Vincent Plush, Sydney, 15 July 2014.

The recent concert by Early Warning System marks another important stage in the development of Brisbane as the most exciting place for small-scale new music performances in this country. Since the appearance of the Brisbane Powerhouse in 2000, an abundance of small new music groups have been nurtured and are now producing second- and even third-generation of ever younger enterprises. A cheering sign in a landscape where there have been so many false starts and disappointed hopes.

Leading the charge in Brisbane are the various activities centred around percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson and pianist/composer Erik Griswold. As the Clocked Out duo, they created many a memorable, zany event, using adapted keyboards, toy instruments and implements recruited from kitchen cupboards and trash collections. Now expanding as Early Warning System, they have introduced other leading percussion spirits to their fold, notably Michael Askill, the revered eminence who, back in Sydney 40 years ago, founded the internationally acclaimed percussion group Synergy.

In their most recent concert, given in the small Visy Theatre in the Powerhouse last week, all three performers featured as composers in new works commissioned by the Australia Council. But it was a new work by Melbourne-based composer Kate Neal that excited me most vividly, with its evocations of theatrical gestures, facial grimaces and the like. I found myself hoping that EWS would continue to develop the purely physical dimension of its performance activities, perhaps by engaging actors and stage directors to work in developing these skills.

For these four works, Tomlinson drew on several of her students and some recent graduates from her studio at the Queensland Conservatorium (surely the largest and most active in the country, a cheering testament to Tomlinson’s drawing power over the past decade or so). This in itself shows the creative and performance process passing down to ever younger generations, a hallmark of a vibrant and flowering musical community. 

In Clocked Out and Early Warning System, Brisbane has nurtured a treasured resource which should be the envy and model for similar ventures nation-wide.