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David Chesworth Ensemble
Performing the music of David Chesworth and others, the David Chesworth Ensemble has forged it’s own musical path winning over audiences around the world with its unique, evocative music.The David Chesworth Ensemble creates a vast soundscape of orchestral, exotic instruments and electronics in a feast of striking, scraping, blowing, shaking, pushing, pulling and plucking.
From his early experimental beginnings with seminal post-punk outfit Essendon Airport, David Chesworth has become one of Australia’s key composers and sound artist. His distinctive compositions and installations have been performed and exhibited extensively in Australia and throughout the world. Major festivals include Ars Electronica, Festival D’Automne de Paris, Edinburgh Festival, Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals, Sydney Biennale and BAM Next Wave Festival New York.
Chesworth’s output has covers a vast oeuvre incorporating instrumental, electro acoustic and installation-based work for ensembles, opera, film, and theatre. The ensemble is able to draw on this ever-morphing ‘Chesworthian’ sound world for its own sustenance.
The David Chesworth Ensemble was formed in 1993 at the suggestion of the ensemble musicians, all of whom had previously worked collaboratively with Chesworth on his many one- off projects and expressed a desire to further develop this music for ensemble performance. The ensemble’s unique sound is derived from both its particular instrumentation: violin, cello, electric bass, trombone, piano, orchestral percussion (two players) and electronics, as well as through the approach and collective understanding of his musicians.
‘It’s an odd combination. The tonal palette stretches from extreme syrup to squeak: the trombone blares, pianos rumble and the vibraphone plinks. Rousing themes are accompanied by a grumbling undertow or abruptly abandoned, while the piano bumbles like a bee at a windowpane. The net effect is strangely euphonious’. The Wire, UK
Written: 27th May, 07
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