Category: performance videos

A Wiko Year in Berlin

(long newsletter post…) My year as composer-in-residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Studies) or ‘Wiko’, has recently come to a close (1 Sept 2021-30 June 2022). This is a residency like no other in which the ‘obligations’ comprise attending 4 lunches and a dinner during the week and giving a talk to ...

Videos in pandemic-times

One emergent positive amongst the many negative impacts on the arts in these pandemic times has been the opening up of access to concerts and festival events from all over the world (as long as one has a good internet connection). In the past weeks, I’ve been able to catch fresh premieres from the 2021 ...

Miscellany: recent music & talks

I gave a keynote talk for a conference at Sydney Conservatorium of Music in September called ‘How to make a woodblock sing (using composition to experiment with thought)’. Eugene Ughetti performed the said woodblock piece, a 15 minute solo called ‘An Elemental Thing’ (2017) and the video is set to start at that point in ...

Time, possession & ventriloquism in my operas

I recently participated in a very stimulating workshop on opera, ‘Sound & Story’, convened by the composer Hans Thomalla and held at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 28-29 June 2017. Here’s my talk text (long read – who knew that the scroll format would come back into vogue after all these centuries…) The Future-present-past voice: possession ...

My exhale is your inhale

It’s been a lovely harvest September with two premieres of my music. What a privilege to hear and see Séverine Ballon weave her magic in An ocean beyond earth and to work with the equally magical Wu Wei and ELISION on How Forests think. I’m hearing a music which I think has a different approach to form than in ...

Video of ‘The Navigator’ opera online

The full video documentation of my opera The Navigator (2008), libretto by Patricia Sykes, now appears on the Institute of Musical Research (University of London) website as part of their ‘New Music Insight’ series.  The video was filmed in the Judith Wright Centre just prior to the premiere in Brisbane in July 2008 with the ...