Sizzle | Beat hits The Great Club (Marrickville) on April 10 @ 3pm.
If you know Ensemble Offspring, you know that our annual Sizzle is quintessentially EO, celebrating new music, risk-taking, creative innovation and FUN in the relaxed environment of the local club. This year, Sizzle returns to The Great Club in Marrickville as Sizzle | Beat, focussing on all things rhythm!
So let’s introduce our incredible lineup of unique guest artists featuring in Sizzle | Beat this year.
Connor Malanos
Connor Malanos is a classically trained violist, music educator and self-taught beatboxer who has competed in the Australian Beatbox Championship and regularly conducts professional development, workshops and classroom sessions on beatboxing. Connor will be performing his live beatbox set, showcasing his stunning ability to create a world of sounds using his mouth and voice alone! Get a taste for Connor’s incredible skills in this performance video.
Eliza Shephard
Making her Ensemble Offspring debut at Sizzle | Beat is our 2022 Hatched Associate Artist Eliza Shephard. A graduate of the Australian National Academy of Music, we are thrilled to welcome Eliza into the Offspring family to share her fiery stage presence with our own flautist Lamorna Nightingale in Harry Sdraulig’s Filigree for 2 flutes (2019). In a piece composed by Eliza herself, Don’t Knock, Smash (2021), she will also show off her curious glissandi head-joint, a unique invention which allows her to significantly bend the pitch of the flute.
Throat Pleats
While no one knows exactly what will happen in a live performance from Throat Pleats, all we know is… it will be weird, wonderful, exciting and above all, thought-provoking. Describing themselves as “carnal vignettes that explore intimate animal impulses” and “an outlet for fantasy and delusion”, together Niki Johnson and Solomon Frank make up this experimental performance-art duo. Performing on deformed clarinets, vacuum cleaners, watering cans, drums and cymbals, the ensemble explores shifting power dynamics. As two queer people navigating an intimate platonic relationship offstage, their work becomes a metaphor for subverting and reflecting preconceived gender roles. Take a look at this showreel to get a taste for the raw energy they bring to their performances.
Sydney Conservatorium Percussion Ensemble
One of the leading music institutions in Australia and the world, the Sydney Conservatorium is home to Australia’s finest young musicians and ensembles. Opening Sizzle | Beat is the Sydney Conservatorium Percussion Ensemble (Saskia Shearer, Jack Peggy, Buddy Lovett, Ishvinder Singh, Ruhani Dhillon, Owen Bloomfield). Led by our own percussionist and Artistic Director Claire Edwardes, the ensemble will perform living composition legend and American minimalist Michael Gordon. His meditative work loved. (2020) features 7 percussionists in surround, and will kick off Sizzle | Beat with some peaceful introspection. Take a listen to Mantra Percussion’s recording to get an idea, but come along for the surround-sound experience!
Sizzle | Beat hits The Great Club (Marrickville) on April 10 @ 3pm.