Ross Bolleter (1946 - West Australian improviser and composer)

B.A. Music/English UWA, 1966. AMusA(Piano) (77).
Restaurant and bar pianist, Parmelia Hilton, 1972-78.

*April 2007 Five by Five - a DVD. Five pieces in 5.1 Surround, including Dominion. Produced by Anthony Cormican.

*April 2007 Dusk - a CD - David Kotlowy (Shakuhachi, Ruined Piano & Prepared Guitar) & Ross Bolleter (Ruined Pianos and Ruined Accordions). In progress.

*January 2007 Completed Dominion (Ocean Piano) DVD (Ruined Pianos with an image track, photos - V.Robertson. Produced: A.Cormican, R.Bolleter & R. Castiglione.)

*June 2006 Secret Sandhills and satellites (Emanem, London, UK.) The best of my work 2001-2006. Voted best CD of September 2006 by Blow Up magazine (Italy), and number 2 CD of the year by dMute Magazine (Jazz and Improvised Music), France. Highlight performances and presentations:

*November 2006 Concert on 3 ruined pianos in a dry dam at Wambyn Olive Farm for Tura New Music's launch of the Ruined Piano Sanctuary (near York.) 100 in the audience.

*October 2005 The Ruined Piano Convergence - the focus of Tura's 7th Totally Huge New Music Festival:
*Creation of the installation Piano Labyrinth - 14 ruined pianos (gathered from the country and metropolitan areas of West Australia) in a gigantic double curve in the main space of PICA, improvised on by all comers.
*Opening of the Festival: Improvisations on Piano Labyrinth with visiting composer Annea Lockwood (New York). Subsequently with Slovak performance artist Michal Murin.
*The launch of my book The Well Weathered Piano (WARPS Publications) at the opening of the Ruined Piano Convergence. (October, 2005).
*Two solo performances, each on 4 Ruined Pianos played simultaneously, at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. (PICA). Interspersed with my ruined piano stories from my Well Weathered Piano.
*Presentation of my Secret Sandhills in 5.1 Surround Sound. Produced by Anthony Cormican. At PICA Performance of Ruined Piano improvisations on Andrew Ford's Music Show.(8/10/05).
*Conference at Tura 's THNMF, 8-9 October 2005 gave a paper, The Aesthetics of Ruined Piano - (PICA) Launch of Andrew Ford's book, In Defence of Classical Music (ABC BOOKS, 2005), with a chapter on my work, 'Things fall apart in the music of Ross Bolleter.'

*April 2002 Solo performance on 3 Ruined Pianos interspersed with readings of my ruined piano stories. Part of Tura's Totally Huge New Music Festival

*March,1998 Adelaide Festival Performed my Enigmata - readings of texts with 4 accordions. Robyn Archer in the Adelaide Advertiser, One of the most exciting and moving events of the Festival.

*October 1997 Solo concert on accordion in Nova Zamky, Slovakia. Solo concert, also on accordion at Plasy, Czech Republic. The Synchronicity Project Transglobal and Transnational works:

*Non Local Universe Oct.16, 2005. Jim Denley ORF Radio, Vienna with Ross Bolleter ABC Radio Perth. Intuitive piece with Interactive windows.

*15-16 September 1997 Left Hand of the Universe

*October 21 1991 Pocket Sky; October 9 1989, That Time/Simulplay 2 - an intuitive piece for 2 musicians on opposite sides of a continent, playing at precisely the same time but unable to hear each other. Track 03 on Crow Country, Pogus, New York, 1999.

*September 16 1989 Simulplay 1 Jim Denley flutes Ars Electronica Linz, Austria playing to a live audience.Ross Bolleter ABC Studios Perth on accordion and piano. An intuitive piece with interactive windows.

* Music for radio: (With Barton Staggs) Derelict Woman by Susan Rogers - especially written for Ruth Cracknell. It was Ruth's last radio performance.

Radio Eye: Sydney Without a Postcode by Susan Murphy.

Music for Film: How the West Was Lost (David Noakes), Blind Love Tango (Susan Murphy), Rithy's Story (Gillian Coote).

Theatre music: 1993, Tourmaline - stage production of Randolph Stow's novel by Black Swan Theatre (FOR 5 ruined pianos, also composed a conventional hymn). Paddy (w. Lee Buddle, Deck Chair Theatre, 1985). Many live concerts playing tango, Eastern European folk music, jazz, and free impro - variously in Sydney (Sideon Cafe), Melbourne (Tony Starr's Kitten Club, solo & with Baba Manouche), and Perth (Kulcha). Performances with Kavisha Mazzella, Streetlamp Tango Band (Qinteto Farol), Blue Rinse Ensemble, Bulgarity (duo with Mark Cain), Alone Together, Desert Air (duos with Tos Mahoney.

