ANDREW BALL

I’m looking forward to bringing my Forbidden Languages solo set to the inaugural Super Sounds festival in Brisbane. I’ve been loving the process of making each FL performance feel fresh and unique, developing and adding more and more material to the compositions and improvisational parameters from my album. Don’t miss the huge lineup on June 8th, headlined by the formidable Rafiq Bhatia (NYC)!

Super Sounds is a new music festival devoted to genre-bending music in the jazz sphere and creative young artists pushing jazz music in bold and exciting directions. Grab tickets here!

Excited to announce that I’ll be performing at the XVIII World Saxophone Congress in Zagreb, Croatia in July. I’m thrilled to be premiering a bunch of awesome new Australian compositions, including some of my own: ‘Artefacts’ (for prepared instruments) with Barega Sax Quartet, ‘Chimera’ with the Australian Saxophone Orchestra, as well as my own solo recital ‘Forbidden Languages’. Please come and say hi if you’re around the congress! You can find me at:

Forbidden Languages (solo) – July 10th, 2.30pm
Barega Sax Quartet – July 12th, 9.30am
Australian Saxophone Orchestra – July 13th, 4.00pm

Here’s a little taster of the solo program!

Thrilled to announce the launch of my new album Forbidden Languages through Made Now Music. I’ve been writing and recording this suite of solo saxophone pieces for the last couple of years and it’s great to see this labour of love become a finished product! On the album I explore ways of creating layered textures and generally making the sax sound rather alien – through extended techniques, preparations, and exploiting hyper-idiomatic quirks of the instrument. I’m planning to make the notated music available in the near future. You can stream and download Forbidden Languages here.

Excited to announce that I am now a represented artist with the Australian Music Centre! You can check out my Associate Artist page here.

I’m excited to launch a new project this year called ‘Forbidden Languages’! This is a suite of new compositions for solo saxophone, in which I explore/ exploit unique and idiomatic characteristics and techniques on the instrument. The individual pieces are all broadly informed by symbolism and mythology, and the concept of alien, imaginary, irrational, dreamlike, ephemeral “language”.

I’m premiering the set of works at Tilde new music festival in Melbourne, Saturday January 21st. Come along if you’re in town – otherwise keep your eyes peeled for more performances and recordings! Here is a cheeky preview of two of the pieces:

I’ve been hard at work lately on a commission for the Australia Ensemble. Very exciting to work with the performers David Griffiths and Ian Munro, on this substantial clarinet sonata entitled Three Dreams in Pulse. Inspired by the rather abstract concept of our distorted recollection of dreams, the piece appropriates and transforms rhythmic cycles that are idiomatic to a mix of cultures (from delta blues, to traditional Korean and Afro-Cuban patterns). The work was commissioned by Andrew Kennedy, and is dedicated to clarinettist Catherine McCorkill. You can catch the premiere if you’re in Sydney on the 14th May – details on the Australia Ensemble website: http://www.music.unsw.edu.au/australia-ensemble/subscription-concerts/bright-young-things-may-14-2016

Road testing some new concepts for an upcoming solo saxophone composition project! We saxophonists sometimes enjoy sounding ‘not’ like a saxophone. Exploring ways in which idiomatic yet unconventional layering and combination of microstructures, articulation, inflection, etc can relate conceptually to a ‘language’ or syntax (in an abstract sense). Stay tuned – this will be part of a larger suite of pieces!