BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
For an emerging composer, the opportunity to have your music heard by every person walking through Arts Centre Melbourne sounds pretty exciting.
It’s no wonder this opportunity takes the form of an award-winning mentorship program. It shines the spotlight on five Victorian composers, records their original works, and broadcasts them to the public.
(Appropriately summarised as “awesome”, don’t you think?)
The program, titled 5x5x5, this year sees Imogen Cygler, Jessamie Kaitler, Alexander Owens, Daniel Riley, and Timothy Mallis learn and work with artistic director and renowned composer Calvin Bowman. Their compositions were workshopped before being recorded at ABC Studios Southbank (with Calvin himself on piano).
When you’re one of the thousands who will take a stroll between Hamer Hall and the ACM Spire in July, you’ll get to listen to the results.
(Or, if you’re eager, you can listen online, too.)
In this story, these five composers introduce their works, tell us about the mentorship process, and shed light on what they hope to achieve when you tune in.
Imogen Cygler
My piece Beyond the Sound for 5x5x5 aims to provide a warm soundtrack to the cold Melbourne winter. It invites listeners to look up from their phones, engage their senses, and to interact with their surrounding environment.
The piece references some of the sites in the beautiful area that is a major hub of arts and culture in Melbourne. It is called Beyond the Sound, as I want to invite listeners to listen to those that may not have a loud or dominant voice, to listen beyond the noise, and to be kind to each other. I think that there is a lot of yelling going on globally at the moment, and we need to be compassionate and listen to each other. This message is also prominent in the nature of the music. When people by chance walk past when the piece is playing, they kind of have it forced upon them, so I wanted to make it gentle for the audience and invite them to listen in, rather than demand the listen.
I’ve felt so at home and comfortable in such a warm and welcoming environment [through this program]. The mentoring process allowed me to explore my craft whilst being encouraged, inspired, and supported by musicians and composers that I really admire.
It’s feels very special! Growing up in Melbourne, I have attended concerts at Hamer Hall and the Arts Centre for as long as I can remember. I also studied at the Victorian College of the Arts, so walked between Hamer Hall and the Spire building daily for four years. I feel very honoured and humbled to have the opportunity to have my voice heard in a place that I really love and have a special connection to.
Timothy Mallis
Soapbox has used text by the brilliant Morgan Rose, which has been turned into a work for soprano and piano. It has the elements of a theatrical cabaret, with moments of more traditional art song. There were a number of compositional methods used, too: sitting at the piano, singing around the house, and even just going for a walk! It has certainly been a difficult process to give the text justice.
Working with Calvin and ACM has been an absolute privilege. It has really highlighted the importance of nurturing local young composers. It has also been wonderful to meet fellow composers who, despite not being in direct contact [with each other] while composing, seem to have the same drive and energy go into their work.
It has also been heart-warming to see that there has been a focus on providing equal opportunities across gender – rather appropriate given the feminist nature of Morgan’s text!
It means a huge deal that a location with such high foot traffic is the setting for Soapbox. It means that public spaces provide a medium for which anyone – not just concertgoers – can have a little art in their lives. This is something that excites me as an artist!
Jessamie Kaitler
When I first received the text [that features in my composition The Dream is Not Yet Realised], I was stuck by the wide range of themes highlighting an overall social consciousness that is quite provoking. There is also an innate poetic nature to the text, which I wanted to retain. For these reasons, I chose to deliver the text as spoken word.
In composing for the ensemble, I wanted to create a mental image of a journey that moves and grows with the text, matching its moments of power and inquisitiveness.
I thoroughly enjoy composing in odd time signatures. Composing this piece in 11/8 (or 4/4 + 3/8) opened up a lot of thematic possibilities to reflect those moments within the text. The piano is the stable component throughout, whilst violin, cello, and clarinet/bass clarinet embellish fragmented melodies.
It was a fantastic experience receiving guidance from Calvin and ACM. I had two sessions with Calvin: one early in the process, and the other just before the deadline. He gave very helpful suggestions regarding thematic development, where and how to add variation to avoid the texture becoming stagnant, and some great advice on clarifying notation. He also performed the piano part, so it was great being able to show him the concept before hand-in!
The staff at ACM, notably [creative producer] Joshua Cowie and Tim Hassall, have been immensely supportive, offering advice and ideas and encouraging our growth during the entire process.
It’s incredibly exciting to know that my piece will be heard by hundreds of people each day, and I’m interested to see people’s reactions to our varying works!
I feel privileged to be able to contribute to the vibrant Melbourne arts scene. It’s encouraging, and I feel lucky to have had this opportunity with Arts Centre Melbourne.
Daniel Riley
Chi Vu’s [writing] explores a lot of gothic and magic-realist themes, and this text was no different with an intriguing short story playing on the sense of déjà vu. My task therefore was to leave enough musical clues [in my piece Recognition] to convey the atmosphere without getting in the way of the narrative. There are a lot words to get through, after all – about 50 per minute!
I ended up taking a leaf out of the Arvo Pärt manual with sustained bell-like harmonies underpinning the text delivery. Though, the result is quite subversive, if anything, since the vocal part is quite operatic and recitative-like in style.
Calvin is one of the few composers in this country I hadn’t yet worked with one-on-one before this project, so it was nice to tick off that particular bucket-list item and discuss the various intricacies of vocal writing in greater detail! Arts Centre Melbourne has also been a pleasure to collaborate with – especially the level of trust they’ve allowed me, to follow my musical instincts during the recording sessions.
I hope I’ve managed to convey the essence of the text, and that the public takes the opportunity to engage with its themes. Whether it resonates or not with everyone, however, is not for me to say!
Alexander Owens
I was thrilled to be selected for the 5x5x5 project earlier this year, and it’s been an incredible process from start to end.
My work I Have, with a complicated and intense text by Amelia Evans, looks at identity and the lack thereof provided by the modern world. Amelia’s text brilliantly dives from a narrator into several different characters, each living flawed, human lives.
As a classical vocalist as well as composer, storytelling is incredibly important to all sides of my music-making, which helped this text really resonate with me. Using a mixture of recitative delivery and more structured, metric sections, the identities are laid bare, and the flaws forgiven as a part of the human condition. There’s a moment at the end of Amelia’s text where this sense of forgiveness and understanding rings clear, and I’ve used the music to reinforce that moment of understanding, where everything comes together and is ok, if not quite resolved.
Given my interest in art song as a composer and vocalist, it was very humbling to be able to work with Calvin, an icon in the Australian song scene. […] What was especially exciting about this project was the recording process, which all the composers were invited to take observe and contribute to. We were privileged to have Calvin not only as mentor but pianist on the recordings as well; and the instrumentalists in the room were equally brilliant. With all five pieces being recorded on the one day, all of the composers were able to hear each other’s works, and there was definitely a lot of talent in the room.
I’m really excited to be able to share my music with 100,000 people, and the impact that sharing my music and the story of the text can have across that scale. This venue of the public walkway between Hamer Hall and the Arts Centre proper is like nothing I’ve had my music performed in before: completely open to the public, and essentially background to the world as people move by. I’m hoping that the music will capture people’s attention so that they can focus on the text and Amelia’s powerful text, and get people interested in music that might be a bit different from what they’re usually used to hearing.
Find out more about 5x5x5 on the Arts Centre Melbourne website. These compositions will be played intermittently from 8.30am-10.15pm throughout July.
Images supplied
