FLO & FRIENDS: City Jam – Zagreb 2019

Following FLO performances in Melbourne and Sydney and collaboration with ZAF and Roger (Alsop) on the ‘Along the riverrun’ projects in Melbourne, Nela and Roger were invited to do a short residency at the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb.

As part of this residency, Nela did a talk about FLO and, together with Roger, delivered ‘An introduction to visual programming language Max’ Masterclass for the students from the Academy of Music (actually, Roger did most of the talking, whilst Nela helped students troubleshoot Max by translating some of the Max programming principles from English to Croatian 🙂

Masterclass planning discussions were really funny because Roger kept saying to Nela things like “I think we can show a composition example in Max using one, four, five” and Nela was like “erm what do you mean one, four, five???”

(From Nela’s 2nd grade music school notebook) Croatian: Velika terca sastoji se of dvije velike sekunde. English translation: big third consists of two big seconds (doesn’t exactly sound right … hence the brain has to do the translation followed by interpretation 🙂

The evening concert, organized for the general public, consisted of a telematic multi-channel audio-visual performance by FLO (featuring live electronics, voice processing, flute improvisations and dance art videos Hands & Vase I, Hands & Vase II and Walking in Lines made specifically for this performance by Fumi Tomioka and Aki Kawashita), a premiere of Nela’s composition Two sisters for two flutes and video projection , a new version of the Along the Riverrun for eight flutes and electronics (with soundscapes Nela and Roger recorded around Zagreb) and a few awesome electroacoustic compositions by Roger, Tibor Szirovicza and Krešimir Seletković (lecturers at the Academy of Music).

This was the running order (and the full lineup!)

KONCERT Petak 21.06.2019. MM Dvorana 242, 19:00-20.30

FLO & Friends: City Jam – Zagreb (Female Laptop Orchestra: Nela Brown (HR), Magdalena Chudy (PL), Sonia Wilkie (AU), Donna Hewitt (AU), Ariane Stolfi (BR), Liz Dobson (UK), Ada Methea Hoel (NO), Fumi Tomioka (JP), Aki Kawashita (JP) & Zagrebački Ansambl Flauta)
Tibor Szirovicza: Birdsong for solo flute and electronics (Lidija Ljubičić)
Nela Brown: Two sisters for two flutes and video projection (Lidija Ljubičić, Marija Esih)

Interval 15 min

Krešimir Seletković: Upstream for two flutes and electronics (Renata Penezić & Marina Novak)
Roger Alsop: Flow for solo flute and electronics (Marina Novak)
Roger Alsop: Along the Riverrun for eight flutes and electronics (Roger Alsop, Nela Brown & Zagrebački Ansambl Flauta)

The view from the Academy of Music apartments where Nela and Roger stayed was amazing!

Whilst walking around Zagreb Roger and Nela stumbled upon some narrow streets that looked like Melbourne CBD (minus the ‘street art’) …

… and had a chat with a lovely lady who was feeding a colony of cats in the middle of the most popular cafe destination ‘Tkalčićeva Ulica’ (they still don’t have ‘cat’s protection society’ in Croatia, so these lovely feral cats depend on humans to keep them alive!)

Some recordings for the new version of ‘Along the rivverrun’ were done during the day, some during the night 🙂

With all of FLO playing remotely, Nela had to work out how to operate 3 laptops + 2 mixing desks using (which can be a challenge if you only have 2 hands!)

Rehearsals went really smoothly in the afternoon …

and the concert went really smoothly too!!!

Aaaah yes, a beer at the famous Pivnica Medvedgrad is a must after all that hard work!!!

A BIG THANK you to the following peeps and organisations who supported FLO performance of FLO + Friends: City Jam Zagreb in various ways:

Professor Berislav Šipuš (who kindly invited Nela and Roger Alsop to do a short residency at the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb)
Renata Penezić and Marina Novak (who co-ordinated ZAF’s visit to Melbourne and Roger and Nela’s visit to Zagreb!)
Krešimir Seletković (who helped with the set-up for the performance and did a nice audio recording to go with the video 🙂
Petra Mitrović (IT Support Lead) who was a total star sorting out all the network issues and providing extra ‘laptop power’
Academy of Music, University of Zagreb
Zagreb Flute Ensemble (ZAF)
University of Melbourne Macgeorge Fellowship 2019
Bitwig Studio, Audio-Technica and RØDE Microphones for supplying FLO with software and hardware!