Harmonic Waves

Special track recorded for the "Say Yes to Love" Volume 2 compilation album in support of Australian Marriage Equality. Recorded at Vienna People Studios by Michael McGlynn and featuring Ellen Kirkwood on trumpet

Rainbow Sombrero

This is a live performance from the 3MBS Performer of the Year Awards at the Australian National Academy of Music.

Gypsy Trio is a fiery piece that uses Gypsy scales and syncopated rhythms. It is filled with rhapsodic virtuoso passages which help to build the work to a climactic end. 

Gypsy Trio

Young and Wandering is about a journey that doesn't travel from start to end. It is an aimless wander, enjoying the beauty in resonant sounds. The piece celebrates the timbral differences and similarities amongst the jazz quartet, in ways not often explored with these instruments. 

Alto saxophone - Holly Moore 
Piano - Selene Messinis 
Double bass - Isaac Gunnoo 
Drum kit - Maddison Carter

Young and wandering

The wonderful Flinders Quartet premiered this piece along with my other work "Exhale" in concert in Melbourne, December 2017. Originally written for the Goldner String Quartet, "The Rose that Wept" pays homage to the dark, Hans-Chrisitian-Andersen type films of my childhood.

"The Rose That Wept" - Live By The Flinders Quartet

Rising Tide is a section from my 1 hour suite for Sirens Big Band, entitled [A]part. It expresses my feelings on climate change; its sheer enormity and devastation, my fear that it is unstoppable, and heartache for our beautiful planet. This is a live recording by the ABC, from the 2017 Freedman Jazz Fellowships, in which I was a finalist. Performed by Sirens Big Band, mixed by Matthew Stuart.
The album recording of the full [A]part suite, which Rising Tide is only a small part of, is available here - https://ellenkirkwood.bandcamp.com/releases

Rising Tide

Premiere performance by DR VokalEnsemblet for Pulsar Festival 2019. 

In emptiness we speak
.
.
.

Speak

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.

I'm Ellen Kirkwood; composer, trumpeter, bandleader and teacher. This channel includes compositions of mine performed by Captain Kirkwood and The Mieville Project, as well as other stuff I've done and recordings I like. Please check out my band Fat Yahoozah's page on Soundcloud too! 

Rising Tide

Ellen Kirkwood

Recent comments

Eamon Dilworth

Related tracks