Biography

Amber Hansen is an Australian multidisciplinary artist whose creative practice engages diverse disciplines, namely composition, production, performance, research and tuition. The multidisciplinary work she produces is strongly influenced by interactions with and perceptions of her surrounding cultural, social and natural environment, underpinned by a passion for music, sound, film, dance/physical theatre, and visual art mediums. Her practice is very much informed by her experiences and perceptions as an Australian woman with mixed cultural ancestry.

Amber has performed, composed and produced for and with many independent and major events, festivals, venues and companies including Brisbane Powerhouse Theatre (AUS), Woodford Folk Festival (AUS), Queensland Conservatorium of Music (AUS), BEMAC (AUS), WOMAD (UK), The Bloomsbury Theatre (UK), Pratt Music Hall, Mt Holyoke College (USA), Al Zaytouna Theatre Group (UK), El Funoun (PAL) and IHOS Music Theatre and Opera (AUS). Amber is presently based in her hometown of Brisbane, Australia and continues to freelance as a soloist and as part of collaborative projects.

Composer website:  www.amberhansen.com

Featured Works

The Old Streets of Amoy, an electroacoustic work featuring erhu, drum kit, and Indian tabla.

The Old Streets of Amoy is an urban cross cultural sonic journey inspired by memories exploring the Asian Underground music scene in East London while searching for a connection with distant ancestral roots in South Eastern China. The composition emerged very spontaneously after completing independent recording session with local musicians who improvised diverse melodic and rhythmic phrases on Erhu, Indian Tabla and Drum Kit. The resulting electroacoustic collage embodies the composers passion for traditional, experimental and urban music cultures while expressing a yearning for connection and understanding between identities and places.

Featured in Playlist 3: Boundary-Crossing Waves (31/03/2015)

re-ORIENT, an audio-visual work from the Sounds of Dis-orientation project.

SOUNDS OF DIS-ORIENTATION is a cross-cultural, experimental and interactive project in development exploring notions of identity, culture, place and space.Projected musicians you see in the performance clips are playing live via Skype from remote locations including Sydney, Bangkok and London. All production, music, sound and visuals composed and remixed by ambersound.

disorientation
1. Loss of one’s sense of direction, position, or relationship with one’s surroundings
2. Mental confusion or impaired awareness, specially regarding place, time, or personal identity.

dis-ORIENTation
1. The simultaneous affirmation and subversion of the Orientalist notion of ‘the other’.
2. A process of dismantling the east-west divide.

Featured in the playlist:  Immersive Waves (1/02/2016)

La Grotta Azurra, composition/remix.

‘La Grotta Azzura‘ (The Blue Grotto) is an ambient composition/remix utilising sounds recorded in and around Isle of Capri created for the 2007 AAIR Radio Ana Capri Remix competition. Original audio files were provided by the London School of Architecture. The sounds were manipulated, edited and remixed in Logic Pro. La Grotta Azzurra was created while living in London, UK 2007.

Featured in the playlist: Radiophonic Waves.

The Last Veil, for electronics via Arabic music.

A composition/remix created by layering and manipulating samples from recordings of Arabic music recitals I curated and presented during my Master of Music candidature (2010-2012). The title allures to the mythology and exoticism behind ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’. This story is also thought to have originated from the myth of Ishtar passing through the seven gates of the underworld. The soundscape itself shifts ambiguously between seven semi-distinct movements.

Featured in the playlist Electronic Waves (April 2019), curated by Aidan Maizels.