Colin Offord - Australasian music, perfomance and visual art

"My music and visual art has provided me with opportunities to travel throughout the world to

present my work and to experience what is happenng on this incredible planet. While the

work is it's own reward I believe it only becomes complete once it is shared with the public.

To those of you who have come to see and hear our work thank you and to those of you who

haven't then we hope to see you soon, somewhere!" Colin Offord Macleay Island, Australia.

MUSICIAN & VISUAL ARTIST Colin Offord is a singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, inventor of original instruments, designer of musical theatre pieces and visual artist. Of Anglo-Celtic heritage, his extensive travels and many collaborations have led him to a synthesis of the artistic and philosophical influences of western avant-garde and folk music, experimental Jazz, East Asian, Aboriginal Australian and Pacific island art forms.

A fusion of music, performance and visual arts his work is a response to the three stages of Australian history: indigenous, colonial and multicultural. Offord’s art is passionate, expansive and genuinely original yet very accessible to a wide audience. He has created an international art form with a distinctly Australasian character. Impossible to label Colin has come to describe his music as Country & Eastern, Pacifica and Australasian.

His activities include: concerts, video projection and environmental events, cross cultural collaborations, the developing and building of original instruments, scores for theatre, new media, circus, film and dance, special events, ,workshops, community projects and exhibitions of his visual art.

Colin has performed at arts and music festivals, in concert halls, theatres, halls and galleries and in schools and universities throughout Australia and the world. He has staged environmental events in volcanic craters, caves, beaches, garden in architectural settings and in the digital realm. He has given performances of his music throughout Europe, North America, East Asia, South Africa and Reunion Island and throughout Australia and the island nations of the Pacific Ocean.

He has represented Australia at Commonwealth Arts Festivals in Auckland and Edinburgh and at World Expo’s in Australia and Spain, for the Sydney 2000 Olympic bid in Monaco and in World Drum Festivals in Canada and Australia. He has been a cultural exchange artist for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade touring throughout New Caledonia, Tonga, Papua Nuigini, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Spain, Scotland, New Zealand, Vietnam and Laos.

Colin sings in a rich voice of exceptional range. He has developed a unique singing style that combines song forms and vocal improvisation, calls and yodels, harmonics, falsetto and the exploration of vocal sound. He accompanies his voice with the most noted of his many original instruments: the “Great Island Mouthbow“. Almost thirty years in development, it is a complex string instrument that can be bowed, plucked and played percussively. Colin then modifies the sounds harmonically with his throat to produce complex overtones into sweeping, rhythmic soundscapes. The result is a vast array of sonic possibilities from a single instrument.

He plays a range of original and traditional instruments: Australasian flute, harmonic windpipes, eagle feather flute, double flutes made especially for him by Australian maker Mark Binns, Conch shells, Ti-tze (Chinese flute), Bao hu & Hulu se (Chinese clarinets), Khene Lao and jaws harps. Other original instruments include: Xylopt: a bailer shell xylophone, Moonbells: multi-phonic harmonic plate chimes, Tongue bells, Australasian Belly Bows, a range of bamboo and metal percussion instruments and Detritus sound costumes.

COLLABORATIONS

Colin has collaborated with a wide range artists throughout the world. Some have been brief, spontaneous encounters at festivals, on tours and through projects and residencies whilst others have been developed and sustained over many years. FINNEN & OFFORD is a current collaboration with songwriter and blues guitar virtuoso Chris Finnen. This combination results in a very original blend of Australasian Blues, deep Swamp Boogie and Country & Eastern music. you can hear a little from a recent concert on Macleay Island if you ivisit youtube.com and to see his amazing collection of string instruments and hear his great guitar playing visit www.chrisfinnen.com

OTHER COLLABORATIONS INCLUDE: “Blackman|Whiteman” with Tharawal Aboriginal Matthew Doyle, Taiwanese Aboriginal singer Kimbo Hu Te Fu, Spanish Tenor Antonio Placer, Greek Soprano Savinna Yannatou, and Prima La Musica Chamber Orchestra Belgium. Australian musicians Calvin Welch check out youtube.com, Peter Kennard, Paul Jarman check out youtube.com, Paul Dengate and Daniele di Giovanni. Sona virtuoso Guo Jin Chai, Malian Kora master Jalimoussa Ballake Sissoko, Portughese Fado singer Lula Pena, “Full Moon” Flemish violinist Bert van Lathem’s improvisation ensemble, Chinese Flautist Gou Yue, Laotian multi-instrumentalist Khamsuan Vongthongkham, the National Theatre of Papua Nuigini, Manus Island drummers and dancers, the “Kelaniya Free Lancers” Sri Lankan drummers & dancers, French bass Clarinet virtuoso Saxi Georges Laurent, “Platypus“ Paul Jarman’s indigenous fusion group and Australis with Australian multi instrumentalist Ron Reeves. Dance collaborations include: Australians Aku Kadogo, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman check out website, Jade Dewi, Senegalese Germaine Acogny, Taiwanese Yogi Yu Chun Chan and Taipei Dance Forum.

