Name: Percussion Ensemble (2010) by Alexander Hunter in Temporal Waves (July 2017)
Duration: 8 min 41 s
Description: Percussion Ensemble (2010) premiered by the Australian National University New Music Ensemble and Uncut Percussion, June 2014

This month we’re so pleased to have another current Making Waves Intern, Mark Wolf @markwolfcomposer, guest-curate the playlist. About the Temporal theme, Mark writes:

    “Whether gripped by the unfolding drama of a new novel, or immersed in the onscreen action of an epic film, or even stimulated by listening to an engaging piece of music, have you ever enjoyed the experience of an effortless concentration so deep that you lose your sense of time?

    The works featured in this playlist all exhibit a paradoxical timeless quality. Each composition is connected with a temporal process, varying in nature from structured improvisation, ‘mobile moment form’ and slowly evolving spectrums of sound, all supporting temporal independence and ensemble freedom. Temporal manipulation is also observed through the exaggeration, expansion and fragmentation of musical time and events influenced by the natural world and architectural spatial design. These pieces are all in some way temporally ambiguous, successful in challenging the listeners’ perception of chronometric time.

The Making Waves team were especially delighted when Mark and Marlene touched base with their playlists to find that the music in both sets covered Space and Time!  Many thanks to Mark for his curatorial input this month: you can find out more about Mark here: https://makingwavesnewmusic.com/composers/mark-wolf/

Temporal Waves (July 2017)

Performed by Toni Berg and Akito Goto, Guildhall School of Music and Drama

they, who fly with wings of glass

Electroacoustic work, composed in 2010 for Korean taegum player, HYELIM KIM; who also provided recordings of her voice telling a dream. Korean-Australian singer and pianist DAMI IM provided her reading of the Korean names of the 'hwa tu' cards game.

Hwatu, Steps and Decks

Percussion Ensemble (2010) premiered by the Australian National University New Music Ensemble and Uncut Percussion, June 2014 

Percussion Ensemble (2010)

Fluttertalks is scored for open instrumentation. Through a structured improvisatory style, it explores the inherency of communication and mutual collaboration in the natural world.

Recorded live 27/10/15
Flutes: Shaun Barlow, Henry Liang and Angus McPherson
Clarinets: Solomon Frank, Benjamin Samuels and Yinnie Yip

Fluttertalks

Skulls was written for Jesse Langen and Ben Melsky who premiered it on January 23, 2016 at Elastic Arts in Chicago. This is a live recording of that performance.

Skulls for harp and guitar

A compilation of multiple samples of my accordions broken at different times throughout the past year. Focusing on showing unaltered acoustic sounds. And majority of the samples were recorded a few minutes at a time of improvised passages.

I was not expecting these sounds to come out! :D

Severed Gizmo

Unravelling Graphite is a slowly evolving spectrum of sound. From the first sketches in late 2014 to finally having to stop myself from further editing in mid 2016, this piece has an unusual biographical nature, a ‘natural’ development resulting in material dictated by an accumulation 20 months worth of compositional whims. The outcome of this has been a work in which material is morphed and twisted, quickly collapses, slowly rebuilt, forevermore transformed. 
The accompanying image is a visual representation of the piece which I sketched during some frustrating days midway through composing.  

Unravelling Graphite was commissioned by the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University as part of the 2014 Silver Harris & Jeff Peck Composition Prize. 

Performed and premiered by the Kurilpa String Quartet (Graeme Jennings, Brendan Joyce, Yoko Okayasu, and Katherine Philp)

Unravelling Graphite (2014-2016)

Composed by Chloë Hobbs, recorded by Ensemble Offspring, 2016.

Delphic (2016)

Ballroom Battle

Making Waves is a monthly series of curated playlists streaming one hour of quality, new composed music.  Founded in 2015, Making Waves shines a spotlight on the music of Australian composers. Fresh playlists are released on the first day of each month and older playlists are made available all year round via our archives; perfect for those with just a few minutes to explore one track or for hours perusing a myriad of diverse sound-worlds.


The project offers wider exposure to emerging composers, their music and the talented performers who champion it. We also provide an easy-to-access platform for listeners to sit back and enjoy a curated hour of exciting new music or explore our living composers more actively.  The playlist themes (and media through which they’re shared eg. Soundcloud, YouTube) evolve each month depending on the content received directly from our talented composers.

At its core Making Waves is a curated listening space. In 2016 we branched into producing our own content through a special project, Making Conversation, thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign. Making Conversation: Australian Composers Project is a series of podcasts and vodcasts presenting the human side of living Australian composers, released on popular audiovisual and social platforms mid-2017.
Composers Lisa Cheney (Melbourne) and Peggy Polias (Sydney) are curating this project.

 Listeners, we encourage you to explore current and past playlists and discover more about our featured composers. 

Composers, we encourage you to send us links to your streamable audio via our website. Visit: www.makingwavesnewmusic.com for more information.

Dr Alexander Hunter is a composer with Scottish, German and Red River Métis heritage.

 

He is currently working as the Composition Convenor and Undergraduate Convenor at the Australian National University School of Music on unceded Ngunawal and Ngambri Country.

 

Hunter studied composition, double bass, viola da gamba and ethnomusicology at Northern Illinois University, and received a PhD in composition from Edinburgh Napier University. In 2014 he relocated to Canberra to take up a lecturing position at the Australian National University School of Music. He has taught composition, music journalism, multimedia performance, theory and history, founded the ANU New Music Ensemble and Experimental Music Studio, and co-founded the ANU Laptop Ensemble (LENS).

 

His work as a composer is based on open works, which encourage a fluid relationship between composer, score and performer. As a composer Hunter has worked with the following performers/ensembles: Mabel Kwan (Chicago), the Quiet Music Ensemble (Cork), Pesedjet (members of Chicago-based Ensemble Dal Niente), the Chimera Ensemble (York), the Edinburgh Quartet (Edinburgh), Scottish Voices (Glasgow), ensemble a.pe.ri.od.ic (Chicago) and others.

​

Hunter’s current performance-led research is based on collaborative multimedia works, most recently with visual artists Mike Parr, Martyn Jolly, Ngaio Fitzpatrick, Andrew Quinn, John Carolan and Janet Meaney; and dancers Jack Riley and Liz Lea. He is also half of the electronic music duo 'Andromeda is Coming...' with Charles Martin.

​

As a researcher his work has been focused on the music of the New York School; reductionist improvisers and other improvisers and improvisation ensembles; the writings of Rob Haskins and Jonathan D. Kramer; feminism, anarchism and leftist politics in composition and performance; open musical forms and notation; and cross-disciplinary models of tertiary arts education.

Percussion Ensemble (2010)

Alexander Hunter

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