I'm an artist and composer, creating conceptually inspired works that range from delicately entwined layers of sound to large scale, theatrical performance art events.
Inspired by human nature, memory and psychic fragility, my work centres around the fanciful, the unknown and the bizarre. I use antiques, redundant musical instruments and forgotten texts, to create innovative, haunting, beautiful yet disturbing artworks. These have been performed at venues from London Zoo to Tate Britain and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and Resonance FM. My musical sculptures have been exhibited at the East Wing Collection at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and I'm a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
I also write music for theatre and contemporary dance, collaborating with the Rambert Dance Company, Scanner and Kuljit Bhamra, and my scores feature regularly on television and radio productions, such as the BBC’s “Horizon” and “Coast” series, and Channel 4’s “Dispatches”.
"What I find compelling about Troy Banarzi's music is that it is always highly organised but never abstract. I sense quiet obsessions at work. He makes sound worlds that are both tender and dark, evoking the vulnerability of humanity with simplicity and restraint. He treasures found objects - sounds or chords - placing them in time as though they were precious things - so that they become precious things, cool but not quite preserved, vulnerable, almost nostalgic. But above all what I like about this music is that it is mysterious to me, withholding as much from me as it gives to me. It is elusive and engaging."
Alwynne Pritchard
Composer, Journalist and BBC Radio 3 Presenter
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My work is funded by Arts Council England
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The Missing
I’m currently working on a project called The Missing.
The Missing is a continuing work of exploration and discovery, taking in London and the Thames, missing people, the afterlife, ghosts and mediums. The projects within The Missing have been funded by Arts Council England, and supported by the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Requiem for the Missing, is the project’s first creation. It is a performance art piece which was first performed by a choir of hooded monks, walking in procession around the courtyard of Somerset House and proceeding to The Courtauld Institute of Art. The requiem contrasts dramatic scenes of a decaying body with ethereal visions of heaven. It includes traditional texts from the Requiem Mass, as well as Buddhist meditations and 18th century coroners’ reports.
The outdoor audio installation, Séance, also first peformed in the historic courtyard of Somerset House, is a collaboration between sound artist, Scanner and myself. It uses recordings of real séances and text from contemporary police missing reports, to produce a poignant and haunting piece of sound art.
"A rich hypnotic dreamscape that pays homage to invisible London, the passing of time, missing people and the ethereal voices of parallel and hidden worlds"
Art Rabbit
"An evocative multi-media experience based on missing people and the afterlife"
Garageland
"Critic's Choice"
Time Out
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Musical Sulptures
Taking inspiration from eighteenth century automata and automated musical instruments, my musical sculptures are fabricated from discarded junk and redundant musical instruments. Disparate parts and unlikely matches give birth to new and curious inventions, which are programmed to make their own equally curious music.
Magic organ combines pipes from a redundant church organ with fairground lights, housed within what was once the case of a large antique coin-operated music box. It's controlled by a remote computer which transmits radio signals from another room.
It was first shown at the East Wing Collection VIII, at the Courtauld Institute of Art in May 2009.
"Troy Banarzi's supernatural organ is back!"
Culture 24
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Euphonika
My multi-media work, Euphonika (2006) involves projections, 8 musicians and 10 instruments in a weird and quasi-theatrical sound and vision performance that explores the urge across cultures and religions to blur the distinctions between the animate and the inanimate. Funded by the Arts Council, the debut performance at the historical Hoxton Hall was recorded and subsequently broadcast on Resonance FM and BBC Radio 3.
Dolls, fantasies, fairgrounds, childhood obsessions and those of a darker and more unsettling nature are the inspirations behind this multi-layered, evocative, funny/strange soundscape. Sex dolls, miracles, talking statues, freaks, fetishism and testimonies from real agalmatophiliacs are accompanied by twisted music hall melodies and the music of memory.
Euphonika considers the ‘living statue’ as a historical cultural phenomenon, and looks at the varied attitudes held about believers - from the socially derogated, to the spiritually exalted. From Hans Bellmer to Denis Nilsen to the high priests of Hinduism.
“Euphonika uses real interviews with people who are weird and like dolls and stuff like that. It’s terrifically creepy and looks and sounds gorgeous”
Resonance FM
"Euphonika pushes outwards, fusing unsettling imagery, serial killers, rudely obsessed doll fanatics within a vaudeville circus atmosphere, leaving this viewer disoriented, unsteady, yet thirsting for more"
Scanner
"Truly spine-chilling. beautifully recorded. In a word: stunning"
Sound on Sound
“Unsettling”
Time Out
Buy Euphonika on itunes!
Listen to excerpts from Euphonika below:
euphonika.com
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Experimental Compositions
A selection of compositions performed at Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, Zoo Art Fair, Laban, Resonance FM and Trinity College of Music
www.banarzi.com
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Music for theatre, film and TV
A selection of compositions for productions at Riverside Studios, National Film Theatre/British Film Institute, BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel4, Channel5, Disney Channel, Sky Digital and Sky Sports
www.banarzi.com
