Upcoming
This is where upcoming performances, publications and other events are listed, forming something of a ‘cat-alogue’ that began on 24 April 2020 (upcoming listings from September 2022].
Scroll down for scholarly material and more detail, including links.
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES OF CAT HOPE COMPOSITIONS/PROJECTS 2024
15.5.24 Le Pritemps de la Musique. Longing (2011), performed by Ensemble d’oscillateurs.
16.5.24 Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, Ireland. Landay Sequenza (2022), performed by the Stone Drawn Circles (Lina Androvska, dir.)
12.5.24 Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Ireland. Landay Sequenza (2022), performed by the Stone Drawn Circles (Lina Androvska, dir.)
11.5.24 Triskel Christchurch, Cork, Ireland. Landay Sequenza (2022), performed by the Stone Drawn Circles (Lina Androvska, dir.)
10.5.24. Switzerland Painted Bird (2015/23) performed by Miriam Paschetta.
9,10,11.5.24 Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. Curation of Twin Peaks Was 30. Artistic director, performer in Decibel
9.5.24 Glór, Ennis, Ireland. Landay Sequenza (2022), performed by the Stone Drawn Circles (Lina Androvska, dir.)
2.5.24 Schmick Contemporary, Sydey. FREESTYLE (2024) video installation, with Tina Havelock Stevens.
25.4.24 NMD24: In Formation, National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland. Landay Sequenza (2022), performed by the Stone Drawn Circles (Lina Androvska, dir.)
11.4.24 ZHdK Atlier Neu Musik, Zurich, Switzerland. Portrait Concert, 8pm Presented by Studio Contemporary Music, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology. Sinister Glamour of Modernity (2013), Liminum (2012), Erst (2015), Majority of One (2016), Great White (2016), Shadow (2016), Wanderlust (2018).
4.4.24 Tenor Conference, Zurich, Switzerland. Wolf (2023) performed by Robert Ek. 6.30pm Konzertsaal 1 (7.K05), Level 7, ZhDk.
9.3.24 Beechworth Bienalle, Victoria. FREESTYLE (2024) created and performed with Tina Havelock Stevens.
11.2.24 OrgelPark, Amsterdam. 9 Options (2022) and Kaps Freed (2017) performed by Maze ensemble.
2023
9.12.23. Sound Party, Church St Studios, Sydney. Wanderlust (2018) performed by the Music Box project.
30.11.23 Melbourne Town Hall. World premiere of Voluminum (2023), performed by Super Luminum and special guests Louise Devenish, Bonnie Mercer and Mary Doumany, Includes a performance of Georgy Ligeti Volumina (1954) by organist Stewart Smith.
21.11.23. Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, U.K. World premiere of Landay Sequenza (2022), performed by the Stone Drawn Circles (Lina Androvska, dir.)
17.11.23. Sounds of Stockholm Festival, Sweden. World premiere of Wolf (2023) performed by Robert Ek (clarinet)
24.10.23 Dreams II, Reactor, Vienna. Songo 102 (2017) performed by Platypus Ensemble
5.10.23 Music Auditorium, Monash University, Melbourne. Australian premiere of ‘9 Options’ (2022), by the Monash Animated Notation Ensemble
28.9.23. Melbourne Recital Centre. Low Prepared piano in J.G. Thirwell’s Silver Mantis program.
4.9.23. - 1.11.23 Wallace Gallery, Perth. Exhibition of ‘Marking Time’ (2016) as part of SINE, curated by Jon Tarry, in WA Design Week, with performance on opening night.
4.8.23. The Ian Potter Southbank Centre, Melbourne. Cruel and Usual (2012). The Australia Saxophone Quartet in a program of Australian music by Liza Lim, Mary Finsterer, Samantha Wolf, & Alice Chance.
4.7.23 The Hedberg School of Music, Tasmania. The Long Now II (2022), performed by Gianni Sen.
1.7.23 - 1.12.23 Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Kaps Freed (2017) as part of "A Line, A Web, A World" exhibition (video with performance by Gabriella Smart, drawings, paper score).
21-26.6.23 St Mary’s On the Strand, London. Never at Sea (2022). Premiere of installation/performance in collaboration with Kate McMillan, with Marcia Lemke-Kern and Louise Devenish. Tickets for concerts, artist talk (24.6) and symposium (26.6) here.
16.6.23 Westwerk, Blurred Edges Festival, Hamburg, Germany. Fetish #25. Bass solo performance.
7.6.23 Musikhuset København, Klang Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark. Chrome Arrow (2014). Performed by Marie Wärme, Monica Vejgaard, Jonas Frølund and Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen.