LIVE & RECORDED SCORES

William Yang’s monologues “Shadows” and “ The North” check out website, Taiwanese new media artist Yeh Yilan’s Video installation “Dancing Brush” check out youtube.com, “Dedale” circus spectacle by Laurent Gachet for Academie Fratellini Paris, Ahmed Madani’s “ L’improbable Verite du Monde” for Centre Dramatique de L’Ocean Indien in Reunion Island, France and Switzerland. Phillip George’s “Mnemonic Notations” check out youtube.com, “Water, Water, Water”, for Elizabeth Cameron Dalman’s Mirramu Dance Company, “Banshee” and “Nuti” for Meryl Tankard Dance Theatre, Louis Nowra’s “Capricornia”, Sally Chance’s Restless Dance Company, and Karen Manwarring’s “Danseurs de la Pluie” for the Pacific Arts Festival New Caledonia.

Music for short features and documentary films include Canadian Edie Steiner’s award winning “Felicities’ view”, David Fanshawe’s score for Michael Winner’s film “ Dirty Weekend” and his own film/concert project “ Tyranny of Distance “ for Le Maillon Theatre du Strasbourg, France which is based on Norman Dawn’s 1927 silent film masterpiece “ For the term of his natural life “.

EXHIBITIONS & INSTALLATIONS

Colin’s exhibitions of drawings, collages and calligraphic works include: Sustainable Cosmopolis | Eco systemi, Palazzo Ducale Genoa Italy, International Container Arts Festival at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, Gold Coast Photography Award, Taipei Artist Village Gallery, Coventry Gallery, Woollahra Gallery, Mori Gallery, Sydney Institute of Contemporary Art, Wollongong City Gallery, Macquarie Gallery, Watters Gallery, Adelaide Festival Centre, the Sculpture Centre, Lillianfels and Hogarth Gallery. Group shows include : The Contemporary Art Society, The Institute of Contemporary Art, the People’s Commission Paddington Town Hall, The Sculpture Centre, Young Contemporaries at N.S.W. Regional Galleries, Wollongong City Gallery, Mori Gallery and the NSW University College of Fine Arts Silver Jubilee.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MAKING ART, MUSIC & MOUTHBOWS

I left school at 15 years of age to “become an artist”. I worked during the day at numerous menial jobs, eventually becoming a commercial graphic artist, designing magazines purely as a way of earning money. Meanwhile I attended various art schools in Sydney three nights a week, attended the Power Institute lectures at Sydney University and over a period of many years I took flute, bass clarinet and voice lessons with private teachers. I spent a lot of time making collages and practising calligraphic brushwork, going to art galleries, performance art events and concerts of free jazz and experimental music in the few venues around Sydney that presented such work; places like the Sculpture Centre, Central Street I.C.A., Watters Gallery, Stanley Palmers Culture Palace, the Basement and the Australian Music Centre.

I first heard recordings of North American, South African and Solomon Island traditional mouthbow music back in the mid 70’s. The intimacy and subtle nuances of the instrument’s sound immediately caught my imagination. I began making the basic instrument: one or two strings stretched onto a light branch or strip of bamboo. I tried old guitar strings, bicycle brake cables; even fuse wire or tennis racket gut but eventually settling on Piano and Gu Cheng (Chinese Zither) wire. I used turnbuckles, old paintbrush handles, turned hardwood and guitar machine heads for tuning pegs. Thirty years later I am still exploring the possibilities of the mouthbow.

At that time music was a secondary art form for me, my primary artistic expression was in the visual arts so when I began making instruments my approach was more akin to making sculpture that produced sound rather than the fine art of instrument making. I have never considered myself to be instrument maker, I don’t have that kind of training or technical skill, rather I think of myself as an inventor and sound explorer.

