After a year of trying to organise rehearsals and recording in the midst of Covid lockdowns, we finally managed to get it done! This piece was written for my partner at our 2 year anniversary, and I'm so glad that we were finally able to bring it to life. I am incredibly grateful to all of my performers for the amount of time they put in to putting this together despite numerous challenges, and am especially grateful to Nick Lazzara and Daniel Parr for mixing/recording the piece as well!

In this recording, the performers are:

Flute - Zoe Grundy
Clarinet/Bass Clarinet - Jay Sun
Alto/Bari Sax - Ben Singh
Piano - Amy Broeksteeg
Guitar - Amber Barbie
Bass Guitar - Nick Lazzara
Violin 1 - Alice Arakane
Violin 2 - Noa Abrahams
Viola - Seb Coyne
Cello - Chiara Kelle

I cannot thank you all enough! Special thanks also to Sean Quinn and Mira Stephens for helping early on, as well as John Collins for allowing me to record at my old school.

That Which Is

Movement 5 from 'Dance Suite' for Viola and Piano :)

Gigue

Music for "//comand_shift ^break", a 2023 contemporary dance work created by Rena Sangawa and Char Lee where three simulated entities discover their agency together and rebel against their commands.

//COMMAND_SHIFT^BREAK

Just a quick piece of ambient music I made that could potentially be used in a video game. Enjoy!

Copyright 2017 J. van de Ven

Aquarium

Hab u seen it?

Boopy Ska - Loopy Doopy

An orchestrated version of a friend's grandfather's melody completed for his 80th birthday!

Where Have You Gone?

My fanfare written for the 2017 Artology Fanfare Competition and recorded by the Australian Youth Orchestra!

Fanfare for the Modern World

'chorus of the apocalypse' (2020), a multi-channeled work of around 4 minutes is a retelling of its precursory work 'voice of the apocalypse', which features as the initial foundation of how the work came to be. Using a variety of bottles, pots, and wooden objects, the work envisages a post-apocalyptic soundwalk through 3 locations, each of which are dreamily bled into one another. The 8-channels of sound intertwine to form a barrage of collapsing, reverberating echoes of vocal quality, with a distant and sinister humming, as well as swirling sounds of “intruders” overhead. This term “intruders” is left to the listener to imagine – are these intruders fictional or something of human means? Further exploration in the second “tableaux” is the semantic of the term “concrète” relative to the drain-pipe but also in relation to the concept of 'musique concrète' and how it is constructed.
This is a 2-channel edition of the work - if you have interest in presenting a multi-channeled version (up to 8 channels) please contact me directly.
Image: 'Retina: Obscured City' (2020) Sean X. QUINN (c)

chorus of the apocalypse - stereophonic fixed media

Performed by the amazing Kate Pengelly and Amy Broeksteeg.

Dedicated to Alan and Kellie Hull on their wedding day.

Sway

An aspiring teenage composer from Melbourne, specialising in orchestral, chamber, and solo contemporary classical composition.

Sway

Josh van de Ven

Related tracks