BIOGRAPHY

Andrea Breen is an Australian sound artist and composer with enduring interests in social action, collaboration, performance and improvisation. For the past twenty years she has been creating acoustic art while researching the generative and interactive processes of sound, word, image and movement improvisation. Her recent work has been for dance: of loss, about death and its transitions (CoreDance Contemporary, New York 2014); dancemusic, responding to being alive (Adelaide Fringe Festival 2015); seasons&reasons, about personal responses to climate change (Nelipot collective, Hobart 2016). She is currently developing a collaborative piece on oceans with the collective.

Andrea studied composition with Don Kay (at the University of Tasmania) and with Ann Ghandar and Peter McNamara (at the University of New England) but is largely self-taught. Her PhD explored a nexus of improvisation and landscape in the music of Australian women composers. She studied violin and viola with Elizabeth Morgan, John Curro, Simon Oswell, Jan Sedivka and Stella Nemet. She has trained in eclectic improvisation with international teachers Andrew Morrish, Ruth Zaporah, Justus Neumann and Al Wunder. When not making art she works as a creative arts therapist.

Composer website: andreabreen.com

FEATURED WORKS

Responsibility, for viola, cello and wine glasses

Responsibility is drawn from Seasons&Reasons for dance and multi-media, performed in Hobart in 2016 at the Peacock Theatre. It is the fourth in a set of five pieces that reflects on and responds to personal and community experiences of global warming and climate change. Responsibility seeks to create a sense of return, suggesting the constant cries about climate change and lack of action by governments and individuals. The music was recorded as a series of improvisations on cello and viola, layered across the sounds of a finger running along the lip of wine glasses.

Featured in Social Activism Waves playlist, March 2017