The Art Gallery of NSW finds its beat with experimental music

The Art Gallery of NSW is debuting a brand-new experimental music series, with concerts happening on the third Wednesday of every month.
Each of these concerts will be free with online registration and echo a demand for a more varied music scene.
Volume presents: Fixtures will be held in two parts throughout the year.
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As Sydney’s musical palate continues to diversify, the Art Gallery of NSW is stepping to the forefront by bringing back its popular experimental music series, Volume, which last year brought the likes of OutKast’s Andre 3000 and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon to our part of the world.

Now it’s evolved. Volume Presents: Fixtures is a new music program from the iconic gallery, widening the scope with a curated program featuring both Australian and international artists testing the boundaries of everything from classical and ambient electronica to contemporary pop.

It’s but one of the many examples that Sydney is pushing for a more interesting, world-class performing arts scene to help bring the Harbour City slide into a new era. It follows other experimental music series like the incredible Sunset Variations, which brought in musicians from across Australia to perform in-the-round at the Sydney Observatory.

The best bit: every one of these gigs, that’ll play each Wednesday at the Art Gallery of NSW’s, is free (with pre-registration).

So, what gigs are coming to the Art Gallery of NSW?

“Volume presents: Fixtures is an exciting evolution in our music programming, spotlighting emerging and established experimental musicians from Australia and around the world and forging connections between art and music,” said Art Gallery of New South Wales music and community curator Jonathan Wilson.

He’s part of a team that’s curated an exceptionally diverse line-up that pulls in artists like Berlin’s Perila, presenting her debut performance in Australia with “healing and transformative sonic interventions”, to a new work of field-recordings and “sonic textures of wind, tide, insects and birds” by Sydney-based Seaworthy and Western Australia-based Matt Rosner.

Other artists on the cards include French electro-acoustic composer and visual artist Felicia Atkinson and, later in the year, composers whose work shifts between multilingual, First Nations and cross-cultural contemporary pop, electronic and experimental music.

The more cerebral approach to live music will be stretched throughout the year in two parts. The gigs above will all take place over the next few weeks, while the second iteration picks up from August and runs to December.

Volume presents: Fixtures concerts all take place on Wednesday night in Meers Hall in the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Naala Badu building.