James Rushford: Turzets

James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer whose work draws from a range of collagist and improvisatory musical languages and investigates the creases, cracks, and folds in traditions ranging from early music to New Age. His concerts subtly exaggerate their seemingly liminal aspects, such as atmosphere and the bodily presence of the performer, until these take on weight equal to that of the musical elements such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre. In Rushford’s long-standing practices on piano, synthesizer,  electroacoustic devices, and portative organ, he brings to each instrument a delicate touch and a harmonic sensibility in which unorthodox tunings coexist with influences from fin-de-siècle Impressionism, the twentieth-century avant-garde, and the structures of popular music. He has worked with a vast range artists including Klaus Lang, Annea Lockwood, David Behrman, Tashi Wada, Haroon Mirza, Dennis Cooper, Ora Clementi, crys cole, Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger, Will Guthrie, and Graham Lambkin. He has performed as Golden Fur (with Sam Dunscombe and Judith Hamann) and Food Court (with Joe Talia and Francis Plagne)