Tag: making waves

Sonic Environment Waves (July 2016)

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This month we’re delighted to have Dr. Leah Barclay, Co-Chair of Sonic Environments, and President of the Australian Forum for Acoustic Ecology , guest-curate this playlist: Sonic Environment Waves.  About the playlist, Leah writes:

This playlist features composers who are working in innovative ways with place, environmental sound and new technologies. It has been curated to coincide with the Sonic Environments conference, hosted by the Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane, July 10-11 2016.

Drawing inspiration from contemporary acoustic ecology, Sonic Environments invites composers, performers, academics, field recordists, acoustic ecologists and technologists to present research and creative works exploring the ecological, social and cultural contexts of our sonic environments. This conference aims to expand our current understandings of acoustic ecology and the role of sound and technology in understanding rapidly changing environments across the world.

This collection of compositions showcases composers experimenting with found sounds, environmental field recordings, mixed media and immersive performance. This playlist traverses the inherently interdisciplinary nature of sound and aims to explore aural awareness in a diversity of sonic environments across the world with composers who are all connected to Australia.

We hope you enjoy this rich and thoughtful selection of works and we thank Leah Barclay for agreeing to curate this playlist.

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Canadian Waves (Special Edition June 2016)

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We’re delighted to hand over to guest curator Elizabeth Knudson for a Special Edition Playlist, our very first international one! Many thanks Elizabeth, for taking the time to bring together these wonderful composers and their works. We’ll be putting the spotlight on these composers and their works over the next week, in the lead-up to July 1st, which happens to be Canada Day.

I’d like to thank Lisa and Peggy for asking me to be guest curator of the first all-Canadian edition of “Making Waves”. I’ve done my best to include some composers I really respect, and whose music I enjoy listening to. The common thread here – which I think is representative of Canadian society and culture – is the fact that its beauty lies in its diversity. In the next hour, you will hear everything from a work for solo electric guitar, to a chamber choir with solo cello, to an orchestral piece inspired by traditional Balkan music. Each composer’s work offers something unique to explore. I hope this serves as an enticing introduction to some of the wonderful contemporary music being created here in Canada. In addition to the composers’ website links (which are definitely worth checking out), another excellent resource to learn more about Canadian composers and their music is the Canadian Music Centre. Best wishes from Vancouver, Canada – and enjoy the music! – Elizabeth Knudson

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Moving Waves (June 2016)

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Welcome to our June Playlist, Moving Waves!  In this month’s audiovisual playlist we explore various physical, musical and visual forms of movement as well as ‘moving’ in a more emotional sense. From mesmerising dance-like percussion, to the moving parts of a prepared piano, to dance, to soundtrack for silent film, to Nathalie Latham’s emotive footage of local women in Tamil Nadu in South India accompanied by the music of Iain Grandage, we promise you that this is a musical journey worth exploration. Join us as we showcase exciting, innovative and moving works by seven wonderful Australian composers. Continue reading →

Experimental Waves (May 2016)

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Cello and answering machine, ukulele miniatures related to a picture book, sampling, remixing and processing, an orchestral soundscape, an ‘oral score’ transmitted verbally from composer to performers in the way that the work’s epic poetry theme would have been;  this month’s playlist is dominated by acoustic and electronic musical interactions with an experimental and highly conceptual spirit.  Some of these works are literary, historical or political, and all of them are highly evocative of the extra-musical world. Let this amazing playlist challenge your preconceived notions of what it means to compose ‘contemporary’ music.

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Solo Waves (April 2016)

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This month we’re following on from March’s Small Ensemble Waves and zooming in even closer to the qualities particular to music for one instrument or performer. In solo works sometimes it is possible to perceive a heightened level of detail and purity of tone colour, as well as an increased closeness between performer and listener. The Solo Waves playlist invites you to savour the varying complexity and freedom that can result from one performer leading the music entirely rather than working as part of an ensemble.

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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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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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