News
Welcome to my Composition News! Here, you'll find all the latest updates for my music projects:
May 2024 March of the Woman, Alyse Faith and Eliza Shephard
April 2024 Tempo Rubato, Kit Millais and Louis Nicoll, Flawed
October 2023 Musica Viva Australia, Claire Edwardes, Morning Masters
September 2023 All That We Are Documentary
February 2023 Acts for the Invisible Documentary on ABC iView
January 2023 MSO Cybec Showcase
November 2022 Omega Ensemble Sydney Opera House Showcase
May 2022 AYO Regional Tour & Living Music Podcast Episode
April 2022 MSO Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers’ Program
March 2022 Omega Ensemble 2022 CoLAB Program
March of the Women
May 2024
I have been lucky enough to be involved in Australian Flautist, Eliza Shephard’s, “March of the Women” project for 2024!
On the 5th of May, we had a fantastic recording session of my piece “What Lies Beneath”, for Flute, Viola and Tape. It has been really lovely to work with Alyse Faith (flautist) on the piece and to be joined by Sandra Ionesco (viola) for the recording at Monash University.
Stay tuned for the final product, which will be released in a few months!
The March of the Women 2024 collection features 31 Australian female-identifying flute players showcasing an all-Australian line up of female-identifying composers. Associate artists are brought in as pieces require, and are selected by the original line up of performers. Each invited performer has been selected due to the diversity of careers that they have built for themselves, their creative outputs and their connection to their communities.
Recording Session
It was a real pleasure to reconnect with two friends from the Melbourne Conservatorium, Kit Millais and Louis Nicoll, to create a comedic piece. The piece “Flawed” was commissioned and performed by Millais and Nicoll at Tempo Rubato as part of their duo recital. I was asked to compose a piece that was humorous in nature, and I’m glad to say that their were quite a few giggles from the audience during the performance. As it turns out, it can be a challenge to write music that is purposefully humorous, but with the help of Kit and Louis’ brilliant stage presence and commitment to character and performance, I think we pulled it off!!
“Flawed” by Kit Millais
and Louis Nicoll
Tempo Rubato Recital, Thursday April 11th
April 2024
About the piece:
In today’s modern classical music environment, musicians strive for absolute perfection in performance, however unattainable it may be. Fast passages can always be cleaner and more sparkly, melodies can always be more sensitive and heartfelt, entries can always be smoother and more polished.
To make a mistake is to commit an absolute faux pas. A mistake is shameful, embarrassing, and catastrophic. If a musician makes an error during a performance (whether producing an off-key note, stumbling during a passage, or having a lapse in memory), they appear unprepared, under rehearsed or inexperienced. Though obvious mistakes are rarely witnessed in a professional setting, the fear of slipping up is an omnipresent anxiety for many musicians.
Flawed examines these concepts of performance perfectionism and anxiety through a humorous lens. The piece takes the audience inside the mind of a nervous musician to show what happens internally (and externally) when a professional performer makes a mistake. Consequently, the piece challenges and interrogates classical performance conventions. It asks what is means to perform “serious” classical music and what results when a mistake is made.
I had a great time working with Claire Edwardes to create “When It’s All Gone” for Vibraphone and Tape. It is a 5 minute piece and was premiered at the Concourse in Chatswood as part of the Musica Viva Australia “Sydney Morning Masters” series. It was also performed at the Sutherland Arts Centre the next day! I’d like to thank Claire and MVA for the commission, it was a real joy to collaborate with both parties to create the piece.
October 2023
About the piece:
Our coral reefs were once vibrant, bustling under water cities complete with high rise structures and even rush hours for schools of fish. Each day, as the rays of sun hit the water, a morning chorus would emanate through the reef. The ecosystem was alive with purrs, grunts and groans: a noisy place. Described as the rainforests of the sea, our reefs were an explosion of colour, teaming with fishes, plants, invertebrates, sea turtles, and sea mammals.
In the past 30 years, 50% of the world’s corals have perished through the process of coral bleaching. Cities of bright and beautiful colours have transformed into graveyards of eerie white skeletons. These biomes are disappearing seemingly unnoticed; the world under the ocean is largely out of sight and out of mind.
In 2015 in New Caledonia, the documentary crew for Chasing Coral stumbled upon a perplexing glowing radiating from the corals. The corals had become florescent, producing a chemical sunscreen to protect themselves from the heat. Though this transformational phenomenon is extremely stunning it is, in reality, an “incredibly beautiful phase of death”. The coral was turning bright, and then eventually white due to stress.
When It’s All Gone attempts to capture this moment, this last moment of brightness before imminent decay. The piece is veiled through a lens of a tender sadness, as though Mother Nature herself is comforting the corals. The mood created also reflects my own sorrow and guilt in witnessing the destruction of something so magnificent.
‘All That We Are’ is a story about a local community coming together to create an aerial performance as part of the Real Festival in Penrith on the Nepean River in late 2019. I had the pleasure of scoring the music for this 50 minute documentary! I care very much for this project and its strong sense of culture and integrity in character. The documentary has themes of team work, community, overcoming fears and obstacles, embracing newness and facing challenge. Click the link above to see the trailer and here for the Facebook page with more information about where to watch!
