Yesterday afternoon I appeared on Fine Music's 'In Conversation' program with Michael Morton-Evans. You can listen to the interview (here), including songs/pieces of my choosing!
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Eighth Blackbird and I after out first rehearsal. Check out that trashy cymbal stack in the foreground!
The inimitable Eighth Blackbird gave the world premiere of my Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup on Monday night. Their Australian tour with Musica Viva kicked off in Perth, as part of the Perth International Arts Festival - the first of a string of dates across the country. The program includes Muhly's Doublespeak, Dessner's Murder Ballades, Hearne's By-By Huey and Andres' Checkered Shade. Lobster Tales was commissioned for Musica Viva with the support of Geoff Stearn and the Hildegard Project.
Some words (and hand actions) from me about the story behind Lobster Tales and Turtle Soup:
Looking as though I'm about to perform an impromptu 'Lobster Quadrille' after the premiere!
And some words about Eighth Blackbird's Perth show:
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The score and parts for my trio Frogstomp (flute/picc, bass clarinet & percussion) and percussion duo Tweedledrum are now available via the Australian Music Centre.
An e-book written by Tristan Coelho, in preparation for MLC School's Australian Music Day 2016, is also available. It includes analysis of my Tweedledrum, Melody Eotvos's The King in Yellow, and Andrew Ford's Lullaby and Fire Dance, along with composition activities for senior high school students.
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Australian Music Centre's online Resonate Magazine features my blog about Vibe Rant, detailing part of my compositional process. Find it here!
You can hear more about Kontiki Racket on The Music Show with Andrew Ford, November 12, featuring Ensemble Offspring's artistic director and percussionist, Claire Edwardes, and I. Follow the link to download the audio here.
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My latest trio Vibe Rant (flute/picc., bass clarinet/clarinet, & vibraphone) is for Ensemble Offspring's micro-festival Kontiki Racket, 12-13th of November. Come along!
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The inaugural Creativity Unlimited Festival will be held at Western Sydney University on September 1-2. Timothy Phillips and Michael Kieran Harvey will give the premiere of my new percussion and piano duo, Brake Dance, on September 2 at 3pm, alongside works by Bruce Crossman, Clare Maclean, Eve Duncan, Tomoyuki Hisatome and Akira Kobayahsi.
Earlier in the day (12pm), I'll be improvising (drum kit/percussion) with Joey Tabua (electric guitar/guzheng) as our rock duo, Tabua-Harrison, as well as with Jess Graham (violin/vocals) and Lizzie Graham (piano) as Tabua-Harrison-Wren.
For more info, the program for both days is available here and here. There's loads more, including improvising trio Espadrille and prog-rock trio Three Wise Monkeys.
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Orkest de Ereprijs will perform my Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax at Gaudeamus Muziekweek, 11 September, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax was commissioned by Orkest de Ereprijs for 2015 after receiving first place at the 2014 Young Composers Meeting with Cabbages and Kings.
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My paper 'A Musical Portmanteau: Rock Viscerality, Juxtaposition and Modernist Textures in Frumious' is now published in Sally Macarthur, Judy Lochhead and Jennifer Shaw (eds), Music’s Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies, Routledge/Ashgate, 2016.
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Be sure to check out Jim Rolon's Australian Composer Polaroid Project in celebration of the Australian Music Centre's 40th anniversary. The series features 41 composers and sound artists, from Stephen Adams to Sally Whitwell, and I feel very lucky to be one of them!
You can find the online exhibition here, and an interview by Andrew Ford with photographer Jim Rolon here.
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The live recording of the And Whether Pigs Have Wings premiere by Caroline Cartens and RKST21 (Orkest de Ereprijs & Het Gelders Orkest), conducted by Arjan Tien, is now available.
You'll also find a few rehearsal snaps below.
Dress rehearsal at Musis Sacrum, Arnhem.
Rehearsal at Town Hall, Apeldoorn.
No trip is complete without a visit to the Kröller-Müller Museum!
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Georgia Tech Chamber Strings, conducted by Chaowen Ting, will give the US premiere of FiddleSticks! on the 29th of February at the Ferst Centre, Atlanta, Georgia. The program is sponsored by Women's Philharmonic Advocacy. More information about the night is available here. Other programmed works include Ney Rosauro's Marimba Concerto and Stravinsky's Ragtime for 11 Instruments.
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I'm excited to be off to the Netherlands next week for the premiere of my new work, And Whether Pigs Have Wings, for soprano and chamber orchestra. The piece is written for soprano Caroline Cartens and the Orchestra of the 21st Century (RKST21), a joint collaboration between Orkest de Ereprijs and Het Gelders Orkest.
Cartens and RKST21 will perform And Whether Pigs Have Wings on two programmes, conducted by Arjan Tien. The first at Brand New Day (February 13, Musis Sacrum, Arnhem), alongside Three Reflections of Previous Thoughts and HOP by Martijn Padding, and Funk My Life, a new work by Mátyás Wettl. And the second at the opening concert of the 22nd Young Composers Meeting (February 14, Town Hall, Apeldoorn), also alongside works by Padding and Wettl.
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Presented by Stockland, a short documentary about FiddleSticks! and the premiere performance is now available to watch!
