For the culturally curious, February and March in Perth can be a rich maelstrom, with Perth Fringe and Perth Festival. We have apparently the world’s “third largest” fringe festival (after Edinburgh and Adelaide), but I’m not sure why this is good.

Whatever the case, audiences must plan and be focused in navigating such a cornucopia of competing works in two simultaneous festivals.

My Perth Festival was complicated by a jaunt to Adelaide (in the middle of that city’s festival and fringe) but I was delighted to be able to follow links between works, including afrofuturism, post-classical music and arts offering haunting examples of post-humanism: that which exceeds, replaces or accompanies the human.

Deep listening

Artistic director Iain Grandage’s previous Perth Festivals tended towards light musical programming, both in quantity and emphasis on accessibility – consider the festival obtaining the world record for biggest air guitar ensemble in 2020.

This year, however, had many post-classical music highlights which demanded deep listening.

Anthony Pateras’ compositions for prepared piano, amplified vocals, clarinet, contrabass and flute with A Dread of Voids was an uncompromising night of rich sonic assaults and drone, often with cyclic developmental structures.

Pateras’ masterful performance, on pianos with strings rendered percussive through the addition of bolts, screws, paper and other materials, was followed...