Homophonic! is heading to regional victorian pride festivals in 2020!
Team Homophonic! in the literal Green Room at the Potato Shed, Drysdale
Geelong Rainbow Festival: Potato Shed, Drysdale. 6/2/2020 Daylesford Chillout: Daylesford Town Hall. 6/3/2020 (Bendigo Pride Festival: Engine Room. 27/3/2020) Sadly the Bendigo Pride Festival has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 situation. We will update when we are able to reschedule!
and soon to be announced dates at: Ballarat Frolic Shepparton Out in the Open
Laila Engle performing “Star Picc” by Stephen de Filippo. Photo by Agatha Yim at Polyphonic Pictures
After sell out seasons in Melbourne Midsumma Festival, we are thrilled to be taking the show on the road! Featuring the winner of the inagural Homophonic! Pride Prize, “Star Picc” for amplified piccolo, effects, and bass drum; and the gorgeous “Stethoscope” by Louisa Trewartha for voices and strings.
Hope to see you there!
Homophonic! regional pride seasonis supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.”
Rehearsals for Laura Kaminsky’s gorgeous “Twilight Settings” end in a cheesy photo shoot, and Laila Engle puts a microphone on the loudest instrument available. #newmusicnerds
Christina Green is a Melbourne-based composer, songwriter, performer, music therapist and teacher. Green works as a composer-performer and as a composer for other ensembles/soloists, as well as maintaining activities as a performing songwriter in the acoustic/folk scene in Melbourne and beyond. She has recorded both as a pianist and singer-songwriter, and is active with the Melbourne Composers’ League, performing regularly at the Elbow Room and other concerts curated by the group.
Green met Palestinian-Lebanese, Australian lesbian performance poet Candy Royalle while they were both on residency at the Bundanon Arts Trust in 2012, and is delighted to have been able to create a new work setting Royalle’s Edge Sky Self, from A Trillion Tiny Awakenings (2018), for Homophonic 2020.
Maria Zajkowski is an award-winning poet, lyricist and librettist based in Melbourne. A regular collaborator with composer Wally Gunn, her first collection The Ascendant features on the Grammy nominated album Render by Roomful of Teeth. In 2019, her first libretto, Moonlite, a true crime queer love story based on Captain Moonlite and his lover James Nesbitt, premiered in the US. Her next collection, What we have except when we are lost, was written with MTC Cronin and is published through Spuyten Duyvil in New York. www.mariazajkowski.com
Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts producer and community radio broadcaster. Author of A Leaving (Vagabond Press), her live album, One Night Wonders, is produced by Going Down Swinging.
Homophonic! is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program, and assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, it’s arts funding and advisory body.
We are thrilled to announce that Stephen de Filippo is the inaugural winner of the Homophonic! pride prize!
Stephen de Filippo is a new music composer from the regional South West of Western Australia. Now based in California, Stephen is currently undertaking graduate studies at The University of California – San Diego.
Stephen’s research explores the ideas of control and density in time-banned notation forms — exploring these interactions though a variety of chamber works that focus on unique instrumental pairings, contemporary performance practice as a central device.
“I am very excited to be accepted as the recipient of the inaugural Homophonic! Pride Prize, and to be working with Laila Engle to create a new work that will be premiered at the Midsumma Festival 2020.
In the past, I have had some difficulty reconciling what it means to be a queer artist. The movement itself is so multi-faceted, diverse, and intersectional. So, I am aware that perhaps I present a limited scope, directly related to my lived experience. Nonetheless, I hope that through this commission that I can create a work that explores some themes of ‘queerness’ in an art music context.
Most recently, I have been tutoring a course in punk music history at UC San Diego, in California – discussing punk’s influence on the queer and feminist movements, and vice versa. Not only has this given me a historical appreciation of the wider queer movement, but it has also helped me in honing in on aspects of queerness that I find personally important. Notably, its transgressive qualities, and the sense of otherness, which is diminishing with the mainstreaming of queer culture (a double-edge sword of awareness, but also appropriation and assimilation).
This prize provides me with the opportunity to explore identity through creative practice, to which I am so thankful for, and am very proud to be part of this opportunity.”
What a season! 3 shows sold out before opening night, and a rapturous crowd every night. Thanks again to all the amazing performers, our phenomenal tech team, and the always supportive and acoustically fabulous La Mama Courthouse Theatre.
All photos below taken on opening night by Agatha Yim at Polyphonic Pictures.
Stay tuned for news of Homophonic! 2020! We have big plans!