All That We Are
A documentary directed by Rory Brennan and produced by Julia Landrey
September 2023
February 2023
Here is a picture taken at the recording session, February 2021
January 2023
I was honoured to have the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform my piece “Stay Close” at Deakin Edge in Federation Square, Melbourne on Saturday the 28th of January.
A little about my piece:
Stay Close attempts to musically encapsulate the emotions experienced when the nature of a relationship stretches and reforms. It is a musical request to and a promise from me to my loved ones to stay close, no matter how we are distanced. It is also about believing in the endurance of a relationship as it shifts and reshapes.
As I progress through my 20s, I witness friends and loved ones growing alongside me. I see them pursuing goals, facing challenges; expected and unexpected, embracing change and travelling far and wide. It is a pleasure to watch and to celebrate each milestone, however accompanied by this joy is a bittersweetness. It is difficult to see friends uproot to new and unknown places, and I have grieved as they have gone away. Relationships transcending from the real world to online, we have resisted the time and distance between through phone calls and letters. Still, the relationship has evolved to become an adaptation of what once was. To encapsulate this jumble of emotions, the music in my piece contains moments of tension, despair and strangeness, and simultaneously moments of excitement, triumph and, by the closing of the piece, peacefulness.
Rehearsal at Deakin Edge 28/01/23
November 2022
photo by Keith Saunders
Omega Ensemble performed my piece ‘A Nostalgia I Have No Right to Own’ as part of the CoLAB Composer Accelaration Program Showcase on Thursday the 3rd of November. See the link above for the program!
A little about my piece:
“Like each time I hear the music played by the boy in the tree in my dreams, I experience a bittersweet sense of nostalgia I have no right to own…When it's time for him to play his solo–his eyes closed, his mind anywhere but here, his fingers so taut and precise that it almost looks painful–my eyes well with tears. Because you know from the look on his face that he's somewhere you want to be.”- Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe RoadThe essence of this piece stems from the notion of borrowed memories and borrowed emotions. Experiencing another’s narrative so intently that you too feel a sense of ownership and nostalgia for their recollection. You are encapsulated with the richness and wonderment of someone else’s memory and are consumed by it. Similarly, this sense of borrowed nostalgia evokes a sense of frustration and jealousy. You will never experience an intensity of emotion so strongly as the original owner of this memory. You are left instead to your imagination, and long to feel such vibrance and warmth in your own human experience. Musically, this piece can be divided into three sections. The beginning section centres around a perpetual piano ostinato which rambles and develops unpredictably. In time, the sense of drive and persistence prompted by the piano line unravels and slows to a moment of stillness and reflection. This moment is a warm glow, a moment where the music focuses perhaps more on texture than harmony. The third section is playful and sprightly. Each instrument initially locks into place through various rhythmic ostinati before breaking loose to explore other threads. May 2022
The AYO performed my String Quartet “Belonging and Longing to Be” as part of their Regional Tour of Victoria and NSW.
This tour was centred around the theme of belonging and the ensemble played works by Brenda Gifford, Toru Takemitsu, Lachlan Skipworth, and myself!
See the concert guide below!
May 2022
It was an absolute pleasure to speak with Rob Kennedy from the Living Music Podcast in April.
We speak about Hatched Academy and partaking in workshops, choosing a tonal palette for Orchestral Works and why I choose to write music and be a composer.
Listen below!
April 2022
It is an absolute dream come true to have been accepted into the MSO 2022 Cybec Composer Program!
“This annual program sees four emerging composers commissioned to compose a piece of music over the course of 12 months, with the final piece performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Our four finalists made it through a highly-competitive application process of over 40 applicants and two selection panels. We are pleased to announce them as: Julia Potter (NSW), Naomi Dodd (NSW), Christopher Healey (VIC) and Joseph Franklin (VIC).
Over the coming months the participants will receive mentoring from leading Australian composers Gerard Brophy, Paul Stanhope, Stuart Greenbaum, and Lead Mentor and Artistic Advisor of the Program, celebrated Australian composer Mary Finsterer. On the completion of the 12-month program one of the four participants will be selected as the MSO’s Young Composer in Residence for 2024.”
March 2022
I am so pleased to have been accepted into the Omega Ensemble 2022 CoLAB Program!
“The CoLAB: Composer Accelerator Program offers a unique opportunity for five early-career composers to obtain direct industry experience in collaboration with the musicians of Omega Ensemble and under the mentorship of leading professional composers.
This selective national program is suited to talented composers with highly-developed compositional skills, a strong artistic voice and demonstrated career ambitions. The program aims to accelerate participants across a nine-month program, developing a substantive new chamber work through studio and digital workshops, with guidance from leading Australian and international composers.
Throughout the program, participants will be engaged and supported in a professional setting, concluding with an industry showcase performance at Sydney Opera House, with each participant presenting their work to an audience of invited industry guests.”