BY CHANTAL NGUYEN
We would like to welcome Chantal Nguyen in her first story as a CutCommon contributor!
I’m old school friends with Holly Harrison, who just so happens to have grown into one of Australia’s leading young composers.
This means I can bring you the scoop behind her music making in a way others mightn’t (unless they too witnessed the glory that was Year 7 Music Tour). So before this interview, I gave Holly a ring and asked what she wished interviewers would ask her – but never did.
Holly, now back from her thrice sold-out United States debut (collaborating with genre-bending, amphitheatre-filling Nu Deco Ensemble), gives us a private viewing into her career.
Huge congrats on your US debut with Nu Deco in Miami! Tell us how you got there.
Thanks, Chantal! Nu Deco ran an inaugural call for scores in 2018, their Nu Works Initiative, and I applied with my piece And Whether Pigs Have Wings.
I’d written the work for the Dutch groups Het Gelders Orkest and Orkest de Ereprijs in 2016, with soprano Caroline Cartens. This was the last in a series of Lewis Carroll-inspired works I’d written for Ereprijs, and the name itself is the final line in a stanza from The Walrus and the Carpenter.
Nu Deco selected two winners, Tanner Porter’s Landlord and my And Whether Pigs Have Wings, so off to Miami I would go!
Nu Deco has a history of collaboration and genre-hopping, bringing artists such as Macy Gray and Kimbra into new music. What was it like working with Nu Deco?
It was a wild ride with Nu Deco back in February. […] It was a relaxed, yet high octane, experience. I adapted my original Pigs for the Nu Deco instrumentation, which involved writing new parts for electric guitar, synth and bass – my kind of thing.
I had a lot of fun re-orchestrating the piece with this in mind – though was initially sad to see the saxes go. All of the instruments were reinforced, actually, so it was fantastic to hear amplified winds, brass, and strings with the rhythm section.
Overall, the experience is more like seeing a rock gig, rather than a classical show. [Conductor] Jacomo Bairos has a great energy with the group, which the Miami crowd really responded to – it’s so refreshing to see the audience engage in real time.
There were three performances altogether, which were virtually sold out!
And how has this shaped your take on collaborative music-making?
Ultimately, we don’t make music on our own: it’s a very social thing. There are so many different approaches to and types of collaboration – some which take place early on in the writing process, and others much later.
I learnt more about collaboration watching Nu Deco rehearse Tanner Porter’s Landlord, and work with popstar Tei Shi, than I did from my own. Tanner sang in her own piece, so it was fascinating to see how her vocals intuitively shaped the playing style of the ensemble around her. [Composer] Sam Hyken arranged a bunch of Tei Shi’s songs for the group, and it was equally interesting to see how the original electronic accompaniment transferred to acoustic sounds as it was to watch her reaction as the music unfolded.
It made me reflect on how important it is to feel comfortable with the people you’re working with, to allow for experimentation. Yet, on the flipside, plenty of collaborations take place with people we haven’t met face to face, just yet. Being a composer often requires large stretches of time working alone, and it’s wonderful to break that up and work directly with musicians – lately, I’ve been craving more of that. I consider myself an introvert, and so I don’t always find it easy to engage with new people creatively.
Two of my recent works – Airbender for bassoon and string quartet, and Hotwire for viola and orchestra – are written for specific soloists, bassoonist Matthew Kneale and violist Stefanie Farrands [respectively]. I can’t describe how much fun I had working with Matt on the piece from the get-go, composing something that captures part of his personality and showcases the bassoon’s agility. Even though we didn’t know each other when we began, we’ve since become good friends.
You’ve had great associations with the US. I remember you did compositional stints at California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Missouri’s Mizzou International Composers Festival, and wrote a piece for Chicago’s Eighth Blackbird commissioned by Musica Viva. What’s your view on the US scene for young new music composers, compared to the Australian scene?
I’ve certainly had some fun in the States and they’ve been very kind to me. One of the differences is the sheer size: there are so many more ensembles and literally hundreds of professional orchestras in comparison to Australia, which amounts to generous opportunities for composers in general.
Wind bands or symphonic wind bands are very popular in universities, so there’s a lot of new repertoire being written for these all the time. I’m even arranging an orchestral work of mine, Splinter, for San Jose Wind Ensemble and a consortium at 2020 College Band Directors National Association!
The [summer festival programs for new composers] drew my interest in 2013, when I had only a handful of performances to my name. At the time, I was trying to gain more experience composing, but wasn’t sure how to move forward […] It felt like no-one from the city was interested in playing music by someone from Western Sydney – there was certainly a stigma at the time.
