The side-length piece "Fallaway Whisk" explores hesitation in its many forms—reticence of speech, sonic restraint—using live, abstracted translations of text from English to German against a lush and swelling soundscape. On the flip side, "Quire" is a work in ten movements influenced by the composer's study of late medieval repertoire on portative organ, weaving the instrument's woodsy interlocking melodies with angelic Yamaha CS-80 synth sweeps and stuttering glitches. The combined effort is somewhat a departure for Rushford, working in traces of Klaus Schulze, concrete poetry, and ars subtilior into a precise and ever-unfolding tapestry.
James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer, whose work is drawn from specific concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist languages.
As a composer, he has been commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Glasgow), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Neon (Oslo), Speak Percussion (Melbourne), Ensemble Vortex (Geneva), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Ensemble Offspring (Sydney),
Decibel (Perth), Melbourne International Arts Festival, Norway Ultima Festival (2011), Unsound Festival (New York 2014) and Liquid Architecture (Melbourne).
As a performer, he has presented work at STEIM Institute (Amsterdam), Logos Foundation (Ghent), Issue Project Room (New York), Instants Chavirés (Montreuil), Constellation (Chicago), Café Oto (London), Super Deluxe (Tokyo),
Blank Forms (New York), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Cave12 (Geneva), Send & Receive Festival (Winnipeg), WORM (Rotterdam), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Only Connect Festival (Oslo), Now Now (2011/2012), Adelaide Festival (2014), Melbourne International Jazz Festival (2011), MONA FOMA (Tasmania 2020) and the Tectonics Festival (Adelaide 2014, New York 2015, Tel Aviv 2015)... He has also performed as a soloist with the Krakow Sinfonietta, Australian Art Orchestra, Michael Pisaro, Eyvind Kang, David Behrman and Jon Rose.
James Rushford has collaborative projects with Joe Talia, Golden Fur (with
Sam Dunscombe &
Judith Hamann), Ora Clementi (with
crys cole),
Oren Ambarchi, Klaus Lang,
Kassel Jaeger,
Anthony Pateras, Will Guthrie, Annea Lockwood,
Graham Lambkin, Francis Plagne, Tashi Wada, visual artists Michael Salerno, Rachel Yezbick and Haroon Mirza, and the writer
Dennis Cooper.
His music has been published by Unseen Worlds, Pogus, Prisma, Bocian, Penultimate Press, Another Timbre, Holidays,
Black Truffle, KYE,
Shelter Press,
Blank Forms.
He holds a Doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts.
