Recent Art Music Award winner for Jazz Work of the Year for his album, Music for Average Photographers Mace Francis explores other sonic possibilities

Street buskers have long been showcasing their musical talents in public places. Now one highly respected composer and jazz musician is joining them, embracing unorthodox performance spaces such as tunnels and bridges to develop new ways of creating acoustic music.

Mace Francis, a PhD candidate with the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), will graduate with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in September for his research looking into how sounds react within a physical built space as a way to inspire new music compositions.

Mace said architectural spaces and their acoustic characteristics offer unique musical material for the compositional process.

“Acoustic and physical design features of unorthodox performance spaces can become part of works and their performances,”

The research grew from an interest in composing music for the acoustic problems of performances rather than trying to resist them.

“The germ for the idea came about while my ensemble, the Mace Francis Orchestra (MFO), was performing at a large reverberant indoor concert venue. The site proved less than ideal for live music performance as the sound bounced repeatedly off the walls. While this was confusing and frustrating at the time, it did instigate interest in the possibilities of working with acoustic problems rather than trying to work against them.”

Three urban sites in the Perth metropolitan area were chosen as a basis for the works: a stairwell, a pedestrian bridge and a tunnel.

“I came into contact with all three of the spaces while using them for their intended utilitarian purpose, for example the stairwell I used was one I came across to get into an office at Edith Cowan University’s Mount Lawley Campus, I found the tunnel while riding my bike and the pedestrian bridge while out walking”.

The outcome is the creation of three new compositions From Traffic Rises, Stairwell to Fifteen and Tunnel Listen.  

“Physical design features of spaces, not usually used for music performances, can become an integral part of new works that provide an important contribution to the possibilities of acoustic music.”

Mace Francis is also a lecturer in Jazz Arranging and Composition with WAAPA. His thesis Music in Site: Integrating Elements of Site-Specificity into Composition can be downloaded at ECU Research Online.

For more information on Mace Francis

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