BY MYLES OAKEY, 2016 CUTCOMMON YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR
They’re so tall, you can only sense their grandeur. Only their narrow trunks fit into view; the canopy overhead, and the roots hidden beneath the wild forest floor.
This is Sue Needham’s Forest, the artwork of inspiration for James Mountain’s composition Between Tall Trees – winner of the Matt Wither’s Australian Music Competition for 2016 and Emerging Composer Under 25 Award.
The competition required all entrants to compose a piece for solo classical guitar in response to Needham’s watercolour landscape; James had his interpretation and title before his first notes.
“I thought to myself: ‘Maybe I can write a piece about what you can’t see in the painting. What if the guitar and the painting worked together to give us a picture of the forest?’. So I decided to write the music based on animals that I imagined could be in the forest,” James says.
“A lot of the themes represent not specific animals, but different sizes of animals – in a kind of cute way.”
On November 13, James will have his idea realised when his work Between Tall Trees is performed beside Needham’s Forest in an intimate concert given by Matt Withers at the National Arboretum Canberra.
“As an aspiring composer, the most exciting thing about the whole process and whole competition is that my piece will be performed by someone of Matt’s calibre. It’s an unreal situation that I haven’t fully got my head around.”
James’ composition will feature along with those of other competition finalists Kirsten Milenko and Mitchell Newton, as well as a new work by Australian composer and Senior Lecturer in Composition at the University of Queensland Dr. Robert Davidson – also a judge on the competition’s panel.
In selecting James’ piece, Davidson commented, “excellent counterpoint, effective and very idiomatic guitar writing, clear conception, strong melody and harmonic direction. Engaging throughout”.
What’s more impressive is that James likely composed much of this work while you and I were sleeping – and while Ross and Rachel were getting back together.
“I’m most productive about 11pm, so I’ll work till 2 or 3am. That’s when most of my best work comes through. I don’t need absolute silence either; recently I’ve been re-watching Friends,” James laughs.
Although that might not sound like some popular imagination of ‘the composer’, it seems to be working for him.
Having studied classical guitar with John Couch since the second grade, and with every intention of becoming a performer, James tells us about the moment that changed it all for him in his final years of high school.
“Two of my mates are filmmakers, and were entering one of their films in to a competition. Because of the copyright laws, they couldn’t use the music they originally chose for the film. They had about four hours to enter this film before the cut-off; and so I got a phone call asking if I could make the most basic soundtrack for this five-minute film.
“I was under this immense pressure to write, record, and edit. I did it in four hours and sent it back. It was the most terrifying, but also exhilarating experience I’d had in music. And that’s the moment I decided I wanted to be a composer.”
Now a composition student at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, James has moved from the tiny town of Googong near Canberra to study under Head of Composition Stuart Greenbaum. James is a part of a passionate and collaborative culture at the conservatorium, especially between student performers and composers. It’s a place where James has been able to test out ideas written for various genres and instrumentation, from string quartet to musical theatre, and take every opportunity that comes his way.
“I think Matt Withers’ competition, and others like it, are incredibly important in the evolution and continuation of Australian music, especially for young composers. Because without performers willing to play new music, composers have no way to get their music heard.”
Beneficial for the performers of contemporary music, too. Matt Withers tells us James’ work “has been a joy to learn and I am positive it will be an audience favourite in concert on November 13”.
On selecting the winning composition Matt said: “Mountain’s work was a clear standout because it is written incredibly guitaristically, and the harmonies and melodies are very exciting”.
Matt Withers Australian Music Composition Competition 2016 winners include James Mountain (first place), Kirsten Milenko (second place), Mitchell Newton (third place). The composition was open to all Australian composers to submit a work for solo guitar inspired by artwork Forest by Sue Needham. The winning works will be performed at Music With a View at the National Arboretum, Canberra on Sunday November 13 at 1.30pm. Book online now.
The Committed CutCommon subscribers will receive a discount when booking this event.
Images supplied.
