Chris DENCH

Chris Dench was born in London in 1953; he is self-taught. After periods living in Tuscany and West Berlin, the latter as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, he finally arrived to settle in Australia--he became an Australian citizen in 1992.

His commissioned works include symphony 4/propriocepts for four amplified voices and large orchestra (1994-7) for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, premièred by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under David Porcelijn in April 1997; strangeness and the eightfold way (1985/97) for the Arditti String Quartet, heterotic strings (1993) for austraLYSIS, symphony 3/afterimages (1987) for the British Broadcasting Corporation; driftglass (1990-1), which represented Australia at the 1992 Paris Rostrum of Composers, quattro frammenti (1992), 'e/meth, and firecycle: Agni, Prometheus, Luzifer for ELISION Ensemble; énoncé (1993-4) for the French Ministry of Culture, premièred by the London Sinfonietta at the 1983 Metz Festival, and many others.

His works have also been performed by Ensemble Accroche Note of Strasbourg, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, ensemble Exposé, Ensemble InterContemporain, ensemble Topologies (who take their name from his piano piece Topologies), Music Projects/London, the Xenakis Ensemble, with such conductors as Simon BAINBRIDGE, Peter EÖTVÖS, Cristobal HALFFTER, Huub KERSTENS, and Diego MASSON, and such eminent soloists as Julie ADAM, Pierre-Yves ARTAUD, Andrew BALL, Giuseppe BRUNO, James CLAPPERTON, Michael FINNISSY, Rolf HIND, Mark KNOOP, Stephanie McCALLUM, the late Yvar MIKHASHOFF, Geoffrey MORRIS, Peter NEVILLE, Ian PACE, Rocco PARISI, Jonathan POWELL, Michael RIESSLER, Stephen ROBINSON, Carl ROSMAN, Todd SEELYE, and Claudio SANTAMBROGIO.

He has been the subject of `composer portrait´ concerts under the auspices of the Almeida Festival in London (1986), the Kunst im Wissenschaftszentrum series in Berlin (1989), the Huddersfield Festival (1992), and the début concert of ensemble Topologies in London (1995), and his works have been presented at such events as the Brighton Festival, the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (at which he was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis for composition in 1984), Fylkingen in Stockholm, Gaudeamus Foundation Music Week, the Hong Kong ISCM/ACL World Music Days, the Inselmusik and Inventionen Festivals in Berlin, the Kings Lynn Festival, the La Rochelle Festival, the Metz Festival, the Middelburg Festival, Musica Attuale 1992 in Bologna, Musica nel Nostro Tempo in Milan, the Schreyahner Herbst Festival, the Musica Nuova per l'Europa event at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena (released on a Fonit Cetra CD in 1989), the Musica Festival in Strasbourg, the Festival Rive-Gauche in Turin, the Sydney Spring Festival, the Biennale di Venezia, and elsewhere--most of these performances were broadcast.

Between 1986 and 1991 he wrote a series of four large-scale solo flute works: Vier Darmstädter Aphorismen, dé/ployé, sulle scale della Fenice, and Closing Lemma, which Paul GRIFFITHS calls `important´ and `remarkable´ in his book Modern Music and After (OUP, 1995).

His 1992 work for Roger WOODWARD's Alpha Centauri Ensemble, planetary allegiances for flute and ensemble (now incorporated into symphony 6/sunless), was included in the group's 1992 European Tour; it was featured in a BBC TV documentary on the Grateful Dead/Rex Foundation. Other TV broadcasts have included excerpts from funk on SBS TV Imagine, and driftglass on both Paul GRABOWSKY's Access All Areas for the ABC TV, and the Northern Territory edition of ABC TV's Holiday show.

ELISION Ensemble's performance of funk, featuring Carl ROSMAN on bass clarinet and Peter NEVILLE on percussion, won the 1996 Sounds Australian Award for Best Performance of an Australian Work.

His most recent completed works include le Passacaglie (1993) for harpsichord, ruins within (1992-4) for clarinet in A, severance (1988-94) for guitar, mem(e) (1994) for bass flute and piano, 'e/meth (1995) for oboe, into the wormworks (1983/95) for piano, beyond status geometry (1994-5) for four percussionists, and symphony 4/propriocepts (1994-7). Among his current projects are amalgamating and extending ensemble works planetary allegiances (1992) and sunless (1994-6) to create symphony 6/sunless; firecycle: Agni, Prometheus, Luzifer, a large-scale virtuoso work to celebrate and demonstrate the accomplishments of Australia's preeminent ensemble, ELISION; a new guitar work for American player Todd SEELYE to première during Ensemble 21's December 1997 season in New York, at which Seelye is featured artist; and symphony 5/littoral for brass quintet and very large orchestra.

Articles on his work by Richard TOOP have appeared in Contact, Perspectives of New Music (volume 29/2), and Contemporary Music Review. Chris writes regularly for Soundscapes, and a `dialogue´ with compositional linguist Chris MANN appeared in Context. Projected CDs of his work include ELISION Ensemble performing driftglass, 'e/meth, funk, ruins within, and quattro frammenti; and a recording of Topologies (1979-80) for piano played by Ian PACE on a recital disc for the British label NMC.

Since early 1996 he has been engaged on a review of his notational systems with the intent of simplifying the means by which musical ideas are presented to the player without compromise of the compositional substance.

Many of his works are published by United Music Publishers, 42 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3BN; driftglass is published by BMG, Rome, and mem(e) and Pas Seul 3: rushes by Red House Editions, Melbourne; the remainder are self-published through Emergent Music and TesserACT Publishing. All his scores can be obtained through the Australian Music Centre.

August 1997