FiddleSticks! is an exciting partnership between Stockland, Sydney Youth Orchestras and Prairiewood High School. Contemporary Australian composer Holly Harrison worked closely with elective music students from years 8-11 in an intensive workshop program throughout Term 3. Using junk percussion, found objects and improvisation excercises, Holly sculpted a piece based on the rhythmic and melodic ideas of students. Everyday items are repurposed into musical instruments: buckets, sandpaper blocks, sports whistles, squeaky-toys, homemade rice shakers and a megaphone. Holly aimed to write a piece which would reflect the fun, outgoing and eclectic personalities of the students she had worked with at PHS.
The percussion was paired with SYO's Sinfonietta under the guidance of conductor Heloise Meisel. In a series of rehearsals and with a team of supportive staff, including SYO percussionist and concerto Competition winner Stuart Rynn, students combined to present FiddleSticks!
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SYO's Sinfonietta and and Prairiewood High School percussionists will perform FiddleSticks! at the Sydney Youth Orchestras' end of year Family Concert at Verbrugghen Hall, The Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 3:30pm, December 5.
For tickets and more information, see here.
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The Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows will perform Jabberwock at their end of year concert at Verbrugghen Hall, The Sydney Conservatorium of Music. It's set to be a super fun programme with Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks, Adès' Living Toys, and HK Gruber's Frankentstein!!
More information about the event is available here.
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The premiere of FiddleSticks! (November 22nd) is fast approaching. The piece is inspired by, and written in part with, students from Prairiewood High School throughout my time as composer in residence at PHS. Written for strings, percussion, and MC/rapper, FiddleSticks! will be performed by Sydney Youth Orchestras Sinfonietta ensemble and Prairiewood High School percussionists.
A feature of the work is the found objects and 'junk' percussion. Everyday items are re-purposed into musical instruments: buckets, sandpaper blocks, sports whistles, squeaky-toys, homemade rice-shakers, and a megaphone!
Details of the performance can be found here.
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The Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows will give the world premiere of my latest piece Jabberwock at the Sorcerers and Wizards family concert at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, October 4. The program features Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice (arr. Farrington) and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Yu). Forming part of the Spot On Children's Festival, guests are encouraged to dress as a wizard or your favourite magical character!
You can purchase tickets and find out more about the event here.
A little more about Jabberwock:
Much of my work has been inspired by the literature of Lewis Carroll (I just adore the wit, language and characters!), and so when I was approached to write a piece for the Fellows for a family concert, the Jabberwock immediately sprang to mind. Jabberwock takes inspiration from Carroll’s nonsense poem ‘Jabberwocky’ from the second Alice novel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). A fictitious, fearsome creature, the Jabberwock is equal parts scary and silly, dramatic and whimsical.
Knowing that the piece would appear alongside the Sorcerer’s Apprentice influenced some of the creative decisions I made, particularly the inclusion of chanting and spoken word, which I intended to be spell-like, or perhaps even cast by the apprentice himself. I had a lot of fun experimenting with Carroll’s text; I cut up, rearranged and added to the original text to create a type of mosaic effect, finding new rhymes and rhythms. The double bass plays the role of a narrator throughout, and the string section try out their rapping chops! The lowest instrument of each family, contrabassoon, trombone, and double bass, are prominent in the piece, and they could be seen as the collective ‘voice’ of the Jabberwock.
The piece begins with the shriek of bowed cymbal (which recurs at various stages throughout), followed by a spell-like chant to conjure up the Jabberwock and call him forth from his natural habitat, the ‘tulgey wood’. After this introduction, I see the piece as being split into three main sections. The first features the Jabberwock in mischief-mode, as he runs rampant, frightening other fantastical creatures, including ‘raths’ – green pigs (as Humpty Dumpty kindly tells Alice), ‘borogroves’ – shabby-looking birds with a mop-like appearance, and ‘toves’- a cross between a badger, a lizard and a corkscrew. The second section (you can listen out for the dramatic tempo change) sees the hunting and capture of the Jabberwock. The wind and brass shout out in fury, and the strings stomp their feet, before unravelling into several celebratory passages, including a hymn-like brass soli, and triumphant horn and violin solos, all rejoicing in the slaying of the Jabberwock.
The final section begins with another chant, recalling the beginning, yet wonders whether the Jabberwock was that monstrous after all – were his ‘claws that catch’ and ‘jaws that bite’ only a myth? Was the Jabberwock all bark and no…bite? Was there another more fearsome predator – the frumious Bandersnatch? Here I take some liberties with the original poem’s story, and the following bars see the Jabberwock have the last laugh and his final hurrah in a joyous (perhaps even ‘frabjous’) extended outro. In this way, the structure of Jabberwock is somewhat ‘choose your own adventure’, and this is reflected in the style of the piece, which celebrates stylistic juxtapositions and is my own amalgam of jazz, rock, metal, pop, and classical influences.
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The Sound Collectors (Louise Devenish and Leah Scholes) will give the Australian premiere of my percussion duo Tweedledrum on July 17 in Perth, alongside works by De Mey, Davidson, Applebaum, Hope, and Vickery. More information about the the concert can be found here.
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If you're interested in hearing and supporting early-career Australian composers, be sure to check out Making Waves, a new initiative curated by composers Lisa Cheney and Peggy Polias. An hour long playlist is released each month based on a theme. My Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax is featured on the latest playlist, 'Boundary-crossing Waves', alongside works by Jessica Wells, Amber Hansen, Alice Humphries, Andrew Batt-Rawden, Erik Griswold, Michael A. Bakrnčev, Antonia Zappia, and Catherine Likhuta.
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