Biography

James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer, whose work is drawn from a familiarity with specific concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist languages. Currently, his work deals with the aesthetic concept of musical shadow. James’ commissions include works for BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Glasgow), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Neon (Oslo), Speak Percussion (Melbourne), Ensemble Vortex (Geneva), Melbourne International Arts Festival (2006/2008), Norway Ultima Festival (2011), Unsound Festival (New York 2014) and Liquid Architecture Festival (2010).

Performance highlights include STEIM Institute (Amsterdam), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Only Connect Festival (Oslo), Adelaide Festival (2014), Bendigo International Festival of Inline image 1Exploratory Music (2013/2014), Melbourne International Jazz Festival (2011) and the Tectonics Festival (Adelaide 2014, New York 2015, Tel Aviv 2015). James has performed as a solost with the Krakow Sinfonietta and Australian Art Orchestra, and has ongoing collaborations with Joe Talia, Golden Fur (with Samuel Dunscombe & Judith Hamann), Ora Clementi (with crys cole), Oren Ambarchi, Klaus Lang, Kassel Jaeger, Graham Lambkin, Francis Plagne, Tashi Wada, the visual artist Michael Salerno and the writer Dennis Cooper. He has been an artist in residence at Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), WORM (Rotterdam), Centre Internationale des Récollets (Paris) and is about to undertake a creative fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart). His music has been published by Pogus (US), Prisma (Norway), Bocian (Poland), Penultimate Press (UK), Black Truffle (AUS) and KYE (US).

Composer website:  www.james-rushford.com

Featured Works

The Fallberry Floor, for electric harmonium.

The Falberry Floor is a semi-improvised work for electric harmonium using limited pitch collections and forcibly blocked instrument air-flow. It evolves through increasingly abstracted variations of familiar material, whilst amplifying the quirks of the instrument and its mechanism.

Featured in BIFEM Waves – August 2017.