Category: 2015

2015 Waves

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It has been an amazing year for Making Waves. Thank you for joining us as listeners, composers and performers on this new experiment and journey.  We have loved every moment of our first year as your helpful guides to embracing new sonic adventures and the talented faces that composed them.

In 2015 we released 11 playlists featuring 70 Australian composers and over 11 hours of contemporary music. Yes, that’s right, Lisa and Peggy lovingly listened to countless hours of submitted music to bring you the best of ‘what’ and ‘who’ is Making Waves around the country! How many of these amazing works did you discover this year? What was your favourite playlist theme? Was there a work that took your breath away?

As a special gift to you this festive season, we’ve brought together all the tracks featured this year in one marathon listing list for the holiday season. 2015 Waves offers all of our previously featured content in one place, including: 3 albums from Bandcamp, 8 1/2 hours worth of music from Soundcloud, and 1 hour of visual works on YouTube.  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! We encourage you to leave your thoughts, most-enjoyed playlists, listening experiences and listening suggestions for others in the comment section below.

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Playlist 11: Saxophone Waves

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Australia is lucky to play host to an extremely active and exciting saxophone scene,  known for its championing of new Australian music. As a team, we have been delighted by the strong presence of saxophone in compositions previously submitted to and featured by Making Waves and this month we decided to highlight the wonderful work of composers and musicians working in this domain.  This month we played detectives and combined our submissions with a hunt for all things saxophone and have been delighted to gather the work of some fresh young local saxophone ensembles who are commissioning, recording and programming much newly composed music. This playlist is in no way exhaustive and we encourage you to post your own favourite new works for saxophone in the comments below.

From one solo line to 17 overdubs, saxophone quartet to saxophone orchestra, to concerto for jazz quartet and orchestra – we love the warm reedy sound bringing all these works together, as well as all the other colours combined. The saxophone is a slightly elusive instrument for a composer grounded in the “classical” tradition, and we’re digging the jazz and riff-based flavours of this month’s playlist.  Special thanks to composer-saxophonist Andrew Ball, who put us on the right track for some awesome audio finds and a special mention to Diana Tolmie and the QLD Saxophone Orchestra who have just put out a brand new CD of Australian compositions in the last few days. We encourage you to check out both of these artists, along with all of the amazing talent included in Playlist 11 below. Enjoy!

Composers, Submit your recordings for consideration, and keep us up-to-date about your best or latest work!

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Playlist 10: Existential Waves

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This month’s tracks are all quite worldly or universal, dealing with philosophical themes as well as aspects of existence and our world: landscape, culture, the planets beyond. We were struck by how the musical language used to explore these ideas – while distinct for each composer – overall has a kind of breadth, gravity, and also a warmth.

Composers, Submit your recordings for consideration, and keep us up-to-date about your best or latest work!

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Playlist 9: Marketplace Waves

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Recent Australian music from Bandcamp.

This month we are excited to bring you something a little different. Welcome to our Bandcamp Bazaar! Below you will find a tantalising offering of full length albums (yes, we’re breaking our 1-hour “rule”!) of recent music by some of Australia’s most exciting early to mid-career composers. All of the albums featured here are available to purchase or stream from Bandcamp directly, so what are you waiting for? Feel free to seize your chance to explore and support our artists and composers directly by purchasing and sharing all of their hard work.

To put this list together we’ve delved into the Bandcamp-hosted music among our submissions, as well as the offerings of composers previously featured by Making Waves in 2015. Continue reading →

Playlist 8: String Waves

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Welcome to a world where anything with a ‘string’ rules. This month it is our pleasure to feature new music written for stringed instruments in solo and chamber settings. As you journey through the sounds we hope you enjoy the variety of works for string quartet, guitar and laptop, guitar and ensemble, strings and vocals, piano trio, violin bass piano and percussion, retuned violin, erhu, cello, voice and bells.

Composers, Submit your recordings for consideration, and keep us up-to-date about your best or latest work!

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Playlist 7: Eclectic Waves

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This month we put the focus on variety, and brought together quite a wide selection of sounds. From solo piano to electronics to sinfonietta, ancient to contemporary themes, animals to computers, delicate to heavy metal sounds. We hope you enjoy the wonderful work of this Eclectic bunch of composers, all featured by Making Waves for the first time.

Composers, Submit your recordings for consideration, and keep us up-to-date about your best or latest work!

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Playlist 6: Meditative Waves

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Find a comfortable place and listen in as our composers seek to entice, entrance, calm, intrigue and centre you in diverse musical ways. This month [our six month anniversary!] the new Australian works we have collected are bound together by their common meditative, introspective or entrancing outcomes. We also find the release of our ‘Meditative Waves’ Playlist very timely and strengthening, as many artists [ourselves included], practitioners and organisations brace themselves for a concerning change in our political arts policy and funding climate. All of our featured composers and ensembles will be impacted by the changes to the Australia Council funding at some stage in the future and we encourage you to lend your voice to the campaign. #freethearts

Finally, we are really pleased to have the beautiful music of Corrina Bonshek and co-curator Lisa Cheney join us again this month. We hope you enjoy this one hour of very new and diverse smooth, delicate and often meditative music.

Composers, Submit your recordings for consideration, and keep us up-to-date about your best or latest work, whether it’s for the first time, or if we have featured you in the past.

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Playlist 5: Nature Waves

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This month we noticed that there were many, many recordings submitted by composers paying homage to aspects of nature: forests, creatures, the earth, planets and stars. Some works edged into the supernatural (eg dragons) and the extra-terrestrial (Jamie Lawson’s alien landscapes surface now and again during the listening arc), so we’ve given the “Nature” theme a bit of a twist here!

We’re really pleased to revisit the music of Melody Eötvös again this month. Composers, Submit your recordings for consideration, and keep us up-to-date about your best or latest work, whether it’s for the first time, or if we have featured you in the past.

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Playlist 4: Visual Waves

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This month we’re thrilled to present you with our very first audiovisual playlist hosted on YouTube. Featuring a prestigious lineup of Australian composers, all compositions are supported by live performance or studio recording footage. We are also treated to works incorporating choreographed visual elements, including some intriguing multimedia work. Mixing it up this month, we are pleased to feature artists of various ages/stages, bringing in the music of some of our revered mentors and role models. Enjoy this specially gathered concert of new music in the comfort of your own home! Continue reading →

Playlist 3: Boundary-Crossing Waves

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This month Making Waves celebrates musical diversity with an exciting and enthralling hour of new music from Australian composers working at the forefront of their creative fields. A veritable musical melting pot, our March playlist brings together compositions that represent a variety of genres, exhibit cross-cultural influences, verge in to hybrid art forms or collaboration, and reference extra-musical themes.

Some of the ingredients in our musical melting pot this month: food, origami, poetry, literature, science, minimalism, rock, dance, folk, Macedonian music, Arabic and Near Eastern music, jazz, prepared piano, electro-acoustic and sound design.

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Playlist 2: Other-Worldly Waves

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Welcome to new and returning listeners in the second month of Making Waves. In this month’s playlist we have brought together compositions that visit ethereal, sublime and sometimes eerie themes and sounds. Forces range from solo piano to string quartet to orchestra, with some soundscape and voices thrown into the mix. This month’s featured composers are from QLD, VIC, NSW & WA, with several now studying and/or working overseas.

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