Welcome to ‘Small Ensemble Waves’, our celebration of new Australian music being written for small forces in abundance. In some ways we’re going back to where it all started (Playlist 1: Chamber Waves January 2015), with another chamber music playlist.  This time we’ve kept to quite small ensembles, of 3-6 acoustic instruments.  When we were considering chamber music for inclusion in this playlist, we distinguished between works written for uniform or homogenous ensembles, of instruments from one family (string quartet, clarinet trio, brass quintet), and works written for mixed chamber configurations, with a wide spectrum of tone colour. The playlist here includes works from both groups. We hope that you enjoy!

Small Ensemble Waves - March 2016

International Women's Day 2016 Playlist

international womens day

Listen back to all the Soundcloud recordings featured during 2016 on Making Waves playlists.

2016 Waves

International Women's Day 2017

International Women's Day 2018

International Women's Day 2019

This is from 2010 - commissioned and performed by Eclectica Trio (Amanda Lovelock, Anna Coleman and Charise Altmann).
The clarinets take on the role of storyteller for this piece – they growl like a wolf, squeal like a pig, and huff-and-puff with increasing vigour to blow the house down. Unfortunately, they do it all in the wrong language (“this contemporary music just sounds like random notes to me!”). Will you still be able to follow the story? Don’t stress, it all ends happily ever after.

The Three Little Pigs

String Quartet No. 2 in E minor by Connor D'Netto
recorded live @ MICMC 2015 - 18 Jul 2015

Winner of the Australian New Works Award, presented by Chamber Music Australia

Performed by the Noga Quartet, winner of the 7th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition

String Quartet No. 2 in E minor - live @ MICMC 2015

Commissioned by the Silo Collective and performed by the Enigma Quartet, this is my recording of the world premiere performance of my String Quartet, "The First Movement" on November 17, 2015. 

String Quartet: The First Movement [Live recording]

Taken from my debut LP "Ichiru".

Stream/Buy the full album (12 tracks LP)-(CD/Digital): 
Bandcamp : modernarecords.bandcamp.com/album/ichiru
iTunes : itunes.apple.com/ca/album/ichiru/id1198539909
Spotify : open.spotify.com/album/4rVHa8DsyPyT12IMpdSQOL

written and recorded by daigo hanada

Ichiru

Buy CD/Digital

And This Is How It Ends

Minimalist saxophone quartet recorded at Melba Hall at the University of Melbourne. 
The Jive is a lively piece in three sections. It employs minimalist techniques such as canon, adding rhythmic cells, cross-fading, resulting patterns and mensuration canon. Some of these techniques are used more freely than in strict minimalism. I experimented with different canonic textures and the resulting patterns created when shifting motives between the different saxophones. Motives in rhythmic unison as well as cross-rhythms are explored in the last part of the piece. Dynamic swells and funky rhythms make The Jive somewhat unpredictable…

The Jive

I. Suddenly for soprano, flute, and piano (A. Mellos 2014)
Madeline Cain, soprano; Daniel Pesca, piano; Caroline Sonett, flute
Live recording, November 12, 2014 Kilbourn Hall, The Eastman School of Music


I. Suddenly from 'Three Poems of Yannis Ritsos' - for soprano, flute, and piano

Levitas was written with the aim of inspiring and uplifting its audience. It's themes and harmonies are easily accessible to a wide range of listeners, and it was a thrill as well as a challenge to infuse this piece with enthusiasm and zest for life. 



Levitas for Brass Quintet

Opening section of work Chromoson - an immersive audio-visual experience

Chromoson

Jassa Joint

For Lyn Fuller, Premiered at the Canberra International Music Festival, May 5th 2016. Commissioned by the National Capital Authority.
MOON FIRE is inspired by a famous tale about a Belgian cathedral tower. Legend has it that on January 27th, 1687, in the town of Mechelen, a local looked up at St Rumbold’s tower and perceived it to be on fire. The townsfolk called the alarm and ascended the tower with buckets of water and anything they could muster to extinguish the blaze. Upon reaching the top of the tower it was discovered that there was no fire, but the blood red moon shining through the fog had created a mirage! Hence the Mechlians were jokingly referred to as Maneblussers (“Moon Extinguishers”) and even named a local beer after the legend.
Rather than the joke, my piece is inspired by the imagery of the blood moon, shining through the fog to create a sensation of an eerie sky lit by vaporous flames. Alarm bells are heard, and a panic of the people, but descends into an eerie fog-like mystical trance. The power of the moon could be perceived as dangerous, volatile, rather than benign.
Having lived in Belgium for a year, I wanted to dedicate this work to the Belgians who have had to face terror this year in Brussels airport and train station. May they always gather in strength to fight their fires.

Moon Fire for Carillon and Electronic Track

Marlēné Claudine Radice is a Sydney sound designer and composer who specialises in notated electroacoustic composition. Previously, she has performed and recorded with the Sonic.Art Quartet, COUP Melbourne, Feminatronic and as one half of electronic duo Erwartung. Marlēné's has been commissioned as a sound designer and composer for Canberra’s National Museum of Australia in 2017 and Questacon in 2013.

