William Gardiner is an Australian composer. Find him featured on New Weird Australia volume 2.
1. What was the first band you saw live?
The other day my parents mentioned to me that a few days after I was born they took me to a concert of Bach’s The Art of Fugue, so I suppose that was technically my first concert! What a great place to start. Moving forward though to a time when I enjoyed a more profound consiousness, I can think of two other concerts that were real revelations to me. The first was a concert called Luminous by the Australian Chamber Orchestra in collaboration with photographer Bill Henson. I heard works of Peter Vasks and Alfred Schnittke for the first time in this concert, and I was profound and moved. The second concert was by Animal Collective in Sydney in November 2006.
2. What’d you learn from them?
It’s very hard to put into words this sort of thing, but I think from both concerts I began to develop a sense of what makes music so special and unique, even compared to other artforms. Things that couldn’t be felt and shared and communicated by other means where conjured up with music, and I really got something out of music that perhaps I hadn’t experienced before.
3. Got any pre gig rituals?
I am actually yet to really get into doing live performances of my own music! Because music I am writing at the moment is largely notated and not performed entirely by myself, it’s something that’s comparatively difficult to organise, but I would really like to in the future.
4. What do you think is the most important issue affecting artists in NSW is today?
Perhaps my experience is a little different (and a lot less!) than some other artists, but I will mention something that is of concern to me but maybe not so much to other artists. I think one of the biggest issues facing us at the moment relating to music in our culture is the great divide between ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ music. People on both sides of that divide seem to be so intensely afraid of what’s on the other side. I get a sense that those who are accustomed to music from one side or the other of the divide really cherish what they get out of their music, and have some sort of false perception that the ‘other’ music is about something else or is fundamentally different. A nasty name that is sometimes used for ‘classical music’ is ‘serious music’. I’ve heard it said that all music is serious and popular in varying degrees. I think this really reflects reality much better. It’s just a really unfortunate divide, and it’s something that I hope might improve as we learn to cope with the hugely diverse amount of music that we all have almost immediate access to in this day and age.
5. If you weren’t a musician what do you rekon you’d be doing?
I think I would probably by much more a diligent student at uni!
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