An hour-long percussion sextet featuring the instrumentation from Xenakis' Pleïades.
Commissioned for Synergy Percussion's 40th birthday in 2014. Beauty is a four movement electro-acoustic work for percussion sextet and electronics combining written materials from Anthony Pateras, improvisations with the electroacoustic composer Jérôme Noetinger and a vast battery of over 100 orchestral percussion instruments, including Xenakis' 17-pitch microtonal metallophones, the Sixxen.
Written over 2 years in Brussels and Berlin, the piece explores spatial polyrhythms, slowshifting textural densities, microtonal sieves and psychoacoustic meditations. Vitruosically executed by Sydney's Synergy Percussion, the piece stands alone in scope and sound, drawing on Pateras' unique body of work for orchestral percussion over the last decade.
For the occasion of release, the composer interviewed both his collaborator Jérôme Noetinger and founding editor of
Semiotext(e),
Sylvère Lotringer, who provided the title of the piece. Both interviews topically traverse technology, DIY culture, ethics and the media.
Anthony Pateras (born 1979) is an Australian-born composer, pianist and electro-acoustic musician active since the late 90s. His music explores electro-acoustic orchestration, auditory hallucination and polytemporality.
His work has been recognised through the 2020 Michael Kieran Harvey Scholarship, residencies at Akademie Schloss Solitude, La Becque and ZKM, fellowships from Creative Victoria, Ian Potter & Sydney Myer Foundations, and representing Australia twice at the
UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers.
Pateras has been commissioned internationally by INA-GRM, Südwestrundfunk, ensemble]h[iatus, Eklekto, Kitchen Orchestra, the City of Modena, Musica Sanae Festival, Festival Archipel and Synergy Percussion. His pieces have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC & Toronto Symphony Orchestras, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Golden Fur and ICE, among many others.
Anthony Patera also works with text and film, recently completing an adaptation of Jump Cuts by Sasha Soldatow & Christos Tsiolkas with James Rushford, music for The Man Who Disappeared by semiotext(e) founder
Sylvère Lotringer, and Another Other, an audio-visual re-imagining of Ingmar Bergman's Persona with Natasha Anderson, Sabina Maselli and
Erkki Veltheim for Chamber Made.
Pateras' longest running collaborations are with the composer/violinist Erkki Veltheim (in duo, in tētēma & in North of North with Scott Tinkler), and with the electronic musician
Jérôme Noetinger, specialising in musique concrète environments using piano, electronics and tape machines.
He has also worked extensively with the programmer & mathematician Rohan Drape on multiple keyboard and ensemble works.
Pateras has also collaborated with Sunn O))), Anthony Burr,
eRikm,
Oren Ambarchi, Mike Patton or
James Rushford on various recording projects, and notable bands include
Thymolphthalein, PIVIXKI and
Pateras/Baxter/Brown.
Anthony has published over 40 albums of his music on labels Tzadik,
Editions Mego, Ipecac, All That Dust, Cave12 and Penultimate Press, and from 2012-2019 edited and produced the 15 volume Immediata text/music project.
From 2001-2008 he completed a Masters and PhD at Monash University which both focused on the intersection of composition, improvisation and electronic music, in relation to timbre and form.
See also
Thymolphthalein (Natasha Anderson, Will Guthrie, Jérôme Noetinger, Anthony Pateras & Clayton Thomas);
Extended Pianos (Erik Griswold, Anthony Pateras & Robin Fox);
Astral Colonels (Anthony Pateras &
Valerio Tricoli);
North of North (Anthony Pateras, Scott Tinkler & Erkki Veltheim);
176 (Chris Abrahams & Anthony Pateras);
Pateras/Baxter/Brown.
Jérôme Noetinger (born 1966 in Marseille) is a composer, improviser and sound artist who works with electroacoustic devices such as the ReVox B77 reel-to-reel tape recorder, analogue synthesizers, mixing desks, speakers, microphones, various electronic household/everyday objects and home-made electronica.
In his long career as a sound experimenter, he has collaborated and performed with many artists, including
Sophie Agnel, Angelica Castello, Antoine Chessex, Tom Cora,
Michel Doneda,
eRikm,
Giuseppe Ielasi,
Lê Quan Ninh,
Lionel Marchetti, MIMEO,
Anthony Pateras, Anne-Laure Pigache,
Aude Romary, Keith Rowe,
Mathieu Werchowski as well as ensembles such as Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, Le Un, Hrundi Bakshi, Les Sirènes and Proton.
From 1987 to 2018, Jérôme Noetinger was the director of Metamkine, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the distribution of improvised and electroacoustic music. Until 2014, he regularly contributed to
Revue & Corrigée, a quarterly journal of contemporary sound, poetry and performance, which he had co-founded in 1989. He was also a member and programming co-ordinator of exhibitions, gigs, and experimental cinema at le 102 rue d'Alembert, Grenoble from 1989-1999.
See also
Thymolphthalein (Natasha Anderson, Will Guthrie, Jérôme Noetinger, Anthony Pateras & Clayton Thomas).
Synergy Percussion is an Australian percussion ensemble formed as Synergy in Sydney in 1974. Its expansive vision of percussion, together with the exceptionally wide musical experience, has allowed the group to work together with a diverse and exemplary family of artists from around the world. Collaborators include Fritz Hauser, Hossam Ramzy, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Aly n'Diaye Rose, Trilok Gurtu, Jose Vicente, Kazue Sawai, Dave Samuels, Evelyn Glennie, Riley Lee, Taikoz, Michael Kieran Harvey, Sydney Dance Company, Meryl Tankard and Regis Lansac, Akira Isogawa, Grainger String Quartet, William Barton, and The Leigh Warren Dancers, the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras among many others.
