Joanna Duda, Sunny Kim, and Helen Svoboda feature together in The Great Reset, a composition commissioned jointly by Jazztopad and the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, but it is not the only thing they share. Each of the artists transcends genre boundaries and defies categorisation. Ghosted, on the other hand, is a project by the international trio consisting of guitarist Oren Ambarchi, double bassist Johan Berthling, and drummer Andreas Werliin. 

The first part of the concert will feature a project that premiered in Melbourne on 23 October. Duda, Kim, and Svoboda interpret the idea of a reset on their own terms. Here, the political and global reset intersects with the personal and spiritual, and the music combines elements of composition, improvisation, and performative dialogue, balancing beauty and disruption, community and individuality, structure and disintegration. For the artists, transgression is not a goal but rather a side effect of following their own unbridled imagination. They recently presented the results of their work at London’s Vortex club – now it is time for Jazztopad. 

After the intermission, Oren Ambarchi will perform. He has collaborated with several artists associated with dense, sometimes downright brutal musical textures – for example, Merzbow, Sunn 0)), Jim O’Rourke, and Keith Rowe. Yet the work presented at Jazztopad will reveal another, entirely different side of the artist. In terms of sound, the material from the Ghosted can be associated with a wide range of aesthetics: from free jazz from the ECM catalogue, through American minimalism, to traditional music from Mali, Nigeria, and Ghana. Regardless of the stylistic connotations, engaging with the compositions of the trio, which also includes Berthling and Werliin, has something of a purifying, metaphysical ritual.