Recorded in Berlin, Brisbane and Tev Aviv, this is a truly international recording. Cathy Milliken is an Australian oboist and composer currently working from Berlin. She has involved herself in many collaborative projects with some of the best modern performers available. Almost half of her collaborative partners in TWO STEP are Australian. She recorded improvised duets with each musician and then took these recordings into a studio where she created a long musical narrative from the duet resources. The text throughout, which comes from a series of short poems from Gertrude Stein’s 1914 Tender Buttons, flows through the recording. Cathy says “Gertrude Stein was inspired by the cubist painters, layering repeating images, to create a sort of three-dimensional imagery. It has a type of mesmerising effect that goes beyond the words. I was interested in seeing whether the texts stand out or merge with the music; I feel they do both.” The whole piece feels like an unfolding journey featuring a series of commentators.
This project has been financially assisted by the Australia Council for the Arts, from which Cathy Milliken has also been awarded a 2020 Music Fellowship.