15.5.23 TENOR Conference, Boston, MA, USA. Longy School of Music, Bard College. Their Lives are Stripped of Meaning (2017), performed by Loadbang.
3.5.23. The Forum, HfMT, Hamburg, Germany. Speechless (2019) cond. Yalda Zamani. 8.30pm. The Hamburg Bass Ensemble, Hamburg Choir for Ukraine with soloists Frauke Aubert, Moxi Biendengel, Marcia Lemke-Kern and Hêja Netrik.
31. 3. 23 Sense and Visibility Conference, HafenCity University, Hamburg, Germany. Wanderlust (2017) performed by Cat Hope.
24.3.23 Forum Jetzt Musik, Hamburg, Germany. Cat Hope and Gabriella Smart. Kaps Freed (2017), Les Serpents (2022), Fourth Estate (2014). Christianskirche, Ottensen
8.3.23 David Li Sound Gallery, Melbourne. The Quiet Friend (2023) premiere for Aura Go (piano) and Louise Devenish (percussion) and electronics.
23.2. 23 Red Room, Malmo Sweden. Signals Directorate (2014) for bass clarinet and electronics, as part of ‘Bass Clarinet (un)plugged’ performed by Robert Ek.
9.2.23 Korzo Theatre, Den Haag, The Netherlands U Mangibeddu Nostru (2018) as part of Dark Minimalism, performed by Herz Ensemble.
7.2.23 Het Cenakel, Tilburg, The Netherlands U Mangibeddu Nostru (2018) as part of Dark Minimalism, performed by Herz Ensemble.
SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS/PUBLICATIONS 2024
17.5.24 Official launch of the co-edited book and CD Actions|Remarks - the John Cage Variations Project, book and CD, at Wallace Gallery, Northbridge, Perth, WA. Featuring performances by Decibel.
28.2.24. Official launch of the c-edited book Contemporary Music Virtuosities (Routledge, UK) co- edited with Louise Devenish. 11.11.23 Co-edited with Louise Devenish and featuring and introduction and 2 articles by Hope. Monash University.
22.1.24 Review in The Journal of Sonic Studies, of Marcus Boon’s book “The Politics of Vibration: Music as a Cosmopolitical Practice”
2023
7.12.23 The Composer, Herself. Contemporary Snapshots of the Creative Process (Palgrave) Grenfell, Kouvaras and WIlliams (eds). I have a chapter in this book about how I engage with low frequency sound.
28.11.23 Interdisciplinary Symposium in Memory of Ross Gibson. Speaker. 11.30am. Monash University, Melbourne.
10.11.23 Artist Masterclass, Music and Media Technologies, Trinity College. Dublin, Ireland
29.6.23 Keynote presentation at Hamburg University, Musicology Institute ‘'The Future is Graphic: Animated Digital Notation for Music'. Hamburg, Germany.
27.7.23 Presentation at HIAS Finissage, with Prof. Dr Georg Hadju. Hamburg, Germany.
25.5.23 Presentation at ‘Radigue at 90’ conference, “Inside the Éliane Radigue Composer-Performer Circle” Paris, France. Columbia Centre.
17.5.23 Presentation on Scoring with The Floors, with Iran Sanadzadeh, TENOR Conference, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA,
9.5.23. Panel member on ‘Ligeti as an inspiration for Artistic Research’ with Lukas Ligeti, Samuel Penderbyne, Reinhold Flender and Gordon Kampe as part of ‘Ligeti’s Labryinths of Wonderland: Composing as Connecting Knowledge’ Conference. Hamburg, Germany.
9.5.23 What is opera for our times? The power of abstraction may hold the answer. Article in Monash Lens.
3.5.23. Interview with John Chowning and Georg Hajdu, HfMT as part of the ‘Tape Music. concert, Ligeti Festival. Hamburg, Germany.
17.4.23 Presentation on Speechless, at Lubek Hochschule for Music, Lubek, Germany.
13.4.23 An Obituary for Susan Frykberg. Article in Cut Common Magazine.
25.1.23 Presentation on Speechless, at the Musicology Dept, Kings College, London, UK.
PERFORMANCES OF CAT HOPE COMPOSITIONS 2022
21.12.22 UdK Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany and Acousticum, Pitea, Sweden. KNM and Ensemble NEO, world premiere of The Drift as part of the Interwoven Sound Spaces project.
