Matthew Herbert’s One Room: Made of Music

Matthew Herbert brings Elisabeth Murdoch Hall to life with a work inspired by its Hoop Pine timber, demonstrating how the space is made of music.

Composer, DJ, performer, producer and agent provocateur, Matthew Herbert is an idiosyncratic voice in contemporary music. 'Matthew Herbert makes music out of sound. Specific sounds. Simple as that seems, it is a practice that was only possibly as a result of one of the most radical and transformative inventions of the 20th century - that of magnetic tape. Once that was introduced into the field of recording, music could be sourced from the entire sonic world, recontextualised, reshaped. The possibility now existed to make anything out of anything. Herbert has remixed musicians as diverse as Bjork and Mahler, has scored film, dance and theatre and is now Creative Director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

In this concert, Matthew Herbert gives the world premiere of a work commissioned by Melbourne Recital Centre. Using sounds generated by the Hoop Pine which wraps the interior of Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Matthew brings this exquisite space to life, demonstrating how the Hall is made of music.

'In an age of such infinite and brilliant possibilities of technique, combined with the urgent politics of now, why have music and musicians lost the urge to challenge, investigate, invent and unite?' - Matthew Herbert

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