Place Waves (May 2018)

This month we’re delighted to hand over the curatorial reins to MW Intern Michelle Nguyen.  The playlist theme centres on the idea of our relationship and place within external environments, both ecological and social, and also our internal selves, looking at identity and memory. In this playlist, place is explored in its physical manifestations, as well as its changing and ephemeral nature.

The interactions we have with the natural environments we inhabit are explored through pieces by David Burraston, May Lyon, and Elissa Goodrich, while Josten Myburgh, Aviva Endean, and Gabrielle Cadenhead’s pieces inquire into our relationship with place in urban, social, and controlled environments. Electro Fractal Gamelan and Connect Four by two amazing members of the Making Waves team, Peggy Polias and Alexis Weaver, take a look inwards to nostalgia, memory, and places in time.

With an overarching soundscape of electronics, field recordings, extended techniques, and musique concrete, these pieces all explore an element of noise and uncertainty, which exposes a lot of our human qualities. In looking for perfection, the glitches, unintended sounds, and accidents have all contributed to our musical culture and the wide variety of sounds we enjoy.

This playlist includes a video of Hapnophobia by Aviva Endean, which is a site-specific work that encompasses the audio, visual, and tactile realms. The video functions as a score for the audience as they move throughout a specific location at the arts centre, and would ideally be watched or performed in location.

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Making Conversation: “Episode 0”

In this series preview you’ll hear Lisa Cheney and Peggy Polias of Making Waves introducing the Making Conversation: Australian Composers’ Podcast.

Stay tuned for the series release on Friday 21 April 2017!  There will be conversations with 30 composers in this series, with a new one released each Friday.

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Keyboard Waves (November 2016)

Here at Making Waves, we’ve been wanting to collate a “Piano Waves” playlist for over a year now.  This staple instrument attracts so much solo repertoire that it can be hard for performers and listeners to know where to start.  There is of course the burden of tradition, of a solid canon of classical piano repertoire, but also the instrument’s versatility in playing a huge role in jazz and popular musics.  In this month’s playlist we broadened our definition to “Keyboard” to include not only acoustic works, but some amazing tracks in which the piano meets technology: via live electronic manipulation, the use of electric instruments and MIDI, input via audience mobile phones, and even a robotic piano named RHEA.  We’ve also split the playlist into a Soundcloud segment (c.50min) and a YouTube segment (c.20min) in order to include a wide array of works. Listen, enjoy and share!

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Small Ensemble Waves (March 2016)

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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