BY THE COMPOSERS
This week, four new Australian works will be premiered by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Brett Kelly will take to the stage for the Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Concert. The event will feature pieces from early-mid career artists Ade Vincent (VIC), Cassie To (NSW), Connor D’Netto (QLD), and Stephen de Filippo (WA).
The four composers come together to tell CutCommon readers what their works are all about, and the personal exploration they’ve taken through their music.
Cassie To
What The Reef means to me
My piece The Reef is an important work to me in terms of my development as a composer, both technically and artistically. The Reef is my first piece for orchestra and although I’ve written for most of the instruments in the ensemble, never have I put them all together. It’s been really fun learning how to balance and blend instruments to create textures and colours that I hadn’t been able to explore previously. Artistically, The Reef expresses my concern and sadness over the ongoing destruction of the Great Barrier Reef. The environment has always been very important to me and recently I have been trying to incorporate an awareness of the issues it faces into my music. To me, The Reef is quite a personal piece, expressing my emotions on the demise of Great Barrier Reef while telling a story of what has been, what is, and what could be.
About Cassie
Cassie To is a Sydney-based composer. She recently completed her Bachelor of Music Composition (Honours) in 2015 at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and this, combined with her personal musical influences, has given her the passion and expertise to compose across different styles and genres. She has composed for a variety of ensembles such as Sydney Youth Orchestra’s String Ensembles (2013), Ensemble Offspring as a selected composer for their Future Retro Concert (2015), and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra as part of their Cybec 21st Century Composers program (2016 – 2017). Cassie’s adaptability and creativity has seen her write scores for short film, advertisements, television and documentaries. Her portfolio currently includes work for Tropfest, ABC, Channel 7, Channel 9 and SBS.
Cassie is a devoted environmentalist and her passion for conservation and telling stories through nature is rippled through her work. In July 2016, she travelled to Alaska to partake in
Composing in the Wilderness – a workshop that involved composing a piece inspired time spent in Denali National Park, which was then premiered at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. This year she is looking forward to performances of her works Avialae by Ensemble Offspring in their Arc Electric Concert, and Ostara’s Equinox by the Adelaide Wind Orchestra.
Support Cassie and explore her scores in our digital music store.
Stephen de Filippo
What Static Anxiety means to me
Conceptually, Static Anxiety attempts to express an anxiousness through the idea of stasis – to express a feeling of discomfort through a lack of motion. This idea is conveyed through detailed alteration of otherwise quite slow moving lines, introduced by the clarinets. This idea is paired against agitated interjections from different instrumental groups within the ensemble of 25, as well as a repetitive pulse which is echoed through the strings, piano, and percussion.
My pieces tend to actualise through the relationships I have with those directly around me. My method of composition usually involves me working closely with individual musicians who frankly, I just want to work with and whose company I enjoy. The pieces tend to form as an interpretation of this interaction – having the relationship inform the creative searching, within the writing process. I feel this is a very holistic and personable method of writing, and this is one of the reasons why my recent output of music is for quite small ensembles – duets, trios – and they explore intimate and conversational-styled relationships within the ensemble. I feel this piece has a similar connection. However, Static Anxiety is more of a construct formed through the relationship with my mentor for the Cybec program, Dominik Karski. I’ve found Dominik to be a calm, thoughtful and detailed influence in my writing. I’m very grateful to have formed a relationship with him through this project, and to continue working with him and his ensemble SoundStorm in 2017, as both a composer and a vocalist.
About Stephen
Stephen de Filippo is a young composer from the regional south-west of Western Australia. Now based in Perth, Stephen is currently completing his honours thesis under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Tonkin and James Ledger – with researching pertaining to the expression of ideology in the works of Richard Barrett.
Stephen’s works detail in articulation, timbre, and texture – working with intimate-sized ensembles to create works which explore conversation interaction between the musicians, expressed in a quasi-improvisationary and open-formed notation style. Recently, Stephen’s music has seen the pairing of amplified and modified instruments with more traditional instrumentation – notably amplified and prepared harpsichord with percussion, and amplified contrabass (using mallet) with trumpet. These pieces bring out the more subtle sounds of the instrument which are normally overlooked in purely acoustic performance.
