Team “Neon” getting into the spirit of this “urban and muscular” music by Tansy Davies!
Zac Johnston, Robin Henry, Emily Clarke, Thea Rossen, Jacob Abela, Katherine Philp, and Miranda Hill braving the heat, while raising the temperature in the rehearsal room!
Peter Wilson is an ex-dancer turned composer, based in London. After graduating from The Australian Ballet School with distinction in 2010, he made a sideways shuffle into music: eventually winning a full scholarship to the Royal College of Music. He now works in a variety of mediums, primarily composing music for concert hall, theatre, film, and dance.
As a composer for concert hall, Peter has worked with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Loré Lixenberg, Ligeti Quartet, Norrbotten NEO, Tom Paewels, and Gildas Quartet. His music has been recorded and released by NMC Recordings.He was described recently as “having a willingness to engage in small, strange details” – a diagnosis Peter quite enjoyed.
As a composer for theatre, his work has been heard in many of London’s major theatres, including Soho Theatre, RADA, The Bunker, and VAULT Theatre. In 2017, he was nominated for an Off-West End Award (‘Offie’) for his work on ‘FCUK’D’. More recently, he has worked at The National Theatre and Donmar Warehouse, assisting composer Michael Bruce.
A few months ago, Peter’s world exploded when he plunged into the infinite whirlpool of electronic music. This is a new area of interest for Peter, and he intends to explore it more thoroughly over the coming months and years.
Sneak peek into the rehearsal room!
Double trouble is the theme of the day! Double Bass Clarinets, Double Violas, and of course, Double Bass. 😉
Karen Heath, Judith Dodsworth, Robin Henry, and Miranda Hill, getting into the bad habits of ”Life Story” by Ades.
Phoebe Green, Merewyn Bramble, and Matthew Horsley, rehearsing a gorgeous new work by Naima Fine Fine.
Emily is a woodwind musician and music educator based in Melbourne. As a graduate of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and Melbourne Graduate School of Education she teaches and performs on saxophone, clarinet, and flute, passionate about sharing excellent music experiences with diverse audiences.
As a saxophone specialist Emily performs with the Melbourne Saxophone Ensemble and The Green Reeds, and in various styles from big bands to orchestra settings as a freelance musician. Most recently Emily has been collaborating with composers for chamber music premiers, with Melbourne Saxophone and in various saxophone quartets. Emily is a passionate woodwind doubler, performing in music theatre productions locally in Melbourne, has travelled Victoria with Sondheim company Watch This and extensively through China touring the production of Phantom Unmasked.
An exciting and dynamic performer, Thea Rossen is a percussionist, creator and educator based in Melbourne. She is director of the Ad Lib Collective, an ensemble focused on concert curation, commissioning new Australian works and community engagement. Her work with the group has taken her to a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada where she developed a program of works exploring issues surrounding climate change through performance called Music for Our Changing Climate which was presented at the Metropolis Festival in 2018.
As a soloist and chamber musician, Thea was a fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival and finalist for the Freedman Classical Music Fellowship in 2018. She has performed with a range of international artists including Vicky Chow, David Cossin and Lisa Moore and been a casual member of the percussion sections in the Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras and Orchestra Victoria. She has also presented works at the Perth and Melbourne International Arts Festivals.
As an educator Thea has designed and facilitated music workshops in regional, remote and metropolitan Australia for Musica Viva in Schools, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre and Art Play. During her time at the Australian National Academy of Music,Thea was awarded prizes for all of her solo recitals including Most Outstanding Performance and Best Program. Thea received her Bachelor of Music Degree with honours at the University of Western Australia studying with Dr Louise Devenish and Tim White.
As an active composer, the work of Amadeus Julian Regucera (b.1984) engages with the embodied and acoustical energy of sound and its production, the erotics of performance, the musical vocabulary of popular music, and noise.
He has had the opportunity to present works at ManiFeste, the Festival Musica, Voix Nouvelles (France), the Resonant Bodies Festival and the SONiC Festival (New York), the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music as part of the American Composers Forum artist delegation, the Hong Kong Modern Academy, the International Summer Courses in Darmstadt, Germany, the Impuls Academy (Austria), June in Buffalo, the Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts.
His music has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Linea, JACK string quartet, Ensemble Intercontemporain, EXAUDI vocal ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and Duo Cortona.
In addition to concert music, his practice intersects with visual and performance art, most notably in the piece Communication (2013), which was featured at the Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten in Graz, Austria as part of the group show Seelenwäsche and a collaboration for performer, Schlachtfeld (a) with choreographer Elysa Wendi.
Upcoming projects include a new piece for Ensemble Linea for the 2017 edition of the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, France and a new piece for bassoonist Adrian Morejon. Amadeus holds degrees in Music from the University of California, San Diego (B.A. 2006) and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 2016).
Laura Tanata completed her Masters of Music Performance at the Australian National University School of Music in 2007, under the tuition of harpist Alice Giles. Laura has been a member of the Seven Harp Ensemble (SHE) since the early 2000s when it was previously known as the Kioloa Harp Ensemble.
