As we draw to the end of a busy and bright 2018, we celebrate that this has been our fourth (!) year of listening out for exciting, beautiful, challenging, experimental, moving and/or thoughtful sounds from composers far and wide. We’re deeply grateful for our supporters and your company on this journey and hope that you have been as enriched and humbled as we have to discover the talented and hard-working composers that make our small but productive industry.

2018 for Making Waves was all about rest and recovery after a huge 2017 and very successful foray into crowdfunding and podcasting. We’re pleased to report that some exciting special projects await us in 2019 and we can’t wait to share more with you soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this recap on all of the music we’ve featured throughout 2018! We have your holiday listening well and truly sorted.

Team
Making Waves is a voluntary project, and we’ve been delighted to welcome new faces to our team throughout the year. Each valued member brought with them a beautiful breath of fresh air and creative curating ideas. We’re always looking for interested music lovers to join us for our 6-month internship pathway to becoming a full MW team member. You can find out more about each composer-musician on the Team page here on our website. We owe enormous gratitude to these champions, working together online from across NSW, ACT, VIC, who listen to and file composer-submitted recordings, coordinate social content and playlists on the website, and sound out thoughts and ideas.

Our top picks of 2018:

We are very excited to catch up on the latest from the Ngarra-Burria First People’s Composers program. Listen to this segment from ABC RN’s The Music Show, with host Andrew Ford speaking with mentor Chris Sainsbury and some of the participants, Tim Gray and Troy Russell.

The 2018 Art Music Awards celebrated amazing Australian new music and performances. We were particularly excited to witness an emergence of a new generation of musical voices with special mentions to the many Making Waves featured composers who made the finalist and winner lists, including our very own co-founder, Lisa Cheney for Instrumental Work of the Year.

Farewelling Richard Gill. Conductor and music educator Richard Gill passed away peacefully at this home in Sydney on the 28th of October. The industry continues to mourn our loss and celebrate the Richards immense contribution to Australian music and education. We were very proud to dedicate our Orchestral Waves (November 2018) playlist in his memory.

An action plan towards gender equality in music at the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address. Read Cat Hope’s address in full here, and afterwards why not listen to her interview as part of our Making Conversation Podcast here.

We were delighted that 9 of our regularly featured composers were recipients of the 2018 Art Music Fund. Composers take note, the 2019 round of the Art Music Fund closes at 5pm on February 20, 2019.

It’s also been great to welcome two international guest curators this year resulting in the very special edition playlists, ‘New Zealand Waves‘ and ‘Polish Waves‘. These playlists were a huge hit with our Australian listeners and we thank Simon Eastwood and Andrzej Karałow for their efforts in highlighting incredible talent from their home countries.

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 and a fresh new tote bag design, showcasing the composers featured throughout 2018. These plush bags fit A3 scores and can be chosen as your goody bag design, or on their own are $35 including postage within Australia for a limited time. No GST charged. You might like to show off your new music savvy around town by purchasing one of these:

Listening

In 2018 we featured 70 home-grown tracks on Soundcloud (totalling 10hrs 35min), and 1 track on YouTube (13 min). We’ve collected all of these here for your summer holiday listening until we release the first playlist for 2019 on 1 February at 9am AEST. 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, Ethan, Marlene & Aidan
The Making Waves team

YouTube

Soundcloud

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

2018 Playlists

Meanwhile, the individual monthly playlists from 2018 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 2019 and beyond, so do revisit anytime.