July 2021 - New choral piece and two APRA AMCOS Art Music Award nominations
News this month is that I have a brand new choral piece called Passion Chorale and I am a finalist in two categories for the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards!
For the second year in a row I was a participant in the N.E.O. Voice Festival led by the amazing Los Angeles based David Harris, Laurel Irene and Fahad Siadat. The festival was online again which was great for me being stuck in lockdown in Sydney. The theme for the ExplOratorio concert this year was ‘The Passions’. I was initially looking at links between consonance/dissonance and emotion but that topic is huge so I decided to rethink. I then found inspiration in an article about Bach’s ‘Passions’ on the ABC Classic FM’s Facebook page around Easter time. I decided to take Bach’s famous Passion melody and do my own setting in just intonation tuning. I especially wanted to bring out certain overtones by using specific IPA vowels but that also proved to be quite a challenge to research and realise. I was actually amazed at the final result with quite a lot of the overtones in the melody popping. You can hear Passion Chorale on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuFAe6d5GXg
My piece SATB choral piece Singing in Tune with Nature from last year’s N.E.O. Voice Festival is a finalist in this year’s APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards in the choral category. Here is a list of this year’s finalists: https://www.apraamcos.com.au/about/supporting-the-industry/awards/art-music-awards-2021#_173854
You can listen to Singing in Tune with Nature on YouTube here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUIEXv3RFQU
Oracle Chamber for bass flute, baritone saxophone and sine tones is also a finalist in the APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards. This piece was commissioned, workshopped and performed by Lamorna and James Nightingale. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHC80EQ4TGk (13:20 minutes into the recital).
More about these three pieces including their program notes can be found on the ‘pieces’ page of my website. Scores for Singing in Tune with Nature and Oracle Chamber are available for purchase through the Australian Music Centre website.
The APRA AMCOS Art Music will be held virtually on the 24th of August.