In the 70’s in Sydney the art gallery scene was open minded and full of exploration. I was already having exhibitions of my calligraphic paintings, collages and suspended art works so I began adding found objects and simple percussion and wind instruments: gongs made from 44 gallon drum lids, welded steel plate chimes, bamboo and metal windpipes, flutes and horns. Performance art was well attended and seemed to me to be everywhere and as most galleries had an interesting acoustic we staged evenings of music, performance art and dance in these settings. Reviews were mixed, ranging from “magical and sublime” to the “lunatic fringe” however there was a small and enthusiastic audience that found our work interesting and engaging.

I was passionate about the visual art of Constantin Brancusi, Ian Fairweather, Sengai, Mu Chi, Shotei Ibata, Jean Dubuffet, Joan Miro, Tony Tuckson, Ken Unsworth, Jean Tinguely, Jackson Pollack and Robert Rauschenberg. The music and instruments of Harry Partch and John Cage became of special interest to me and I listened avidly to free jazz artists such as Don Cherry, Pharaoh Sanders, Roland Kirk, Sun Ra, Brian Brown, Phil Treloar and Roger Frampton, to flute music from Korea, China, Japan and the highlands and Sepik River regions of Papua Nuigini. I was inspired by the vast gamut of musical creation to be found throughout the Pacific and South East Asia and by the Celtic music revival in Europe. I studied flute, bass clarinet and voice with various teachers though mostly I learnt by osmosis, through listening, reading and exchange with other artists and especially through travel.

In response to all this stimuli I began to search for my own artistic language, something borne of my time and place, something from my landscape. Setting up for a performance in one of my installations could take days and as I was beginning to get gigs around the country and had my first international tour in Germany in 1982, I needed to find a more practical and portable solution. Was it possible to bring these sounds and visual ideas together in a single instrument and art form?

THE GREAT ISLAND MOUTHBOW

Travel always brings you home. The idea of an “Australasian sound” began to grow in my head. The mouthbow provided an ideal vehicle for this search as it offered the opportunity to develop both my visual and aural interests simultaneously. Back home again I began in earnest to add other objects and small resonators to the instrument. The guitar maker Terry Hennessey gave me a diaphragm from an old wind up gramophone suggesting I use that to amplify the sound. The wheels went into motion.

By replacing the gramophone needle with a small metal bridge I could conduct the sound from the string into my mouth via a tubular mouthpiece to make subtle harmonic variations to the sound. I named it the “Leichhardt Gramophone mouthbow” after the Sydney suburb that was my home at the time.

The next stage came in 1982 when I built the “Grand Jacaranda Mouthbow” a 2.3 metre tall, insect-like beast. The string could be bowed, strummed and played with sticks. The pitch could be bent by hand pressure and by shaking the instrument. Played in an upright position, the long single string had an edgy growl and it offered a considerable range of playing possibilities. I began using small mics on the mouthpiece to amplify the sound, giving the audience a close up aural interpretation of what was going on harmonically in my throat. I had now found a sound that approximated what I was hearing in my head and it led me to the creation of the Great Island Mouthbow and to my own artistic language: a fusion of music, performance and visual arts and an artistic response to the three stages of Australian history: indigenous, colonial and multicultural.

In 1986 I spent 6 months researching and developing my instruments: the mouthbow, Moonbells and Windpipes, Raindrums and various percussion. The delicate silica membrane from the old gramophone diaphragm could only handle the stress of a single piano wire. I wanted to find a way of transferring the sound of multiple strings through to the mouthpiece to achieve a richer sound with better harmonics, articulation and pitch range. The Stroh-violins and banjos of the early 20th century caught my attention so perhaps the diaphragm as resonator with a pinned moveable bridge would work for me too.

I made a bridge from aluminium, two shallow resonators of wood with carbon fibre diaphragms and an “S” bend tubular mouthpiece. I carved the body from a paperbark branch. The result was the first “Great Island Mouthbow” a four stringed harmonic instrument held vertically and again played in a seated position. By using wound and unwound piano strings the Great Island Mouthbow responded well to all three playing techniques: drumming with chopsticks, plucked and strummed like a guitar or bowed like a cello. I could modulate these sounds harmonically with my throat to create cross rhythms and multiple layers of sound.

Since that time there have been many successes and failures as I have explored ways to improve the sound quality, range and ergonomics of the mouthbow. Every few years I build a new version, play it, make various acoustic and visual modifications and eventually it leads me to the point when it’s time to make the next model. Another obvious but important development occurred in 1990 with the making of the first horizontal version of the instrument, allowing me freedom of movement around the stage while playing.