15.12.22 Valenciennes, France. Cat Hope performing improvised electric bass solo as part of the ArtZoyd Christmas Market. Also featured are Kasper Toeplitz, Christian Zanési, Helene Breschand and Emilie Girard-Charest. Espace Pasolini.
11.12.22. Hamburg, Germany. 7.30pm World premiere of the Low Tone Orchestra’s “9 Options’ performed by MANE as part of ‘Digital Scores for Music’ program, at the MultiFunktion Studio, Hamburg Hochschule for Music and Theatre.
11.12.22 Toronto, Canada. 7.30pm ‘Feather’ , 8 Channel work co-composed with Stuart james, Concert ZERO, MinuTOR, McMillan Theatre, University of Toronto.
8.12.22 Hamburg, Germany. 7pm. Cat Hope performs a short work as part of “Australian New Music Shorts’ at the Hamburg Institute of Advanced Study
5.12.22 Athens, Greece 8pm. Cat Hope performs flute music by Radigue, Hope’s composition ‘The Long Now II’ and a world premiere of Le Serpente by Lionel Marchetti/CatHope. Tectonics.
2.12.22 London, UK. 7.30pm, Decibel and Ruthless Jabiru feat. Cat Hope (bass), world premiere of ‘Never at Sea’ for bass orchestra. Brunel Tunnel Museum
2.12.22, Utah, USA. 4pm, Utah New Music ensemble perform Thier Lives are Stripped of Meaning. (2017). Dumke Recital Hall
26.11.22 Huddersfield, UK, St Paul’s Chapel, 12noon, Decibel perform works of Cat Hope, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
18 -20.11. 22 Adelaide, Australia. Dan Thorpe plays ‘Chunk’ in his ‘works for piano and body’ program, 10.30pm each night, Piano Lab
17.11.22 Strasbourg, France - HANATSUMiroir, world premiere of ‘through polarities, our life in pieces’, Exhibitronic Festival
8.10.22 Fremantle, West Australia Old Customs House 7:30pm - GreyWing: Banksias Under Snow. WA Premiere of ‘Wanderlust’ (2018).
UPDATES IN TEXT (from 2023, these will appear in the blog)
20.07.2021 Live performances are BACK! After a great premiere of Decibel’s live 2 Minutes From Home concert at the Revelation Film Festival in Perth (reviewed here) on the 11th of July, it will be performed at the Melbourne Recital Centre on the 26th of this month, and features Hope’s piece ‘Delay Taints’ amongst 20 other 2 minute works. Decibel also performed ‘U Mangibeddu Nostru’ at thier “Revolution” concert there in June. Cat Hope’s ‘The Aesthetics of Disappearance’ will be performed at the ELISION concert at the same venue on the 25th August. Past concerts have featured three works at New North’s ‘Viels’ on 8 June - Delay Taints, Majority of One, and an Improvisation with Helen Svoboda and Iran Sanadzadeh; and the first gig of Amplified Red (with Lisa McKinney, Tina Havelock Stevens and Gabriella Smart) in Adelaide on June 6.
An interview with Cat is featured in 15 Questions.
Cat leaves for a 9 month stint in Europe on 20 August. This includes being based in Hamburg, Germany as a research fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Studies, a short artist residency at Art Zoyd Studios in France, a Research Fellowship at Kings College, and new commissions/performances for Irish group Stone Drawn Circles, Strasbourg ensemble hanatsu miroir, Berlin group KNM, and a new work ‘Never at Sea’ for the Ruthless Jabiru Orchestra, for a new major collaboration with long term collaborator Kate McMillan. Decibel tour the UK in late November, which features the first ever monograph concert of Hope’s work, at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and will conclude with the premiere of Hope’s opera ‘Speechless’ in Hamburg.
Two new book chapters by Hope have also been released. A chapter entitled “The Sensuality of Low Frequency Sound” in The Body in Sound, Music and Performance
Studies in Audio and Sonic Arts, and a chapter entitled ‘Working Towards Gender Equality and Empowerment in Australian Music Culture' in A Century of Composition by Women: Music Against the Odds.
2.05.2022 A few things looking backwards and forwards. The Summers Night Mentorship project, delayed since 2020, had it’s concluding concert at the MRC on the 23rd of March - featuring new works by Bree Van Ryk, Hilary Klenig, Kate Milligan, Frankie Reilly and Aviva Endean. Cat also oversaw the ABC recording of these works during the workshop period. Cat undertook a quadraphonic diffusion of Xenakis’s ‘Orient Occident; at Monash University on the 14th of April as part of a centenary celebration concert.
