BY LILY BRYANT
“You spend all this time working on your piece in your little house, like a bit of a hermit” is how Naomi Dodd humbly describes the creative period leading up to a premiere from one of the country’s top orchestras.
Certainly, musical composition, like any creative art, can be a personal and insular process. But as the 2024 Cybec Young Composer in Residence, Naomi is motivated by how her music might connect with others.
“I do think about engaging with people’s emotions. When I’m writing I think: ‘do I want this part to be really exciting and make people feel energised, or is it meant to feel nostalgic and sad, or longing or reflective, or is it meant to make you sit on the edge of your seat?’”.
Drawn to scribbling down melodies in her own invented notation after starting piano lessons at the age of 8, the young composer is now making a name for herself at home and abroad.
Naomi was awarded the prestigious residency following her acceptance into the MSO’s Cybec Foundation-supported 21st Century Australian Composer’s Program in 2023, and she has already had two major works premiered this year (Cerulean Dances and A Song for the Sleeping).
Her latest work Run will make its debut alongside Akutagawa’s Triptyque for String Orchestra, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No.7 at Hamer Hall in October. The significance for a young composer to have their works performed by world-class musicians to thousands-strong audiences can’t be overstated.
“I’m very grateful to the Cybec Foundation,” Naomi says.
“It’s a fantastic experience because it’s meant I’ve got to write lots of orchestral works in quite a short amount of time, so I’ve been able to improve my skills and hone my craft.”
Even the most established composers might find it intimidating to see their name sandwiched between giants like Shostakovich and Prokofiev on a program, but Naomi is taking it in her stride.
“It’s quite scary writing for a professional orchestra. The first piece I wrote, I remember feeling very nervous. I thought, ‘oh my gosh, it’s a professional orchestra playing my music!’. But since I’ve written more, I have become more confident.
“Every single time I hear an orchestra play my music, it’s just super surreal.”
While musical composition can be a largely solitary pursuit, the transition from score to stage can be where the music finds its creative life force.
Ahead of each premiere, Naomi attends the orchestra’s rehearsals, and works with the musicians and conductor to hone the details of her work.
“I really trust the musicians and the conductor,” she tells me.
“It’s like you pass it over to them and they bring it to life. Sometimes, there’s little things that the musician plays differently to how I might expect, and I like those moments of magic. There are parts which you didn’t realise could sound that good, and there are other parts that you need to sometimes fix a little bit, but it’s just a really rewarding experience.”
This will surely be the case when conductor Benjamin Northey brings down the baton for the first rehearsal of Run. While this work is similarly directed by emotion, it departs from her previous Cybec commissions to a world that’s darker and more fantastical.
“I wanted to write a really dramatic work. I felt like that sort of style was the hole in the three pieces I’d written this year for MSO,” she says.
“I love listening to really epic music. It makes me feel empowered and excited. It’s like when you’re in a safe place and you’re reading a book that might be a bit frightening; frightening things are happening to the characters but it doesn’t make you feel scared.
“I just wanted to write a piece that makes the audience’s heart rate quicken, and creates that sense of empowerment and excitement.”
Musically, Naomi cites Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Holst as inspirations for the work, situating it perfectly in a program of turbulent and stirring 20th-Century Russian music. But keen-eared concertgoers may notice another, slightly more modern musical influence.
“The other thing is that it’s inspired a little bit by dance music, a bit of EDM in there. As I was writing it, I just felt it had this constant pulse throughout. And once you hopped on, it was like it pulled you towards the end.
“There’s a big build and then a bass drop, which I really hope works!”
Naomi’s willingness to seek inspiration from musical genres typically exempt from the label of “high art” speaks to a larger philosophical question facing Australian art music: how do we encourage new audiences to connect with our art form into the future?
Perhaps the simplest answer is to show them who you are, and make them feel something.
“I just try to write from that emotional perspective,” Naomi says.
“You’ve gotta be yourself, so I always just strive to write music that I actually like and I want to write and that I love, and part of that is that emotional connection with listeners and audiences.
“It’s always been innately part of me, just writing music.”
Hear Cybec Young Composer in Residence Naomi Dodd’s world premiere performance of Run on the program, Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, led by conductor Benjamin Northey with musicians from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, 7.30pm October 3 and 7.30pm October 5 in Hamer Hall.
Steven Isserlis (below) will perform the cello concerto.
Images supplied. Isserlis captured by Satoshi Aoyagi.