I’d been part of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers’ Program that year, though had difficulty finding something similar to apply for. I remember applying to the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s program and being unsuccessful three years in a row!
I thought I would cast my net a bit wider, and I’m so glad I did, as I discovered the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Composer/Conductor Workshop.
Speaking of geography – a fun fact is that you grew up in New South Wales’ semi-rural Hawkesbury region (with me! Wreaking havoc in the school music block!), remained for university, then chose to base yourself in nearby Penrith as a composer. It’s a common view that living away from the big smoke is an artistic disadvantage, but you’ve always disagreed. Why?
Family and community are very important to me, and it feels right to be here now. Growing up, had we not lived on acreage, it’s safe to say I would never have started playing drums or playing in bands. I can’t imagine how that might have changed my musical language or life trajectory!
I consider where I live to be an important part of my identity: there might not be as many chai lattes and smashed avos, though I enjoy knowing who lives next door.
I think I have the best of both worlds. Ultimately, people make art wherever they are – it makes no sense to me that it would only happen in cities. Art’s for everyone, and I don’t like the idea that it’s created in just a few select pockets.
We also live in a world where so much collaboration happens online, whether via email or Skype, or on the phone – and so it’s never been easier to work with collaborators here, interstate, and overseas. Throw in an Opal card and the Blue Mountains express, and I don’t believe there’s anything holding back an artist from the west!
On top of composing, you’re a keen music educator in the region. You teach improvisation and composition at Western Sydney University, and to the “next gen” of young female composers at MLC School and Caroline Chisolm College (lucky millennials!). Tell us about your approach to music education.
I think how we teach develops as a direct response to how we were taught.
I feel I had an eclectic music education at Western Sydney University, where robust discussions were encouraged and no one type of music was privileged over another, and so I have an instinct to recreate that in some way. I turned out okay, right?
As someone who was making music that didn’t fall neatly under the umbrellas of classical, pop, or jazz, I firmly believe that, had I attended uni elsewhere, I wouldn’t be writing the music that I am now – if at all! The first year of the course re-booted my interest in improvisation. I had some terrific mentors during my time as a student, though the course has changed dramatically since then.
It’s a very different experience being on the other side of it. Above all else, I believe in helping younger people (and sometimes older!) find their creative voice, whatever that might be and no matter our own bias. We can teach the nuts and bolts of composition – how it fits together – though, ultimately, I think it’s really about working out how to voice what they want to say.
I’m still learning this as well, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers.
It’s well-known you’re a drummer and that your drum kit inspires composition. But lesser-known is that, before all the wild percussion and (as I seem to remember from our school days) your parents sourcing mattress-type things as sound blockers, your musical foundation was years of learning trumpet. Tell us how this influenced your creative approach.
I have to correct you there, Chantal – my mum fashioned some DIY sound suppressors for the windows after the neighbours, several hundred metres away, complained that the sound of my band was ‘coming up through the ground’! The bass player’s subwoofer would make the barn-turned-studio walls vibrate quite loudly!
Trumpet was my first instrument, and I started playing in kindergarten. […] My foray into improvisation began with trumpet when I was about 10, when I played in a semi-improvised local theatre production. The music was rather Zappa-esque. I thought it was awesome that I could make up my own parts and change things in the moment, depending on what was happening. In hindsight, this was a formative time for my music-making, but a route I wouldn’t return to for many years.
As I became older, I developed a crippling performance anxiety, which made it very unpleasant to perform notated music, yet I felt quite differently about improvisation – it was much freer. Pursuing this avenue more, playing trumpet and drums in experimental bands, ultimately led me to composition. I started to think about what it might be like to make creative decisions that weren’t confined to my own instrument.
And you play drums in your collaborative experimental rock duo Tabua-Harrison. What’s happening with the duo of late?
It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since our debut album Scout was released on Psychopyjama. It’s available on bright orange vinyl, too.
As you know, the album and all our shows are completely improvised – we opened for W.E.S.T Trio (Felicity Wilcox, John Encarnacao, and Lloyd Swanton) at Foundry 616 a couple of weeks back, which was hugely exciting.
And what do you have planned next that our CutCommon readers can look forward to? Anything involving Nu Deco?
All sorts! My next stop is Hobart with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. I’ve written a viola concertino, Hotwire, for Stefanie Farrands, which is bluegrass-inspired. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Nu Deco-wise, stay tuned for the video recording of my And Whether Pigs Have Wings.
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Images supplied, Nu Deco by Alex Markow.
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