The Great Island mouthbows aremade from Melaleuca Quincanervia, the paper bark tree as it is very strong and has a long close grain that conducts vibration very well. I use high-grade aluminium and brass for fittings such as the bridges and carbon fibre for the diaphragms. The strings are wound especially to my specifications by Parke Piano Strings.

The ideas for some of my instruments come directly from materials that cross my path from time to time eg: the wedge-tail eagle feather flute, the “Xylopt” (Bailer shell xylophone) or the “Icon Gongs” (Holden hubcaps). Others because I am searching for “a sound” eg: Waterbells and Moonbells, Raindrums and Harmonic Windpipes. Sometimes I make instruments for large-scale community projects and sometimes for the simple pleasure of exploring the unknown.

These days the changes and refinements have become smaller with time, however this process has no end and will continue indefinitely alongside composing, improvising and performing music, collaborating with other artists, giving workshops and making visual art.

OTHER ORIGINAL INSTRUMENTS

1. The Australasian Belly Bow employs a gourd resonator and small soundboard to produce harmonic “wah wah” sounds when moved off and on the belly. Its musical relatives can be found in the various bows and bow harps of Africa, the Pin Nam Tao of Thailand and the Sadev of Cambodia, the Berimbao of Brazil and in the many bows found throughout the world.

2. Moonbells: I first made these in 1986. They are cut from high-grade aluminium and brass plate in such a way as to emphasise their multi-phonic overtones. Each bell produces three notes that are immersed in a dense cloud of harmonics and multi-phonics. The bells have been through many configurations and given rise to other instruments, notably the Waterbells, Spoonbells, Tongue bells and Pressure Gongs.

3. Windpipes inspired by the Highland and Sepik River Flutes from Papua Nuigini I have developed a range of harmonic pipes made from aluminium and bamboo. They range in size from 2 metres to 10mm. The Windpipes generally have one blowing hole and no finger holes. The sound is varied by wind pressure and by hand movement at either of the open ends. I sometimes use a fine membrane to cover a hole mid-way giving a reed like vibration to the tone similar to the Chinese Ti-Tze.

The Lyrebird flutes use finger holes and are designed to be played with one hand while playing the mouthbow while the other. Other flutes and pipes include the Kangaroo Bone Flute, Wedge Tail Eagle Feather Flute which aptly sings like a bird and the Australasian Flute: a modified classical silver flute body fitted with a bamboo head joint and membrane resonator. By replacing the mouthpiece with a bamboo one, by making a larger embouchure hole and by covering a small hole in the head-joint with a fine membrane I have increased the instruments tonal possibilities. I also play Double Flutes made especially for me by the brilliant West Australian flageolet maker Mark Binns.

CORPORATE & SPECIAL EVENTS

21st Pacific Science Congress, Opening Ceremony, Sydney Opera House
5th Annual Asia-Pacific Film Festival Awards, State Theatre, Sydney
10th Anniversary State Dinner. NSW -Tokyo Sister State Relationship, Sydney Hilton
Australian Capitol Territory Tourism Awards, Canberra Convention Centre
Sydney Botanic Gardens, Spring Carnival program and media launch
Asian Pacific Law Reform Association Convention, Regent Hotel Sydney
Metalworkers International Conference Opening Ceremony. Darling Harbour Sydney Exhibition Centre,
Mastercard International Annual Directors Conference dinner. Lady Macquarie’s Chair, Sydney Harbour.
Promotional events for the Australian Tourist Commission: Sydney Opera House, Fort Denison on Sydney Harbour, Canberra Casino, Chinese Gardens and the Regent Hotel
Australia Day Ceremony & Artes Pavilion Opening, Expo 92 Seville Spain
Asia-Pacific Real Estate Conference Opening Ceremony Sydney Convention Centre
“Sea Change”, Olympic Arts Festival program and media launch,
Sydney Maritime Museum
Sydney 2000 Olympic Bid, Monte Carlo, Monaco
Peoplesoft Asia-Pacific product launch, Conrad Jupiters Casino, Gold Coast
National Wheelchair Games Opening Ceremony, State Sports Centre, Sydney
International Metalworkers Federation Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre
8th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems Opening Ceremony,
Sydney Convention Centre
Annual Conference of Australian Civil Engineers, Darling Harbour Convention Centre
Ernst & Young International Accountants Conference, Sydney Opera House
Royal Gala Performance in the presence of Prince Charles & Lady Diane, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Scotland
Rivercare 2000 Awards Ceremony, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Sydney
International Soil, Erosion& Water Management, Annual Conference, Sydney Hilton

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