why is it that the saxophone (1840) is the last new instrument to have ‘made it’ into mainstream (Western) art music? The evolution of acoustic musical instruments, so active and continuous since the stone-age, has almost ground to a halt. Is this because electronics and computers have taken centre stage? Has the exploration of vibrating strings, skin, wood and columns of air been overshadowed by electronics and programming?

Fence and Triangle, Winton Town Fence Band 2003 
Fence: Pinky Mutton, Mary Pearce, Stephanie Greenwood, Rosie Archer, Rebecca Crap, Milton Taylor, Toni Wilmott, Barb Howard, Karen Stockham, Joan Evert
Triangle and Conductor: GL

Cinema took a body blow with the arrival of video but has bounced back with a new and robust relationship to digital technology. Instrument making is still suffering from the mass exodus from workshops to office chairs. It will recover and new instruments will be heard. It can be so simple, so beautiful, and mostly free!

MUSIC or NOISE? short audio work, 2005
ten-pin bowls, conduit whistles, amplified cactus and flying harmonica

RAISING the ROOF concert excerpt, Hamer Hall 2012, composed/arranged and conducted GL, featuring Chao Feng Chinese Orchestra, Drum Nation, Kew Band Melbourne, La Voce Della Luna, MASSIVE Hip Hop Choir, Melbourne Mass Gospel Choir, Melbourne Ukulele Kollective, Mesopotamia Group, SKIN Choir and the AUDIENCE.
MC: Julia Zemiro
CREATIVE PRODUCER: Patrick Cronin
STAGE DESIGNER: Darryl Cordell
CONCERT SOUND DESIGN and RECORDING ENGINEER: Jim Atkins
CHOREOGRAPHER: Bec Reid
LX DESIGN: Niklas Pajanti