It’s been a huge year for the Making Waves community: the extended team, composers and listeners.  Thank you so much for joining us in 2017 as we venture through monthly playlists and our first foray into podcasting.

We’ve been delighted to continue to put the spotlight on new faces this year.  Having featured over 150 composers in 3 years worth of playlists (time flies!), it sometimes feels like the more composers we get to know, the more there are to discover.  And that’s a good thing!  The new music community is so active, vibrant and dedicated, and it’s fantastic to see so much creativity taking place in sound around Australia, and continue to be introduced to new work.

Along with the playlists the Making Conversation: Australian Composers’ Podcast was released.  We are super proud to have brought this project to fruition, along with 10 interviewers, audio and podcast enthusiasts.  Massive thanks to the Making Conversation team and to the  composers interviewed for a total of 29 episodes in this season.  We hope to continue the series in the future, and we encourage you to check out the series if you haven’t already, with audio and video episodes available here on the website for streaming or via your favourite podcast services or YouTube.

We must give a massive Thank You also to the new faces who have joined the Making Waves team.  Project founders Lisa Cheney (VIC) and Peggy Polias (NSW) are so grateful to be joined on this voluntary project by Mark Wolf (QLD) and Marlene Radice (VIC), who have each completed 6 month internships in 2017 and are staying on to continue promoting composers and their music.  Meanwhile, in November 2017 we are delighted to welcome Alexis Weaver (NSW) and Michelle Nguyen (VIC) who have both commenced internships.  We look forward to showing them the ropes, culminating with a playlist each in 2018.

It’s also been great to extend the collaborative spirit into new ventures.  This year we invited David Chisholm to guest-curate the BIFEM Waves playlist in August, to coincide with the 2017 festival in Bendigo.  We were also commissioned to produce 4 special episodes for ABC Classic FM: New Waves Podcast, using excerpts from the Making Conversation Podcast series and putting the spotlight on 16 composers and a full work each.

If you like what Making Waves are doing, you can show your support by: liking, following and leaving comments and feedback at all our social channels and liking, following and leaving feedback at all the social channels of featured composers when you see new or familiar faces pop up in your feed.

We also have a growing line of merchandise.  We’ve updated the Featured Composer tote bag for 2015-17 and have also introduced a Making Conversation podcast logo tote bag.  You might like to show off your new music savvy around town by purchasing one of these:

If tote bags aren’t your thing, we’ve added t-shirts, coffee mugs, notebooks and more to the mix over at our new RedBubble shop. We also recently updated the Favourite Things collection with some audio/tech picks.  A portion of all sales supports the running costs of the Making Waves project.  You can also leave a one-off or regular donation and read more about supporting the project here.

Now, for the end of year playlist.  In 2017 we featured 75 tracks on Soundcloud (totalling 8hrs 27min), 10 tracks on Spotify (1hr) and 6 tracks on YouTube (41min).  We’ve collected all of these here for your summer holiday listening until we release the first playlist for 2018 on 1 February at 9amAEST.  Whether you pick through your favourites, catch up on the year of composers, performers and works, or have a binge-listen on shuffle, we hope that you enjoy looking back on this year!

We encourage you to leave your thoughts, most-enjoyed playlists, listening experiences and listening suggestions for others in the comment section below. And if you haven’t already, you can subscribe to our email list, submit your own work, and share the project across your favourite social media channels with anyone you know who might like to open their ears to the new.

Seasons greetings,
Lisa & Peggy
Making Waves

YouTube

The ‘playlist’ button will bring up a track listing which you can use to skip back and forth between the works.  If you want to check out the playlist and works in more detail, there is a button at the bottom right of the picture taking you directly through to YouTube. Please be mindful that this is an hour worth of video, and it will chew the data! If you were going to tune in on a mobile device without a large data allowance, please consider listening in over wi-fi instead.

Spotify

On the Spotify playlist above you can click through to discover the album that tracks are from, or find more recordings from the composers and performers. Please note: Spotify requires and account to listen in – there is a free tier and a premium tier but you might need to create a login and password, or use your Facebook details.

Soundcloud

To find out more about a musical work, click on the track name in the playlist and then again on ‘view track’.

2017 Playlists

Meanwhile, the individual monthly playlists from 2017 are listed here if you want to look at any of these in more detail. These will remain archived on the Making Waves website into 2018 and beyond, so do revisit anytime.

And for more information on all the composers and artists featured in 2017:

---