In addition to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Stephen has premiered works for ensembles including The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, The West Australian Symphony Orchestra, The Australian Youth Orchestras, The University of Western Australia Symphony Orchestra, and OperArt Lab Chamber Symphony (Greece).
Support Stephen and explore his scores and recordings in our digital music store.
Connor D’Netto
What Singular Movement means to me
I didn’t set out with this as the aim, but this piece became a challenge to myself in many ways. I set out to write something more brooding, simply because I hadn’t done that in a while. After starting the work, getting no more than a couple of minutes in, trashing it, starting again, and repeat (x 3), I got to two weeks before a draft was due and I had to leave to go on tour for a week in far northern Queensland. I got back from tour, had a week to go, and the challenge was on. I’m actually really happy with the result – to me the work brings together many aspects of my writing for chamber ensembles in the past and draws it together en-masse.
It’s called Singular Movement, as it all came together around ideas of musical direction and development. Each section of the orchestra is set on its own trajectory – a singular direction and path for the development of its material. For some, it is the slow evolution from sustained drones to sharply agitated rhythm; for others, from back- to foreground; others texture and ephemera to structure. It is a slow, drawn out evolution; there are few points in the work where dramatic change occurs suddenly, however, over its length it traverses vastly contrasting textures and musical ideas.
About Connor
Connor D’Netto is a composer of contemporary classical music, described as “the model contemporary Australian composer” by ABC Classic FM. Throughout his works, Connor balances the quasi-neoclassical with post-minimal influences, combining them with contemporary performance practices, unique one-off concerts and performances, and the delicate incorporation of electronic music elements and production techniques. His music has been widely commissioned and performed by ensembles such the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Camerata of St Johns, and performers such as Karin Schaup and Claire Edwardes. In 2015, Connor won Chamber Music Australia’s Australian New Works Award, with his winning work, String Quartet No. 2 in E minor, becoming the set work of the 7th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition.
Connor is the artistic director of Argo, a contemporary classical music concert series which seeks to create immersive art music experiences bending the boundaries of genre and artform, combining music with everything from live-visuals to ballet, and fostering creative collaborations between artists of various mediums. In September, Connor moves to London to begin his Masters at the Royal College of Music, having completed a Bachelor of Music (Honours) at the University of Queensland in 2016.
Support Connor and explore his scores in our digital music store.
Ade Vincent
What The Secret Motion of Things means to me
My work is called The Secret Motion of Things, and is an exploration of humankind’s march towards the creation of an artificial intelligence that vastly supersedes our own. The title comes from a Francis Bacon novel called New Atlantis, in which he writes of a utopian society that revolves around a research institution called Salomon’s House. The purpose of the institution was to study the ‘knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible’.
The work begins with a vast, expansive opening act that gives way to a surging and driving conclusion. I used the opportunity to explore a range of sounds and extended techniques, many of which I have not attempted before, with the ultimate aim of injecting a sense of wonder into the piece, followed by an urgent, relentless and unstoppable momentum.
About Ade
Ade Vincent is a composer and performer. He fronts and writes music for indie pop band The Tiger & Me, writes art music for the concert hall and music for screen. His music has been heard on television, radio, major music festivals, concert halls and the cinema screen. The Tiger & Me is signed to ABC Music and will release its third album in 2017, which Ade is currently writing and producing. Recent concert music highlights include a commissioned work for Lior and Tinalley String Quartet; and the commercial release of a song cycle setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven.
In 2015, Ade founded Kaleidoscope Audio, an audio company specialising in music and sound for video games, with sound designer Michael Trott. He has a Masters in Composition from The University of Melbourne where he now lectures.
See these four world premieres at the Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers concert, held at the Iwaki Auditorium on January 28. Details online.
Images supplied.
