Boyd. Musician, Composer and Sound Artist.
Email: boyd@burragorang.org
Works online: www.burragorang.org
Instruments: Bass,
Baritone, Alto and Soprano Saxophones Bass and B Flat Clarinets.
Boyd is currently writing for and performing with brass and
accordion group S-Bend, with world
music group Kim Sanders and Friends
and working on sound for art installations with artist Alison
Clouston.
He teaches saxophone and clarinet at Normanhurst Boys High School and Mosman Church of
England Preparatory School.
In 1987 Boyd
completed a Diploma of Jazz Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Since then he has composed and performed music for
theatre, film, art installations, radio, concerts and recordings. He is co-founder
of the Original Otto Orchestra a
saxophone quartet that exclusively performs music by Tony Gorman and Boyd.
Boyd's soundscapes are concerned with how we listen to
sounds in our environment, and translating these sounds into music for
conventional instruments. The instrumentalist through 'extended techniques'
creates new and extraordinary sounds that interpret 'natural' sounds. At times
'natural' sounds are used as samples to create musical structures. These recall
the structures of nature and/or music, for example enabling us to hear a waltz
in the noise of a frog pond.
These concerns are at work in his other compositions, often
with an element of humour, as when he transcribed a bee swarm for saxophone
quartet in 'Smoke gets in my hives', or pathos, as in 'NASA's ark' where the
captive animals in NASA's orbiting space laboratory become the sole survivors
of a global cataclysm! His work has wryly commented on galactic imperialism 'The Martian National Anthem', and on
Australia's inevitable movement towards Asia
'Continental Drift'.
Original composition for:
Sound Installation
2007 World Tree (part two). Collaborative
installation with visual artist Alison for Climate Changing Climate
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery and for Tin Sheds Gallery Sydney University.
2007 Adrift with Alison Clouston for Grounded; art, activism,
environment. Campbelltown Arts Centre
2006-7 Body
of Water with
Alison Clouston for Peats Ridge Sustainable Arts and Music Festival
2006 Adrift with Alison Clouston, Mittagong Memorial
Hall, part of the Murray/Darling Palimpsest.
2005 Wake with
Alison Clouston, for Dawn Light international ArtistsÕ Workshop Gosford
Regional Gallery.
2004-5 Ossature with
Alison Clouston, Space3 Gallery Sydney, Penrith Regional Gallery, Australia and Bowen Gallery Wellington New Zealand.
2004 Running Away to Sea with Alison Clouston for Out of Gallery Guerrilla Exhibitions in
Western Sydney.
2003 Sound of Bamboo 2
with visual artist Sue Pedley for the exhibition Reverb at Mai's Gallery Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam.
2003 Working party
member, site manager and participating artist in the Burragorang
International Artists' Workshop a two week
event for 25 Australian and International artists creating new works at a
remote site in the Blue Mountains NSW. Jointly funded by the NSW Ministry for
the Arts and the Australia Council for the Arts. Produced a website for this
event: www.burragorang.org
Snake Sounds for the above with artists
Sue Pedley and Maureen Lander.
2002 Sound of Bamboo 1
with artist Sue Pedley Gallery 4A Sydney.
2001 Magical Golland Elizabeth
Bay House with Alison Clouston commissioned by the Historic Houses Trust of
NSW.
1988 Something Short Of A Picnic with Alison Clouston, The Jam Factory Adelaide,
Adelaide Festival.
Theatre and Dance
2007 Wind Prayer
Performance by dancer Ji-eon Lee with Boyd and Sam Golding playing music from
the Brides of Khan score.
2005 The Mouse and His Child an adaptation of Russell HobanÕs novel as a puppet/music production
(in development).
2000 Drum Horn Moot Performance
combining live music and sculpture making featuring The Original Otto Orchestra
Dhamor Percussion and artists Alison Clouston and Joris Everaerts.
2000 Decay music/theatre
with playwright Christine Evans.
1998 Workshopped and
performed music for the play My Vicious Angel by playwright Christine Evans for Vitalstatistics
Theatre Company Adelaide
Festival & Belvoir St. Theatre Sydney 1999.
1990 Frankenstein's Shadow a theatre production by The People Next Door with seasons at the Canberra Playhouse and
Sydney's Performance Space.
1988 Something Short Of A Picnic performance with the Unley Youth Theatre using costumes by visual artist Alison Clouston,
Adelaide Festival.
1980's Music/Theatre productions with Sax and Violins including Adelaide Festival Fringe.
Film
2001 Short film 'Saying
Goodbye' directed by Terje Brand.
2000 The Brides of Khan, directed by Safina Uberoi, SBS TV.
1990-2005 Composed and performed music for silent films with
Jan Preston including The Lost World
commissioned by 48th Sydney film festival 2001 also performed at the New Zealand Film Festival 2005, So This Is
Paris by Ernst Lubitsch 1926 commissioned
by 38th Sydney Film Festival1991, The Spy by Fritz Lang 1925 commissioned by AFI 1990. Recorded The Spy for the
National Film & Sound Archives.
Radio
2002 Backburn with
visual artist Alison Clouston about the 2001 bushfires commissioned by ABC
Radio National.
Concert performances of original compositions:
2007 An Afternoon of Boyd Music Members of the group Mara! Perform music by Boyd at
the Sydney Conservatorium.
2004 S-Bend Brass and Accordion quartet.
1988 The Original Otto Orchestra saxophone quartet including the 1992 Melbourne Festival.
1994-2000 Brassov original
music by Boyd and Kim Sanders influenced by the Gypsy brass bands of Eastern
Europe.
Recordings:
Backburn Anthology
of Australian Music on Disc My
World, This Time CD ANU
The Original Otto Orchestra A Recent Find Near The Glebe Point Road, CD Rufus Records
The Original Otto Orchestra self titled Album/Cassette.
The Spy (Fritz Lang,
1925) Soundtrack for National Film and Sound Archives.
The Brides of Khan
film for SBS TV.
S-Bend perform
original music by its members
Guy Freer: Piano Accordion and saxophones
Sam Golding: Brass
Boyd: Saxophones and Clarinets
Selected Bibliography:
ÔTwo Up; Alison Clouston &
BoydÕ, Australian Art Review, issue 14 July–October 2007 pp. 58–60
James Hancock Space3: An
Australian Independent Creative
Network 2000-2005 SPACE3 Gallery Sydney 2005 pp.146-151