Laura has also been involved with the Griffyn Ensemble since 2006; an active Canberra based chamber ensemble with a passion of presenting rarely performed works and new music, often with a unique theatrical flair.
In 2011, Laura founded her own business, Vermilion Music, with the ambition to cater music for all occasions. For further information visit her Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/VermilionMusic
The harp has given Laura plenty of opportunities to travel Australia and the world, visiting cities such as San Francisco, Beijing and Aberdeen. She has released an album with SHE and is currently planning to record with the Griffyn Ensemble in 2017.
Andrew Aronowicz is a passionate writer of music and words, and a promising young mind in Australian classical music. He holds a Master of Music from the University of Melbourne, and was an Australian Postgraduate Award recipient during his post-graduate candidature. He is also the recipient of an Australia Council ArtStart grant.
Taking cues from the extra-musical, Andrew sees his music as synonymous with the visual arts, his instrumental lines etched or drawn as if by a pen or calligraphy brush. Drawing inspiration from books, poems, artworks, philosophy, and spaces natural and constructed, Andrew seeks to bring together random threads and render them in sound, creating abstract and beautiful sonic works which stimulate, beguile and entrance.
Andrew has composed music for a number of major Australian ensembles and performers, and his music has been broadcast on 3MBS Fine Music Melbourne and around Australia on ABC Classic FM.
In May 2016, his composition ‘Strange Alchemy’ for orchestra was chosen as the Australian Under-30 entry in the 2016 International Rostrum of Composers, held in Wroclaw in June of that year. Andrew has received various commissions, from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Cybec Foundation, Arts Centre Melbourne, Syzygy Ensemble, Forest Collective and Sarah Curro (violinist), among others. His music has been performed as part of the Melbourne Metropolis New Music Festival and the SoundSCAPE Festival in Maccagno Italy, and he has been a participant in Speak Percussion’s Emerging Artists program and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Composer School.
This year in 2016, Andrew was commissioned to write new works for Plexus Ensemble, and also for Syzygy Ensemble as part of the Glen Johnston Composition Award at Macedon Music. His work, ‘Following the Blackbird’ was also presented in a concert in June featuring flautist Naomi Johnson, and presented by Forest Collective. Andrew was also composer in residence for a second year at the 42nd annual Border Music Camp in Albury, NSW.
Andrew is a regular contributor to Limelight Magazine, as a reviewer and feature writer. He has also contributed to some of Australia’s most notable arts publications, both online and in print, such as the Australian Music Centre’s Resonate Magazine, 2mbs Fine Music Magazine and new music blog, Partial Durations. Through his work as a music journalist, Andrew has interviewed a number of prominent Australian musicians, including Brett and Paul Dean, Elena Kats-Chernin, Paul Stanhope, Anthony Pateras and Lyn Williams OAM, as well as English tenor Ian Bostridge. Andrew was selected in 2013 as a Music Presentation fellowship recipient by the Australian Youth Orchestra, giving him the opportunity to work with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and on the Music Show at AVC
Andrew has lectured in music theory at the University of Melbourne’s Conservatorium of Music. He has also delivered pre-concert talks for both the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, and is volunteer at 3MBS Fine Music Melbourne, presenting “The Romantics” every Saturday morning on 3MBS Digital.
He has been mentored by various Australian composers, including Stuart Greenbaum, Elliott Gyger, Katy Abbott and Brenton Broadstock.
Sydney Braunfeld
Born in 1986 in upstate New York, Sydney began taking horn lessons at the age of eight. She attended Juilliard, studying under William Purvis for her Bachelor’s degree and Jennifer Montone while completing her Master’s.
While in the US, Sydney had the honour of performing with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra and the New World Symphony Orchestra. Sydney then went on to study further at The Curtis Institute and received her Performer’s Certificate in 2011, the same year she moved to Melbourne.
Since relocating, she has also played with the symphony and philharmonic orchestras of Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Sydney, Adelaide and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra. Sydney is currently a full-time member of Orchestra Victoria, specializing in low horn!
Merewyn Bramble began playing both violin and viola when she was little and was taught by her mother. In 2005 she completed a Bachelor of Music with Honours in Performance under the tutelage of William Hennessy and in 2007, a Master of Music Performance mentored by Caroline Henbest. During her course at the University of Melbourne she was awarded the Peg Oldfield Prize and the H.A. Owen Award for performance excellence. She performs with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and holds casual positions with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria and the Adelaide and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras.
Violist with the Patronus Quartet, Merewyn competed in the 2015 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and as a former member of the Tailem Quartet she was a finalist in the 3rd Australian Chamber Music Competition and performed in the 2008 ARD Chamber Music Competition in Munich. The Tailem quartet also completed residencies at the Banff Centre, Canada, and at Yale University’s Norfolk Summer Chamber Music Festival. 2007 introduced Merewyn to the Australian Chamber Orchestra when she was accepted as an Emerging Artist. Merewyn made another soul-searching trip to Banff in 2011, a journey she intends to repeat many, many times in the future.
Away from the music stand, nothing beats writing for children, running long distances and buckling up the tap shoes.
