Starting the final full year of my PhD, these past few months have been about expanding and consolidating the compositional ideas I have been experimenting with since 2021. Working towards my experimental chamber opera, Knots that Bind, which will be performed in November this year, I am continuing to test new forms of musical notation and ways of censoring as a compositional method. Being able to test these experiments live in front of audiences has been an invaluable part of my process, giving me a much deeper understanding of how my ideas work in practice. I was lucky to have the chance to perform a new conception of Rosenhöhe at the Zurich University of the Arts in April for the TENOR Conference 2024. Performing on theremin with double bassist Helen Svoboda and a motion tracking responsive tape track, I started to expand the idea of a textile score where the feelings/actions of push and pull form an erotic notation. Now, in July, I am reflecting back on this performance and expanding the concept as I workshop Knots that Bind with a larger ensemble for its premiere, and for a preview excerpt through the Speak Percussion Bespoke program.

For more on the TENOR 2024 Conference at ZhDK, read the Resonate article written my myself, Chlöe Sobek and Helen Svoboda.

Knots that Bind is supported by Creative Australia/Music Australia.

To end my half-year in Germany, I was lucky to attend the Darmstadt Summer Course and take part in the intensive workshop 'Local Music' run by Sarah Saviet and Arne Gieshoff. For a full week, we worked on a site-specific project in the New Artists' Colony in Matildenhöhe, a residency space with a rich artistic history within a beautiful garden. As a group of composer/performer/improvisers, we explored the gardens and gallery and studio spaces, unlocking the sonic possibilities of the location. As well as performing in group outdoors feedback improvisations, I also came up with an idea for a short piece for trombone and violin, Rosenhöhe. The piece is very much inspired by the architecture of the studio gallery space, with its high balcony and large window. The violinist and trombonist are tied together with string, alternating between control over each other while also controlling, through motion tracking, the mixing of two tracks made out of field recordings. This experiment in interplay between hidden sounds, control and movement was only possible because of the shared excitement of our project's group and gentle support of Saviet and Gieshoff.

My second week of Darmstadt was focused on learning and listening. I took lessons with Du Yun, Brigitta Muntendorf and Matthew Schlomowitz, and joined classes with Lachenmann and Clara Iannotta. All of these encounters were inspiring in different ways, but I focused most on understanding more about musical form and dramaturgy, preparing to work on my chamber opera that will be my largest work to date. Presenting my work in progress and ideas over and over again throughout the summer course gave me a new perspective on my PhD research, uncovering ways of communicating to peers and audience. I'm so grateful to have been able, with the support of Monash and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, to experience this eye-opening fortnight. I leave with excitement about when I'll next encounter my friends from around the world.

Photo by Kristof Lemp.

If I haven't seen you recently, you might not know that I'm spending the semester in Hamburg. I'm doing a PhD exchange at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg which has an amazing multimedia composition department, as well as performing the synth part in Cat Hope's opera Speechless! So far it's been very busy, jumping straight into Speechless rehearsals as well as setting up my life here and dealing with all the paperwork that comes with moving to Germany (even just for a few months). I'm cooking up new collaboration ideas as well as sitting in on courses in VR, multimedia analysis and German classes. I'm honoured to be a part of this performance of Speechless in the Ligeti Festival at HfMT Hamburg. It's an incredibly moving work.

In May I'll have my first of a few side trips in the Northern Hemisphere. I'm heading to Boston May 15-17 for the International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR), where I'll present a paper as well as having my piece Shadow Aria be performed by the amazing NYC ensemble loadbang. I'm very excited to share some of my early PhD research on methods of censorship in composition as well as to work with loadbang.

Back in Australia and online, I'm happy to be taking part in Speak Percussion's Bespoke PD workshops this year. It's been an amazing chance so far to learn from and play with the incredible musicians and artists in and around Speak, including meeting the inspiring and hilarious Duré Dara. I look forward to seeing what else comes about through this opportunity!

The last couple of months have been really busy. In addition to preparing to start my PhD, I’ve been working on a commission from RMIT and City of Melbourne for RMIT’s Black Box room – a 24.2 multichannel 3D speaker system. This is really my first time working in multichannel, and having 24 speakers in a 3D layout available to me is hugely different to making music in stereo. I researched Ambisonic sound, which is the technology used mainly for reproducing sound captured with an Ambisonic microphone or creating synthesised sounds for a virtual reality 3D space. Since my piece doesn’t need to precisely replicate a real or imagined space, I didn’t attempt real Ambisonic spacialisation (although I would love to try it in future). Instead, I created 3D effects of sounds moving around the room by layering 2D octaphonic and quadraphonic panning effects in different directions and angles. Spacialisation really adds a whole other element of music to play with – each sound has new possibilities of movement and dimension, and there’s also a chance to let the audience interact with the work by hiding sounds in different corners of the room. I remember a workshop MESS hosted with Suzanne Ciani where she said that every music venue should have at least a quadraphonic or octaphonic speaker setup that performers can use. I completely agree with her because multichannel spacialisation has the potential to add so much excitement and impact to music, and I really hope I get to work in more multichannel systems throughout my career.

In August, I attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse which was hosted online. I had originally signed up to attend in 2020, but that was postponed and this year they decided to make the course and festival half online, with performers and concerts happening in Darmstadt but composition students online. Of course, it wasn’t the same as being there in person, and it was sad to think of all the pub nights and spontaneous jams missed. But I’m still really glad to have attended – my workshops and lessons with Jennifer Walshe, Cathy Milliken, David Helbich, Sebastian Berweck and Du Yun were incredibly inspirational and had me jotting down pages of new ideas and thoughts. I took part in the Minimoog Project, where Sebastian Berweck workshopped new pieces for solo Minimoog. An instrument rarely notated for, it was exciting to see everyone’s solutions and come up with my own. A common thread between many of the composers was thinking about how styles of notation affect the performance of a work. For me, writing a carefully notated score feels like giving a little gift to the performer, a secret artwork, and I handwrote my Minimoog piece with coloured pencils as a nod to early electronic composers like Eliane Radigue.

shallow listening had its second and third performances recently by the music box project in Sydney. A year and a half after the premiere at BIFEM 2019, the fact that the ensemble were still excited about the program made me so grateful. The now award-winning performance, having recieved the Excellence in Experimental Music Award at the prestigious APRA AMC Awards in 2020, drew a new crowd in NSW. I was excited to see the ensemble perform my piece and the others in the unhinged program with even more energy and conviction and enhanced staging and lighting at Australian Hall. Thank you to Steve Moffatt at Limelight for the rave review.

In contrast to the Zen-like calmness of that pillar, the other two works on the program were far more theatrical and demanding of both performers and audience. Shallow Listening features a terrific duet between Stefanou’s prodigious mezzo-soprano vocals and Jigalin’s theremin with some Cathy Berberian-style spoken and sung passages, heavy on dark humour with references to robodebt and the need to smile at all costs.