Discography and Publications
CD releases: June, 2006 Secret Sandhills and satellites released on Emanem, London, UK.
The best of my work 2001-2006.
1999: Crow Country released on Pogus, New York 7 6034-21021-2. Nominated as one of the 10 best albums of 1999 by Cadence Magazine (New York) - the best of my work, 1988-1999.
1994: The Country of Here Below Tall Poppies, tp045.
1990 My Nallan Void on Austral Voices (New Albion Records, San Francisco) - contemporary Australian experimental compositions, with Warren Burt, Ros Bandt & al, produced: Stephen Scott. WARPS ? World Association for Ruined Piano Studies. Formed 1991 by Stephen Scott and myself.

*WARPS releases:
1997 Left Hand of the Universe, W02: The Night Moves on Little Feet 1997, W03. Piano Dreaming, 2002,W04: Pocket Sky, 2004, W08. Spring in Iraq (w. A. Cormican), 2004, W07; Paradise Café, 2004, Sunset Ostrich S01.
*Publications: The Well Weathered Piano (WARPS Publications) with CD Pianos are only Human, October, 2005: All the Iron Night - a book of poems and stories, many dealing with musical themes, published by Smokebush Press, West Australia.(2004). Fostering Creative Impro - a handbook for piano teachers (1979).

Stephen Scott (co-founder of WARPS) was born in Corvallis, Oregon, in 1944 to scientifically trained parents who were also talented amateur musicians. Early study of music included tutoring in recorder in Bristol, England, clarinet and saxophone in elementary and secondary school bands, and private study and transcription of recordings by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson and John Coltrane in high school. Formal training in composition was at the University of Oregon and Brown University, with field studies in African music undertaken in Ghana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe in 1970.
Scott is professor of music at Colorado College. He has served on the faculty of The Evergreen State College and as visiting composer at the Aspen Music School, New England Conservatory, Princeton University, University of Southern California, and at several universities and conservatoria in Australia. Awards have included the New England Conservatory/Rockefeller Foundation Chamber Music Prize (1980) and a National Endowment for the Arts Composers' Fellowship (1985-86). Scott is listed in New Grove's Dictionary of American Music and Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and his work is discussed in several books on twentieth-century music. His bowed piano composition "The Tears of Niobe" represented the United States at the 1991 Internatioinal Rostrum of Composers in Paris.

Discography:

Minerva's Web; The Tears of Niobe: works scored for grand piano bowed and plucked by ten musicians; 1990 (New Albion, NA026)
New Music for Bowed Piano: The Colorado College New Music Ensemble; 1984 (New Albion, NA004 LP)
Vikings of the Sunrise: Bowed Piano Ensemble of Colorado College; 1996 (New Albion, NA084)

Collections:

"Rainbows, Part I": for piano with ten players, appears on Portraits collection including works by Ingram Marshall, Somei Satoh, Paul Dresher, Daniel Lentz, and John Adams; 1986 (New Albion, NA009)

New Albion Records / 584 Castro St #525, San Francisco, CA 94114 / ergo@newalbion.com

Stephen Scott was the co-founder of WARPS with Ross Bolleter back in 1991. He released Bolleter’s Nallan Void on the album of Australian compositions called Austral Voices (New Albion). He collaborated with Bolleter in an intercontinental intuitive duo, Transglobal Musings, and arranged the performance of When the Anzac Body Blossoms, at Colorado College on Anzac Day (April 25) 1991, with Bolleter playing 3 Ruined Pianos that had been prepared by rain and snow. The performance was made possible by drying out the pianos with hundreds of hair dryers. After the performance in which Nathan Crotty participated at a distance at 3.00am in Western Australia, Stephen and Sandy Scott turned on a spread of Anzac biscuits and vegemite sandwiches. We then watched Peter Weir’s Gallipoli projected onto a sheet which shifted about uneasily. The whole effect was most moving, and we all got drunk on Coopers Ale, and some very fine West Australian wine.
Stephen Scott organized the Colorado end of Left Hand of the Universe, in which Dan Wiencek played Ruined Piano. Apart from forming an ensemble playing a great variety of instruments, ranging from whirlies through to a synthetic contrabassoon activated by a flame lit below it, Stephen Scott was seen on the video to be backing his ute (pickup truck) into the remains of a Ruined Piano propped againainst a wall. Stephen Scott’s cultivation of bowed piano through his many compositions, and his formation of the Colorado College Bowed Piano Ensemble to play his works, has made Bowed Piano an important aspect of the world of experimental piano.