Marlēné's soundtrack, titled 'Retrograde', connectedly explores abstract sounds and planetary motion. Read her description of the piece: 

"Retrograde motion references the movement of anything outside of the earths atmosphere that runs in a counter motion to the spin of the planet it orbits. In this soundtrack I wanted to experiment with how music made entirely out of reversed audio samples would be interpreted by a listener. The music is inherently unsettling as while we listen to sounds which are in reverse we cannot help but attempt to create meaning and order from sound that has been abstracted from its original form. " - Marlēné Claudine Radice

EHE 20.10.16 - Marlēné Claudine Radice (SYD) - Retrograde

@2016 
Performed by the Briar String Quartet (Matthew Rigby- Violin 1, Navin Gulavita- Violin 2, Georgia Stibbard- Viola, Sage Fuller- Cello) 
Premiered at the Composer's Concert, St Stephen's Church Richmond, Victoria

Recorded at Sing Sing Studios, South Yarra, Victoria
Engineer: Aaron Dobos 

I always heard the phrase ‘The first step is always the hardest’.
Beginnings spark a potential energy, waiting to burst out. The endless possibility and avenues a road can lead is enthralling; blossoming new and dynamic waves. It’s exhilarating, yet restrained, not knowing where the road leads or how it will end.

This piece is my first step.

String Quartet No. 1 - "First"

What is 'space'? Where is 'nohwere'? How do we understand these concepts? How do we cultivate 'nowhere' and 'space'? These are questions that I considered when approaching this work. Into Ethereal Space responds to the exhibition title 'Nowhere=Space' by exploring contrasting peaceful, meditative sections and flurried rhythmic sections. This piece invites you to enter into a space of contrasts and to explore, contemplate and consider what 'nowhere' and 'space' might mean.

This piece was commissioned for the opening of 'Nowhere=Space' at 107 Projects. This is a live recording of the premiere performance, 11 July 2018.
Performed by Quart-Ed: Caitlin Sandiford, Sarah Qiu, David Tocknell and Karen Cortez.

July 2018.

Inside the Mosaic

Into Ethereal Space

for two flutes, percussion, piano
Music X, Blonay, Switzerland
July 2010
Timothy Munro and Pethrus Gardborn, flutes
Jeremy Malvin, percussion
Erika Dohi, piano

These dark notes drifting takes its title from a poem by 9th-century Chinese poet Li Po.  Inspired by a Chinese folk tune, the piece evokes distant flutes, coloured by the sounds that one might hear across a valley at night in the spring.

Spring Night in Lo-Yang hearing a flute
In what house, the jade flute that sends these dark notes drifting,
scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-Yang?
Tonight if we should hear the willow-breaking song,
who could help but long for the gardens of home?

These dark notes drifting

Matthias Bamert
West Australian Symphony Orchestra

This work was commissioned as an education piece, and is
designed to showcase the sections of the orchestra at the circus or at the zoo:
Brass (opening): fanfare, welcome to the circus/zoo;
Woodwinds: the monkeys;
Strings: the trapeze/the swans;
Percussion: lions and tigers;
Tutti, and brass fanfare to end.
The conductor may pause at each new section to introduce the instruments
of the orchestra, or may have the opening few bars of each section of music
played before performing the piece without pause.

Roar!

For solo soprano and SSAATTBB. Commissioned and recorded by The Australian Voices, 2012. Conducted by Gordon Hamilton.

Dedicated to William Duckworth and Jocelyn Wolfe.

Text:
DROUGHT

BY JUDITH WRIGHT

The summer solstice come and gone,
now the dark of the moon comes on.
The raging sun in his pale sky
has drunk the sap of the world dry.
Across the plains the dustwhirls run
and dust has choked the shrivelling tree.

This is my world that dies with me, 
cries the curlew in the night.
I have forgotten how the white
 birdfooted water in the creek
used in spring to call and speak.
All is fallen under the sun
and the world dies that once I made.

The strength that brandished my green blade,
the force uncoiling from the cell,
 drains like water from a wrecked well,
 says the dried out corn of the earth.
The seed I cherished finds no birth.

Now the dark of the world comes on.

Drought (choral)

Title: la grotta azzura (ambient mix)
Date: 2007, 2009 

Description: Ambient mix of 'la grotto azzura' (the blue grotto), originally created for AAIR Radio Ana Capri Remix competition hosted by the London School of Architecture in 2007. All samples utilised in the remix were recorded around the Island of Capri and provided by AAIR. Sound editing and composition/remix performed in Logic Pro.

​Competition judges included Brian Eno (UK) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (JAP/USA).  As there were too many good submissions, AAIR decided to not award only one winner. La grotto azzura was featured first amongst all international submissions published online. Remix Competition site now inactive.

IMAGE CREDIT: 'The Blue Grotto' by late Romantic Painter Heinrich Jakob Fried.

la grotto azzura (ambient mix) - 2009

Clare Strong (née Johnston) is an Australian composer, based in Melbourne.
Clare has composed works for some of Australia’s leading performers and ensembles including: the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the Goldner String Quartet, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Plexus, Claire Edwardes (percussion), Sarah Curro (violin), Stefanie Farrands (viola), Virginia Taylor (flute), Alice Giles (harp) and Louise Johnson (harp). She has completed a Masters as part of the inaugural National Women Composers' Development Program run by the Sydney Conservatorium. 

Clare completed a Bachelor of Music from the University of Melbourne in 2013, where she was awarded the Esther Rofe Award for Composition. In 2015 she won the David Henkels Award for Composition and had her Gypsy Trio performed at the 3MBS Performer of the Year Awards.

In 2015 Clare was selected to participate as a composer in the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat in New Hampshire, USA. She studied with composer Martin Bresnick and had one of her compositions performed by the Wet Ink Ensemble from New York City. Clare was also selected to participate in the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine, USA where she studied with leading American composers and had her works performed and recorded by the Contemporary Ensemble at the festival and the AMF Orchestra.

Clare was chosen as one of four composers at the AYO National Music Camp 2015 where her music was conducted by James Judd and performed by leading international musicians.