This special evening featuring films alongside two special performances

A visual sculptor, improviser, instrument builder and performance artist, Michael Vorfeld is a key member of the European contemporary music community making his Sydney debut.

Live Performance

Air Pressure
Michael Vorfeld & Philip Samartzis

 ‘Air Pressure’ is a live performance developed through dialogue between Antarctic field recordings and experimental performance practice.

Drawing on Philip Samartzis’s long-term polar fieldwork and Michael Vorfeld’s extended instrumental and material-based approaches, the duo explores the physical presence of air, pressure, vibration, and resonance. The work unfolds as an improvised exchange between site-derived sound and live gesture, transforming environmental recordings into a dynamic, spatial experience. Rather than illustrating Antarctica, Air Pressure foregrounds elemental forces—wind, instability, and acoustic resistance—inviting audiences to encounter the continent as an active sonic presence.

Film Works

LEUCHTSTOFF (Luminescent Substance) ((2003, 16mm, black and white, 14 min., digital version)
SILHOUETTE (black and white, digital, 8:35 minutes)

Two explorations of light, shadow and electricity in performance.

Live Performance
QUINTET

Michael Vorfeld, percussion
Jim Denley, woodwinds
Saskia Shearer, percussion
Uma Volkmer, trumpet
Clayton Thomas, double bass

A small orchestra of possibilities, this quintet is something of a Venn diagram of personal and musical relationships. Jim, Michael and Clayton have all collaborated in different groups for over 20 years. In this first-time meeting they are joined by two brilliant improvisers from the Sydney creative music community, Saskia Shearer and Uma Volkmer, whose own subtlety, ingenuity and character promise expand the palette and potential of each moment to come.

Schedule

7:30pm — Air Pressure
8:30pm — Film works by Michael Vorfeld
9:00pm — QUINTET

About the musicians

The Berlin based Michael Vorfeld plays percussion and self designed stringed instruments and realises electro-acoustic sound pieces. He works in the field of experimental, improvised music and sound art. Besides solo activities he is a member of different groups and collaborates with artists of different art forms. One of these projects is Air Pressure with Philip Samatzis.

Philip Samartzis is a sound artist, researcher, and curator currently based in Sydney whose practice investigates the social and environmental conditions of remote regions and marginalised communities. Working across Antarctica and sub-Antarctica, the Swiss and Australian Alps, and the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia, he uses advanced audio technologies to register environmental change in some of the world’s most fragile and dynamic ecosystems.

Jim Denley‘s work with wind instruments emphasizes eco-musicality, spontaneity, and co-creation with Musickin (human and more-than-human) and Place. He improvises with the eternal orchestrating Sonoverse. He’s deeply involved with the Sydney-based Splinter Orchestra, a radically inclusive large-scale improvising ensemble. Undertaking PhD research from 2020-2024, this manifests as a book, Towards Ecologising Musicking: “As Weather” Improvisation (Bloomsbury 2026).

Saskia Shearer is a Gadigal-based percussionist and artist whose practice pushes performative boundaries, toeing the line between meditation and chaos. Experimenting with an array of traditional instruments and found objects, she creates texturally diverse sound sculptures that celebrate the versatility of percussion, viewing instruments as vessels for movement and stillness. Classically trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Saskia incorporates tradition while rebelling against its constraints. She is co-director and performer with Chaos Collective. Recent performances include Chaos Collective at Schmick Contemporary and and performances with Sound the Alarm

Uma Volkmer (she/her) is a musician and artist working on Gadigal land. Her practice is experiment driven with a focus on collaboration, connectivity and an explorative dialogue between visual and sonic forms. Most recently, Uma has been exploring texture, abstraction and materiality within her creative practice and as a trumpet player. Since being introduced to Sydney’s exploratory scene through Splinter Orchestra in 2023 Uma’s love of improvisation has grown and in February 2024 she released debut album Burst with band Bad Photography (Jim Denley, Alex Tucker).

Clayton Thomas is a double bass player based in Sydney. He is the founder of the NOW now festival for improvised music, the Inner West Jazz Fest, as well as the socio-musical projects Splinter and Splitter Orchestra and Sound the Alarm.  As a performer, Thomas has travelled the world in support of his solo music, as well as collaborating with a vast community of groundbreaking improvisers, composers and jazz musicians.