Opening of the Mouth: An Antenna in the History of ELISION
ELISION Ensemble's ideal throughout the 1990's has been to pursue an artistic direction which remains implacably committed to composers who can conceive and write for the ensemble as an integrated instrument. ELISION has focussed on a music-making which arises from an interaction between composers and the personal virtuosity and idiosyncrasies of individual players, composers who are able to tackle the ‘timbral’ potential of the group with an approach that could be described as sculptural. The demands of this creative attitude are distinctly different from the notion of a composer writing for the ensemble as an ‘orchestration problem’ (where the musical content can be divorced from the ‘materiality’ of the instruments themselves).
ELISION's approach also emphasises the creativity that can be brought to bear on shaping the form of a ‘work’ with intense dialogue and collaboration across a number of artforms, before it has coalesced into any identifiable category. And often, the resultant work defies clear categorisiation at all. This strategy describes the ‘design’ of the Bar-do'i-thos-grol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), a 7-night performance/installation cycle (The Festival of Perth 1995) and The Oresteia, a memory theatre (opera) (composer Liza Lim, director Barrie Kosky and choreographer Shelley Lasica).
These approaches have energised the narrative of the ensemble, its musicians and its associated artists, and finds its fullest realisation in Opening of the Mouth.
The music of Richard Barrett has been an antenna to the creative life of the ensemble. First commissioned by ELISION in 1990 with support from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Richard's work signifies, along with the music of Liza Lim, the ELISION ethic most fully. His music encourages us to investigate ‘what is possible’, to hear sound in constantly shifting and fresh formations: collapsing, writhing, re-emerging, sensual, despairing and always unpredictable. In turn, Richard's sense of how he ‘hears’ his work is elaborated by the performance of ELISION. It is a mutually defining relationship that began with the trio Another heavenly day, led to the composition of the negatives cycle (movements 2, 3, and 4 performed in Perth for EVOS in 1992), the critically acclaimed recording of these works by ELISION on the ETCETERA label and is now expanded in this project to take in the long-term collaboration between Richard and the London-based installation artist Richard Crow.
It is with great excitement that the ensemble commits itself to this project. Opening of the Mouth draws into itself an intellectual and creative ferment whose scope emerges from the history and spirit of ELISION, and spills across disciplines to an unorthodox utilisation of the ensemble. The sensibility of Opening of the Mouth, deriving its inspirational sources from the ritualistic and mythological; from the poetry of Paul Celan and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, focuses the ensemble upon reclamation; the giving of a voice, of optimism arising out of the experience of annihilation and the articulation of the inarticulate.
Artistic Director, ELISION Ensemble
"In projects like this, ELISION constructs itself not so much as a concert-performing ensemble but as a vehicle for the creation of unique and thought-provoking artistic statements. Is it not strange or even impertinent to try to exorcise the ghosts of Auschwitz on a balmy summer night in a railway yard 30 minutes out of Perth? Is it possible? ELISION projects are ones with which one mentally carries on an argument long after the event. ELISION is a mouth."
—Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald 11.03.1997
Further information on Opening of the Mouth can be found HERE
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