Bree Van Reyk
Bree van Reyk plays drums and percussion, writes and produces music, creates performances and makes unkempt musical instruments using old bits of wood and guitar strings.
She has toured and recorded extensively throughout Australia and around the globe with the likes of Paul Kelly, Gurrumul, Justine Clarke, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Holly Throsby, Sarah Blasko, Lior, Katie Noonan, Darren Hanlon, and many other songwriters and ensembles. Bree is long-standing member of Ensemble Offspring and Synergy Percussion and has been commissioned by both groups.
With visual artist Lauren Brincat she has created new work for AGNSW, MCA, GOMA, MOFO, Next Wave and Performance Space with a particular focus on large-scale performative works including 2014's No Performance Today which featured the NSW Police Band, and 2013's Blood & Fire with 50 tambourine players. Their performance work, Molto Echo (for seven drummers in a museum) was recently purchased by the MCA for their permanent collection.
In 2015 Bree was Artist in Residence at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Her projects at Campbelltown saw the creation of a new work, In Stereo, with Brussels-based artist Kate McIntosh, and MASSIVE BAND with 100 High-School girls and women in one big, loud rock band together.
Bree is currently creating music and co-inventing giant string instruments for a dance/music work with Urban Theatre Projects and Ensemble Offspring, writing The Invisible Bird for Sydney Chamber Opera, making an interactive online album of improvised performances called Superclusters, and putting together an invitational-installation-meets-noise-band work acknowledging the historical invisibility of women for Performance Space’s Day for Night. Bree van Reyk is an Australian percussionist, drummer, composer and sound artist.
As a composer Bree has been commissioned by Urban Theatre Projects, Marrugeku, Shaun Parker Company, Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Dance Company, the MCA, The Letter String Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Synergy Percussion, the Canberra Youth Orchestra, fashion designer Bianca Spender.
Bree has also developed several musical installation works including the soundtrack installation for The Pool - Australia's exhibition at the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2016, an interactive Melody Fence with designer Elliat Rich for Ross Park Primary School in 2011, and Arbor Sonata with Chloe Goldsmith for Dress-Up Attack and Malthouse Theatre's crafternoon series in 2013.
Bree has co-produced albums with Toby Martin, Annie McKinnon and Jess Green and is developing a large-scale improvisatory performance work, Superclusters, which also exists as an interactive online album.
Bree is currently studying towards a Master of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as part of the Composing Women Program where she is studying with Liza Lim and Damien Ricketson and writing new works for world re-known flutist, Claire Chase, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Chamber Opera.