International Women’s Day 2016

08/03/201608/03/20162 Comments

Welcome to a special playlist celebrating International Women’s Day, 2016! In this bonus playlist we’ve gathered together the works by our amazingly talented, previously featured, Australian female composers since our beginnings in January 2015, through to our most recently released playlist in March 2016.

According to author Rosalind Appleby (2012) in Women of Note: The Rise of Australian Women Composers, Australia has been leading the way in gender balance in composition. “The figures continue to grow: in 2011 the AMC recorded women making up 25 per cent of composers or in real terms 146 of 585 composers are women.” Here at Making Waves we’re so excited about the thoughtful and high-quality work we’re seeing from so many Australian colleagues, regardless of gender, and we’ve made it our mission from the beginning of the project to strive not for the “75-25” benchmark, but for gender parity in our curation. We’re thrilled to note that the campaign theme of International Women’s Day in 2016 is #PledgeForParity.

What do you think music-lovers, listeners, composers, performers, ensembles, arts organisations: is gender parity in music/the arts something on your radar? Have you got any general thoughts about gender and music, or the intricate ways other aspects of identity intersect with gender, in the fabric of music? In the industry? Leave a comment; we’d love to hear your thoughts. To read more on this topic we suggest starting with Rosalind Appleby’s recent article Women Composers – there always have been and there always will be, here.

Lastly, we feel it is important to mention that this playlist is in no way exhaustive of the number of amazing women creating music in Australia. In fact, we feel we’ve barely even scratched the surface! With this in mind we ask that you take the time to get to know the work of a composer below and share this playlist with your friends, students and colleagues. If you enjoy our playlists you may like to sign up via our Making Waves E-Bulletins at the bottom of the page.

Composers, as always, we encourage you to Submit your latest work to us at any time.

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Small Ensemble Waves (March 2016)

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Welcome to ‘Small Ensemble Waves’, our celebration of new Australian music being written for small forces in abundance. In some ways we’re going back to where it all started (Playlist 1: Chamber Waves January 2015), with another chamber music playlist. This time we’ve kept to quite small ensembles, of 3-6 acoustic instruments. When we were considering chamber music for inclusion in this playlist, we distinguished between works written for uniform or homogenous ensembles, of instruments from one family (string quartet, clarinet trio, brass quintet), and works written for mixed chamber configurations, with a wide spectrum of tone colour. The playlist here includes works from both groups. We hope that you enjoy!

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Immersive Waves (February 2016)

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We’re very excited to begin a new year of the Making Waves listening journey with this selection of audiovisual works, our first playlist of works hosted over at Vimeo. Immerse yourself in an hour of music that grapples with numbers and geometry, installation art and art history, re-examining orientalism, culture and place, and ideas about medium, message and control.

We were struck by how, in many of these works, the visual element is just as ‘composed’ as the musical elements. We also love that many of these composers are working collaboratively with other artists. It’s not surprising that composers with a comfortable grasp of multimedia technology would work in the electroacoustic realm, which we’re seeing across this entire hour of music. We hope you enjoy this video hour!

Note: in 2016 we’ve made a slight change to release time each month, from 9am on the last day of the month, to 9am on the first day of the month.

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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

30/09/201531/10/20152 Comments

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

31/08/201529/09/20152 Comments

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

30/06/201530/06/20152 Comments

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

30/04/201530/05/20152 Comments

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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