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

2016 Waves

The inspiration for Stratus Rising came to me in early 2010 when my family and I stayed at a friend’s house in the Victorian alpine town of Warburton. The house sits on the slope of a big crescent hill, and one early morning I walked out onto the porch and witnessed something truly sublime: the green hill was covered in wispy strands of white clouds slowly climbing their way up the slope to return back to the sky. Moments after seeing this magical sight I sat at my friend’s piano and began writing this composition, though it was not until April 2011 that I finished the work. What I have tried to create here is a piece of music which embodies the dynamic nature of this vision and that region, one which is at times sublimely peaceful against the backdrop of its still, low-lying clouds, and at others equally tumultuous when these very same clouds turn into powerful storms.

Stratus Rising (2011)

Sounds from The Empty City is the original soundtrack to the live and animated theatre production of the same name. Composed and played on ukuleles by David Megarrity and recorded and mixed by Brett Collery, it encompasses everything from meditative electronica to joyful acoustica, and will appeal to lovers of Shugo Tokumaru and Penguin Café Orchestra. Read and see more here: wp.me/p2WRbv-14j

Pavement

Shoelaces and Yo-Yo

Sounds from The Empty City is the original soundtrack to the live and animated theatre production of the same name. Composed and played on ukuleles by David Megarrity and recorded and mixed by Brett Collery, it encompasses everything from meditative electronica to joyful acoustica, and will appeal to lovers of Shugo Tokumaru and Penguin Café Orchestra. Read and see more here: http://wp.me/p2WRbv-14j

Showing Pluck

Lost Property

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

'Two Portraits of One Subject' was written in 2012 at the request of Belgian classical guitarist Trui van Neck. The subject of the title is Robert Schumann. There are references throughout the work to both the man and the music - some more subtle than others.

Two Portraits of One Subject - Paul Ballam-Cross

Premiered by flutist, Guro Petterson at the Royal College of Music, London. 
Received it's Australian premiere by flutist, Kim Tan at the Melbourne Recital Centre.

WOLF, Mark - Hamaroy Troll (2010)

Recorded by Marshall McGuire
Muntu Walunga is a piece influenced by African mythology and the sounds of African thumb-pianos (mbiras - or “lamellaphones” to be precise!). These instruments produce a metallic percussive sound that has little resonance, and the music is typically fast and extremely rhythmic. In the piece the harp is asked to play using certain effects which imitate this sound, and the pitch material is based on six to eight-note cells (typical of the eight-note scales of the African mbiras). The pulse of the rhythmic sections is often in three which is also typical of mbira music.
From the book “African Mythology” by Jan Knappert, I learned that the Bakongo people of Zaire (central Africa) tell a myth of the creation of people:
Nzambi (God) first created Mahungu “Breath”, a human being who was both male and female, and so: Muntu Walunga “The Complete Person”. It had the shape of a palm-tree with two heads. Wooden statuettes show the tree with breasts on one side, with a woman’s head, and on the other side a bearded head, the two coming out of a spathe, like a spadix emerging from a sheaf of a palm-leaf. This double person lived a happy life since it knew no jealousy or hatred, no desire or want. One day Mahungu saw the tree called Muti Mpungu, the tree of the Supreme Being. Mahungu went up to the tree trying to embrace it, but the tree split Muhungu into two equal personalities, who were henceforth called “Lumbu” (Man) and Muzita (Woman). After this event they always wanted to be together and to embrace one another.

Muntu Walunga - solo harp

Tracings for flute and live electronics explores the changing timbral qualities of single notes and the way that this can be combined to create shifting textures. In a way it reveals how simplicity can harness great colouristic potential in regards to sound, but also creates a warm and aesthetic wash of sound.

This piece traces some of the ideas presented in Takemitsu’s article One Sound as well as in his perception of sound: 

The perception of sound, while depending on its strength, duration and pitch, is actually influenced more fundamentally by the characteristic of sound that takes as its composite factors all of these and yet is larger than their sum, that of timbre.

My perception of time in traditional Japanese music
Toru Takemitsu

It explores these ideas in the context of flute and electronics, uncovering the timbral nuances of each gesture in the live flute and combining these to create a sound world that changes in extremely subtle ways. 

Performed by Jeremy Tatar

TRACINGS

Official Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeydzqPpY70
Remix: https://soundcloud.com/benheim/babylon-remix


BenjaminHeimxCourtenayCleary - Babylon

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

Beautiful Lines

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

MultiSonics

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

Performed by Krista Low.

Bloodlust for solo cello, refers to the primal and instinctual urge to kill or cause harm. It's about bacchanalian freedom and surrendering oneself to darker kinds of desire. The piece was conceived in terms of performative gesture and is consequently structured around bellicose physical gestures such as large aggressive bow strokes, sections of rapid snap pizzicato and rapid off the string passages.

The piece wrestles with dualities in a Nietzsche inspired struggle between the Dionysian and the Apollonian; mans inner struggle to reconcile emotion and carnality with rationality and logic. 

Bloodlust

Music made for the Strut Collab Program in 2015. Samples taken from work by composer Laura Halligan. Choreography by Kynan Hughes. 

TS Eliot Four Quartets - Number II

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

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.

2016 Waves

Making Waves New Music