"Sometimes, when the anger fades away, all we're left with is quiet introspection. This side of Nimbostrata reflects the journey of exploring those faint traces of emotions. Nimbostrata encompasses metal, electronica, ambient and electroacoustic music because the creative output is part of the same process. Kudos to MUWN and Skyler Remillard, with whom I worked on a collaborative album." (LR Friberg)

Nimbostrata - Fading Echoes

https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/product/our-duty-to-care-song-cycle-for-soprano-piano-trio

Our Duty to Care is a cross-disciplinary music composition based on the legal case Sharma v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560, where eight Australian teenagers (namely Anjali Sharma and Isolde Raj-Seppings, Ambrose Hayes, Tomas Arbizu, Bella Burgemeister, Laura Kirwan, Ava Princi & Luca Saunders) represented by an octogenarian nun (Sister Marie Brigid Arthur) as their litigation guardian, sued the Minister for the Environment (Cth) and Vickery Coal Pty Ltd.
They successfully argued that the Minister owed them and other Australian children a duty of care, which was supposedly breached when the Minister approved the extraction of coal from a coal mine.

Whilst this decision was later successfully appealed by the Minister, this case monumentally established that climate change is legally real – with all submitted scientific evidence un-refuted. This denotes a significant shift, as we are no longer fighting to prove our climate crisis, but rather urging all to fight the crisis itself.

This work sets newly commissioned text by poet, close friend & regular collaborator Savanna Wegman, who has re-interpreted my own legal research about the case into a 3-part poem, which has in turn structured the song cycle. It embodies climate anxiety, the nervous excitement of the trial and its success, and the melancholic yet hopeful transference of ideology: how far we’ve come & how far we still have left to go.
Composed as part of and made possible by a 2022/23 University of Melbourne Wattle Fellowship.

Timing: ~ 18 minutes 
1: Robed in Apocalypse (~6min)
2: they will rise, as birds fall (~5min)
3: The Changing Wilds (~7min)

Written for Bridgette Kelsey and Solstice Trio. Dedicated to all current and future generations of Australians who inherit a climate crisis. 

Bridgette Kelsey, soprano
SOLSTICE
Isabel Hede, violin (guest)
Stephanie Arnold, cello 
Georgina Lewis, piano

Commissioned Cover Art Illustration © by Lucinda McIntyre.

Commissioned Sext Text: ‘Prophecy, as a fire comes’ by Savanna Wegman © 2022 
Text used for 1: Robed in Apocalypse:
No more prophecy 
until the sky begets a softer 
Everlasting sun 
or
the youth unravel 
braided darkness
rushing innocence
all over Earth 

Shadows designed 
for our tired birth places
ghosting the new life 
upon babbling breaths  
 
And so the young are born 
New guardians 
Robed in 
Apocalypse

Text used for 2: they will rise, as birds fall:
Know they will rise
As disappearance is written  
on ancient weather 
become beast
She watches above 
as birds fall 
out of the mother sky 

March into the high courts 
of creators and destroyers
Anjali Sharma and the army 
                  Future keepers
Enter this laced arena 
burning horizons in their bellies 

The Minister surveys the gravity
how deep we may breathe
how quickly we will fall
when the Earth veins split 
and the sanctuary howls 
at its open flesh  

The weather sounds like a whisper 
in these walls that stand for justice 
Lay down a pocketful 
of bird bones
of poison oceans

Text used for 3: The Changing Wilds
They speak for the
forgotten
Their ancestral home-body
Their drowning, burning worlds
for their lands that have lost hope 
together their voices are louder
Becoming suns
Becoming rains 
Becoming rivers multiplied 
Becoming the skyward call 
of protection 

this call
Is honoured
the duty of care rewritten
A first for acknowledging
the changing wilds

Evidence now held
in palms that believe in
collapse
and might begin to
listen
Blessing the horror 
with a soft breath of courage 

Remember how
young sacred tears 
are greeting Earth 
like miracle seeds

Our Duty to Care (LIVE)(song cycle for soprano & piano trio)(2023)(Bridgette Kelsey & Solstice Trio)

Story:
Notorious Ninja

Story Setting:
No Shadow Man was tormented. Everyone seemed to forget his existence, and Phat Cats were no exception.

One day, No Shadow Man hears rumors about a legendary ninja known as Notorious Man. Despite being a ninja meant to stay unseen, Notorious Man lived up to his name, being infamous. It was said that he possessed a ninjitsu that could alter his own and others' presence. No Shadow Man thought that if he could meet Notorious Man, perhaps his own presence could be amplified.

On a certain day, following a rumor, No Shadow Man finds Notorious Man at a casino he had decided to visit. It was an easy spot. Not exactly stealthy like a Ninja Turtle, but here he was in all his flashy appearance. "This guy’s ridiculous, standing out like a sore thumb!", thought No Shadow Man.

"Fine. I'll enhance your presence. But only if you beat me at roulette," Notorious Man, clad in flashy red ninja attire with a flushed, drunken face, declared.

Notorious Ninja

Tonight

Efforts were made to understand the silence between notes.

Sonatas Op. 2 No.23

Witiena [part 2]

Cuouslu

Inspired by my new Exquis MPE controller, by the free BBC Symphony Orchestra plugin I made this classical track, which is not my typical genre. 
The idea for the title came from my son who is very interested in volcanoes lately and is amused by the name of the volcanoe which sounds like the german word for butt.

Popocatépetl

Ateriga [part 1]

Performance at Persian Sound City
12th June 2025

A performance of First Portrait
Kamancheh: Amin Naseri
Piano: Sepand Yekrang Safakar

اجرای شهر صدای پارسیان
بیست دوم خرداد هزار چهارصد و چهار

اجرایی از پیکر اول
کمانچه: امین ناصری
پیانو: سپند یکرنگ صفاکار

Sonatas Op. 2 No.23

Paul Maurice Roche | Composer