2022 THE YEAR THAT WAS.
Artistic Director of Decibel Cat Hope recaps Decibel’s year. After not performing together since 2019 the group has returned with a wide range of activity and partnerships.
Decibel perform ‘2 Minutes From Home’ at City University, London. Photo by Cat Hope.
In 2022, Decibel performed 3 concerts in Australia, 6 in Britain and 2 in Germany. This included the world premiere of the 2 Minutes from Home live performance at the Revelation Film Festival in Perth, at Luna Cinemas in June, repeated in Melbourne at the Melbourne Recital Centre in July. We also performed our Revolution program at the Recital Centre in June. As part of our British tour we visited the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (recorded by BBC3), Bath Spa University, City University, Liverpool University, Cafe Oto and a special collaboration with chamber orchestra Ruthless Jabiru at the Brunel Tunnel Shaft in London. We performed works by Gail Priest, Erik Griswold, Dominic Flynn, Amanda Stewart, Haruka Hirayama, Dan Thorpe, Cathy Milliken, Lindsay Vickery (3), Tristen Parr, Lionel Marchetti (2), Marina Rosenfeld, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, J.G. Thirwell, Jon Rose, Thembi Soddell (2), Pedro Alvarez (2), Louise Devenish, Aaron Wyatt, Cat Hope (8), Stuart James, Paul Turowski, David May, Harry Mathews, Stephen Jackson Banks, Kara Saariaho, Tansy Davies, Julius Eastman, Goni Peres, John Cage, Annika Moses, The Velvet Underground, Chris De Groot, Milan Knizak, Chloe Sobek, Jaslyn Robertson and Iran Sanadzadeh.
Aaron Wyatt conducts the joint Ruthless Jabiru and Decibel ‘bass orchestra’ at Brunel Tunnel. Photo by Lindsay Vickery.
Collaborations featured strongly this year, with the Brunel Tunnel ‘The Holy Presence Of’ performance co-produced with conductor Kelly Lovelady, which saw Decibel play in the orchestra, Decibel member Aaron Wyatt’s international conducting debut, and the world premiere of a new bass guitar concert by myself. We collaborated with the DigiScore European Research Council project alongside the Hamburg Institute of Advanced Study, the Hamburg Hochschule for Music and Theatre and PhD candidates from Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash Unviersity on the creation of new works using digital notation. We contributed some of our scores from the Complete John Cage Variations project to the ‘CageWorks’ exhibition of the works of John Cage at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space.
Cat Hope performing on bass guitar at the Brunel Tunnel. photo Matt Hunt.
We released two albums – ‘Cat Hope – Decibel’ on Hat[Art] Hut subsidary Ezz-thetics, and a new major work, Inland Lake, by Lionel Marchetti, on Room 40.
We continued to develop the Decibel Score Player and the related Score Creator and continue to see downloads grow each year. We published 2 papers on our work at international conferences, and our work was mentioned in a range of academic publications this year.
THE YEAR AS STATS
2022 saw the performance of 48 works (and to be fair, 21 of these are 2 minutes long, but some were played more than once), of which 40 were commissioned by us, and 31 are Australian works and 28 were world premieres. 24 of the works we performed were by non male identifying people.
Decibel scores for John Cage Variations on exhibition at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space.
PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS
None of this would be possible without amazing supporters and partners including the Melbourne Recital Centre, Revelation Film Festival, HCMF – Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Rachel Davison PR Bureau of Works, Karl Ockelford, Kate Milligan, Kerry Young, Sam Gillies, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Kelly Lovelady, Bath Spa University The Brunel Museum Thames Tunnel Shaft, The Tung Auditorium, University of Liverpool, Café OTO, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Arts – British Council, The Digital Score, BBC Radio 3, #UKAustraliaSeason, Room40, #Hat[hut]Art, Monash University, Tura New Music, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, #HamburgHIAS, Kate McMillan, Matt Hunt.
Top banner photo credit: Luke Devenish – Decibel and Ruthless Jabiru rehearse at Brunel Tunnel, with Aaron Wyatt Conducting.