AUSTRALIAN ART ORCHESTRA
Genres: World Fusion, Third Stream, Progressive Big Band, Jazz Related Improv, Composition, Avant-Garde Jazz • Australia

Founded by Paul Grabowsky in 1994 the AAO is one of Australia’s leading contemporary ensembles. Now led by daring composer/trumpeter/sound artist Peter Knight, its work constantly seeks to stretch genres and break down the barriers separating disciplines, forms and cultures. It explores the interstices between the avant-garde and the traditional, between art and popular music, between electronic and acoustic approaches, and creates music that traverse the continuum between improvised and notated forms. The Australian Art Orchestra nods to the hugely influential, Art Ensemble of Chicago in its name, as do a number of other famous groups including the Vienna Art Orchestra, and in doing so it builds on a set of ideas that stretch back to the beginnings of jazz. These ideas in turn drew on an extraordinary collision of cultures, ways of thinking, and folk traditions that are so old that their beginnings are untraceable. The AAO’s music may sound read more...