Upcoming, though - Cat’s work ‘The Long Now’ will be featured in the ANAM Set Festival, at the Abbortsford Convent in Melbourne over the 14-15 May, and ELISION will premiere her new work ‘The Long Now II’ at their concert, RIFT, at the Recital Centre on Friday 13 May. Cat is travelling to Marseille in France to present a paper co-authored with Aaron Wyatt at the TENOR conference 9 - 11 May, where her work ‘Muska Landay’ will also have it’s European premiere. Cat was recently awarded an Art Music Commission by APRA, toward the new work she is developing for the Melbourne Festival in 2023.
6.12.2021 After extensive lockdowns in Melbourne, a few things are starting to happen, or are emerging from that time. You can see Cat’s October Keynote at the Australian International Association of Music Libraries on Music Rights here. The piece for the ANAM Set, for bass trombonist James Littlewood, will be premiered on December 4 and can be watched as part of a larger concert here. Cat was a mentor at the Australian Art Orchestra’s Creative Music Intensive, held at Mount Hotham in early December. Sylvia Hinz performed Wanderlust, at ‘Realitastseverschwinden V’ in Berlin in September. This, and a range of other tracks, are featured on the upcoming release on Swiss label Ezzthics ‘Cat Hope | Decibel’ due out before end 2021. A new paper about staging Speechless has been published here. Cat also authored an obituary for Alvin Lucier in Cyclic Defrost.
8.7.2021 Cat is playing bass flute in a duo with Belinda Woods at the Make it Up Club Tuesday 13 July, free entry. On Saturday July 17, Cat is hosting a panel entitled “Sonics, Genre, Place” with Isobel D'Cruz, Amy Franz, Annaliese Redlich, Jenny Branagan, Annetta Nevin and Nicole Thibault at the Rah! Rah! #2: a Feminist Punk Retrospective of Melbourne Music. The following week Cat is holding two classes at the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studios, as part of the MESS Professional Development Course.
Cat’s work The Lowest Drawer featured as part of the Heroines of Sound Festival in Berlin, performed by Ensemble KNM at Radialsystem amongst a program of international women composers. In other news performances with Decibel New Music Ensemble are slated for September and December this year at the Melbourne Recital Centre. More about this soon. Cat’s New Music Classics series is now monthly, on the last Thursday of each month. You can book on line here.
Cat is one of the selected composers for the ANAM Set, and is working on a new work with bass trombonist James Littlewood. The work will premiere at ANAM on 21 September, and be recorded by ABC Classic.
21.4.2021 A new work is always a time for celebration! And Cat’s new work Lampi, for piano and large ensemble, is being premiered on the 23 of April at Abbortsford Convent, as part of Midsumma Fest by Forest Collective, with soloist Dan Thorpe, for who it was composed. There is a far reaching interview here. Cat’s work The Rupture Exists is being performed at the Tectonics Festival in Glasgow, held online on May 8 and 9, and available as a binaural recording thereafter. The work will also be performed in Hamburg as part of the 2020-21 International Conference for Technologies of Music Notation and Representation, also held online from May 10 - 13. Cat will also be giving a paper at the conference with Aaron Wyatt, on conducting animated notation. Cat has also been involved in online conference presentations at Society for Artistic Research in Austria, and Vibrant Practices in the UK. You can watch the paper presentation on her work Kaps Freed, with pianist Grabriella Smart and electronics designer Stuart James here.
Cat’s composition and performances as part of Decibel’s 2 Minutes From Home is also online as a complete 45 minute compilation as part of the Festival Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques in February, the Earth Day Art Model in the USA and the TENOR, Germany in April. A recent review of the series can be found here.
7.3.2021 Cat is starting a new music series that is running fortnightly at the Classic Cinema, in their SouthSideBar. Entitled ‘New Music Classics’, the series features local, national and eventually international acts. You can read an interview with Cat about it here, or listen to one here. Later last month Cat recorded with ELISION ensemble, on a new version of The Post Truth Pleasure Garden, at the Melbourne Recital Centre. She was a featured Professor in the Monash Arts International Women’s Day spotlight. Past pop albums written and performed by Cat have found their way onto Spotify this last month, and her piece Wanderlust was performed by Sylvia Hinz in a recent online broadcast. Cat has been in the studio recording with Decibel, with a new album due out on HatHut later this year, and her piece Her Pockets Full of Inertia was featured on Cameron Lam’s Aussie Playlist last month. Cat has also written an article for the Australian Music Centre on the departure of CEO John Davis. There is another in Limelight. Other activities for March include an interview with Deinstbar Radio, Germany: looking at Cat’s noise back catalogue, and a solo bass noise performance at Articulate Art Space, Sydney, with long time collaborator Rakini Devi.
