BY LEAH BLANKENDAAL
West Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth and compositional heavyweight Brett Dean took out the Paul Lowin Prizes on Tuesday evening.
One of the most lucrative awards for composers in the country, the Paul Lowin Prize recognises excellence in the field of orchestral and song cycle composition.
Skipworth’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra took out the Orchestral Prize, worth $25,000, whilst Dean’s And once I played Ophellia for soprano and string quartet won the Song Cycle Prize, worth $15,000.
Skipworth, a first-time Lowin finalist who graduates today from the University of Sydney with a PhD in Composition, says the award was particularly special as it came at a time where his supervisor and mentor Anne Boyd was able to attend.
“It’s really nice that she was there as well, I owe a lot to her bringing me out of my comfort zone and giving me challenges to think about things in different ways,” says Skipworth.
The Paul Lowin Prize is one of a string of accolades for Skipworth’s work. In 2015, it won Performance of the Year in the APRA AMC Art Music Awards, whilst earlier this year it was one of three works taken to the International Rostrum of Composers.
“You never know as a composer which works are going to take off,” explains Skipworth. “But this piece is kind of a line in the sand. I had been trialling things that I felt like I should do, but in this work I just did what I wanted.”
Skipworth credits some of this success to a change in his musical language. “It’s been a rethink to my approach to tonality. I’ve gone a little bit further away from using octatonic scales exclusively and instead utilised tonal undertones,” he explains.
Contributing to the strength of this work is performer Ashley Smith, Head of Winds and Contemporary Performance at the University of Western Australia. Smith, known for his commanding strength and virtuosic range, gave Skipworth license to explore the full range of the instrument knowing he was in good hands.
“People often ask me whether this piece can be performed by someone else and the answer is: ‘Yes, but-‘,” Skipworth laughs.
“I did revise four bars of the climax just before the premier. Previously [Smith] had gone up to a high C#, which is just stratospheric, and I sent him an SMS going: ‘I need it to round off to a D’ and he never replied, so I just put it in. And sure enough, he handled it.”
Ashley Smith will perform works by Skipworth, Feldman and Adams at the final Scale Variable for 2016 on 14 December, presented by Tura New Music. As part of its Composer in Residence program, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra will perform a new orchestral work by Skipworth in its opening concert of 2017, while the WASO Chorus will perform another Skipworth premiere later in the year.
Image supplied.
