We have divided this room into two sub-rooms. The first, Acoustic Performance, features the music of composers who work with post-serial and post-minimalist sound-worlds in which they explore atonal and tonal harmonies and textures, and take these into new expressive terrains. Composers here include: Clare Maclean, Lecturer in Composition (Western), with her recently premiered work, Psalm 11, performed by The Song Company; Diana Blom, lecturer (Western), with Inflorescence for piano performed by highly acclaimed pianist, Michael Kieran Harvey; Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture), Nicholas Ng, with Stellar Mansions performed by The Australian Voices; doctoral alumnus, Eve Duncan, with Aer Turas (Air Journey) performed by the Sirius Ensemble; doctoral alumnus, Christina Green, with Edge Sky Self for Homophonic! Ensemble; doctoral students, Brad Gill with Still 2-Mei for vibraphone, percussion, dizi and soprano saxophone and Chloe Hulewicz, with Are you ready for a fight? for the Penrith Youth Orchestra Brass Quintet. The second room, Electroacoustic and Electronic, features five composers: three are current students in the doctoral program, Emma Harlock with Black, Jo Truman with Solitudes, Sean Botha with Midnight; Noel Burgess, a technical officer in Music and a doctoral candidate at Macquarie University, with Lorentz’s Lament; and Roger Dean, Professor of Sonic Communication in the MARCS Institute, with Pan Pipes.
Acoustic Performance
Clare Maclean
Psalm 11 was commissioned for the 2020 Adelaide Festival, as part of 150 Psalms. This setting of the Psalm draws from two Yemenite Jewish melodies which are adapted and fragmented. One melody is for Psalm 11 and the other is for the Jewish liturgical poem, Kirya Yefefiya, which expresses a longing in exile for Jerusalem.
Diana Blom
The title and influences for this work come from the exquisitely detailed botanical paintings of the Australian rainforest tree, Stenocarpus sinuatus (Firewheel Tree), by Australian artist Elizabeth Cooper, which shaped the work, the sound gestures and the sustain pedal as ‘sound brush’ colouring specified notes and note groups. A second influence was Deanna Petherbridge’s (2010) description of drawing techniques pentimento, chiaroscuro and line itself.
Nicholas Ng
Stellar Mansions, commissioned by The Australian Voices, is inspired by Chinese astronomy and the poetry of Prof Neville Yeomans, former Dean of Medicine (Western Sydney University). During times of crisis, I am often comforted by looking up into the night sky where a vast ocean of light may be seen through the darkness
Eve Duncan
The vitality of still air in beautiful parts of the world inspired me. In the Tibetan monasteries in Himalayan Ladakh and the northern Appalachian Mountains the air was uplifting. In New South Wales’ Wollemi National Park the air melded a sense of suspended time and gentleness in an untouched natural world
Christina Green
Edge Sky Self (2020) is a setting of the poem Edge Sky Self by the late Candy Royalle (from A Trillion Tiny Awakenings), a poet/spoken word artist from Sydney. It was commissioned and presented by Melbourne's Homophonic! ensemble (Midsumma Festival 2020), celebrating new music by queer composers. Kind permission from the Estate of Candy Royalle and University of Western Australia Publishing to set Royalle's poem is acknowledged.
Brad Gill
‘Still 2: Mei’ is a work composed in four sections, separated by silence. 1. ‘The Prayer of the Frog’ consisting entirely of an improvised temple block solo; 2. ‘Dawn’, with a focus on dizi and saxophone playing material based on transcriptions of the noisy miner call; 3. ‘Still’, an improvised microtonal section, and experiment with what I call ‘still form’; 4. ‘Winter Evening Rain’.
Chloe Hulewicz
Are you ready to fight? is a brass quintet piece performed by the Sydney Youth Orchestra in September 2015. Drawing upon Frederic Chopin’s mazurka form, juxtaposed with the visual comical contradictory ideas and accruing tension portrayed in the boxing scene of Charlie Chaplin’s silent film, City Lights, this piece brings to life the emotive colour sonority of my Polish culture through a unique hybridisation of a Polish-Chaplinesque voice
Electroacoustic and Electronic
Emma Harlock
'Concept:FUTURE' is an ambient/improvised series that explores the impending climate crisis. The series consists of a sonic bedding recorded into Ableton Live, and an improvised processed electric bass guitar track which sits above. The series begins with 'Green', then 'Blue', before ending with 'Black'.
Noel Burgess
Lorentz’s Lament features my midi Tesla coil, piano and additional synthesisers. The sound of the tesla coil spark and piano are run through several digital signal processors in a computer and are expressively shaped and evolved though performative gesture using a Leap Motion infrared controller.
Roger Dean
This is my first piece treating the grand piano as capable of playing any pitch, not just 88 fixed notes. Largely algorithmic, it sonifies the first 2 months of covid-19 pandemic new case numbers for Australia, alongside those for the whole world. www.australysis.com.
Jo Truman
‘Solitudes’ is a homage to the composer’s gg-grandfather, the visionary 18thC Scottish ornithologist, wildlife illustrator, writer and ecologist, William MacGillivray. Centred around his poem it comprises of multi-layered extended vocal techniques – microtonal (signifying birds), overtone and “standard” singing, performed by the composer – and a looped and treated bagpipe drone.
Sean Botha
Midnight is one of many improvised recordings by H.S. Botha, with a strong emphasis on placement of sound, intended to be used in film, TV and video games. Sean made this piece based on what he could hear in his mind during isolation. His need for exploring outer space and seeking out what we cannot hear in the dark of night, led him to place sounds of the ocean and electronic sampling into a multisensory experience.