06.1.2021 The score for Kaps Freed is discussed in the latest issue of Kunstforum (German language, and the New Virtuosity Manifesto continues to gain traction with a discussion in French magazine Revue & Corigeé 126. Cat was awarded a special commendation at the Vice Chancellors Excellence awards at Monash University, for her work in Diversity and Inclusion in an online ceremony at the end of 2020. Arts practice seems to be coming back to something more ‘usual’: Cat is taking part in a development period for a new work with pianist Gabriella Smart and light designer Jen Hector in the last two weeks of January at The Substation. There are also a new work in development with soprano Allison Bell and a major work for pianist Dan Thorpe and the Forrest Collective ensemble. A chapter about the Cat’s opera Speechless co authored by Cat and Joel Crotty has been published in a new book about Australian Opera, here.
08.12.2020 Cat is part of the Art Zoyd Studios ”Marché de Noël Electronique” on 23 December, featuring part II of the Mas/Mystery series in the form of a video piece with Karl Ford - you can watch it here at 6pm French time. A new paper about Cat’s music, co-authored with Sam McAuliffe has been published in Organised Sound. In other academic news, Cat is part of a successful ARC grant studying gender in Australian Jazz and Improvisation. You can find more about it here. Further, Cat is part of a 1.1 Million Euro ERC Consolidator Grant award on Digital Scores. Hosted at Du Montfort University in the UK, more information soon.
20.10.2020 Cat has a work in the large survey curated by Francisco Lopez in Spain, as part of Audiosphere: Sound Experimentation 1980-2020. There is a free catalogue of essays associated with the program available here. Cat is also hosting a panel entitled ‘Tearing Down the Palace: The Beauty and Terror of Making it New’ as part of the Light The Touchpaper symposium’ hosted by Monash University on 11 November. Registration is free but you need to RSVP here. Hope will also be presenting with Louise Devenish at Indeterminate Futures transdisciplinary conference in Dundee, Scotland on 13 November. You can find the video they created for the conference here.
1.9.2020 A playlist curated by Cat Hope of Decibel’s music can be found on SkyLab Internet Radio here. Cat is giving a talk about her scoring methods at Monash’s SensiLab on 16 September at 4pm, you can register, and watch it after the event, here. An edition of the NiTRO journal on interdisciplinarity, edited by Cat and Jenny Wilson, is available here. Cat has created a new 'latency friendly' work entitled ‘The Rupture Exists’ that will be premiering at the Göteborg Art Sounds Festival in Sweden, with members of Decibel, Ensemble Neo (Sweden) and Mis-En (USA). Streamed live on the festival YouTube channel at 15:00 CET, Saturday October 17th and then viewable here. This is followed by a presentation and subsequent performance of the work at Piteå Performing Arts Biennial 2020, Tuesday 27 October.
7.8.2020 A short thought bubble about Cat passing lockdown time has been published by Linden New Art . Cat is working on a new piece for Ars Electronica, that will premiere at during Ars Electronica 2020 on Friday 12 September. A performance of Kaps Freed by Gabriella Smart (from her home) opened the Monash Online Lunchtime Concert series this week, and can be watched here. This aligns with a new review of the work. A new book chapter by Cat has been released on Mobile Media Sound Art, in this collection.
20.7.2020 The death of Ennio Morricone has seen the publication of an article on his legacy by Cat in the Daily Review. Decibel new music ensemble was awarded grants from the Australia Council and Western Australian government to develop the 2 Minutes From Home project. This features 20 x 2 minute commissions delivered as audio visual works every 2 weeks until the end of 2020, with members performance in isolation shown alongside the score. Cat will be contributing a work in October.
19.6.2020 Cat is a panelist on a sound design panel, as part of St Kilda film Festival, talking about the music she made for the Erin Coates/Anna Nazzari film she made the music for, Dark Water. Friday June 19 at 7.30pm, online. RVSP here.
5.2020 Release of a Podcast where Cat discusses the impact of COVID 19 to artistic life in Melbourne with the cellist in Ensemble Handwerk. The podcast includes an improvisation between them on bass flute and cello.
24.4.2020 Release of the education kit for Cat Hops’s composition ‘Her Pockets of Inertia’ online as part of the Other Voices education project. This provides materials to assist high school students to perform and understand this piece for flute choir. The piece now ships with the Decibel ScorePlayer iPad app.