anthony pateras chasms
sirr | cd 0030 | 2007

Chasms is the extraordinary debut solo prepared piano album from Australian composer/pianist Anthony Pateras. Although placed within the lineage of the Cage prepared piano, Chasms takes things further, re-configuring the instrument into a psychoacoustic percussion orchestra, exploring extended timbral continuums through complex rhythms and physically intense performance strategies.

Through purely acoustic means, the work attempts to enhance piano performance via a compositional sympathy with algorhythmic computer composition and studio technology. In its essence, this is electro-acoustic music created purely with prepared piano. Chasms represents a simultaneously alien and familiar approach to the concert hall dinosaur, contemporising the sound world of the piano in an attempt to match the valuable sonic innovations of the early 21st century. This is piano music which respects the past, present and future.

about Anthony Pateras
Anthony Pateras is a composer/performer active within pre-meditated and intuitive creative contexts. Live, he appears regularly throughout Europe and Australasia on prepared piano in the Pateras/Baxter/Brown trio, on voice & electronics with Robin Fox, prepared piano solo or as a conductor of his own notated works. He has released and produced numerous albums, recording for Tzadik (New York), Editions Mego (Vienna), Synaesthesia (Melbourne) and Quecksilber (Berlin). This latest release is his extended prepared piano work Chasms, on Lisbon’s Sirr Records.

As a composer, his notated music has received performances from the Slagwerkgroep Den Haag, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Flux String Quartet, Slave Pianos, percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Recently he has been commissioned to write a major for the Australian Chamber Orchestra in which he will feature as a soloist. Recent performance highlights include a performance of his Continuums and Chasms at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a multi-speaker performance on the GRM Acousmonium in Paris, a marathon performance at the Erase/Reset electronic music festival in Berlin and a successful Europe-wide tour with Pateras/Baxter/Brown. He was also recently featured on ABC TV’s Set program, presenting pieces with Twitch, Pateras/Baxter/Brown and Robin Fox to a national audience across Australia.

www.anthonypateras.com