Click here to read all about the show, with interviews with Miranda Hill and David Chisholm.
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The composer and musicians after rehearsing “A Sort of Orbit, (Passacaglia) By Wally Gunn.
If you think we look good… we sound even better.
Luke Paulding
Born in the Middle East and raised in Melbourne, Luke Paulding is swiftly emerging as a prominent voice in Australia’s younger generation of composers.
Luke’s music has been performed and recorded throughout the UK, Ireland, France, the Middle East, Singapore and across much of Australia, by leading musicians and ensembles such as the Melbourne and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, ELISION Ensemble, Speak Percussion, Namascae Lemanic Modern Ensemble (France/Switzerland), ensemble interface(Germany), Aria Co., Quiver and Kupka’s Piano. He has received commissions from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, ELISION Ensemble, Speak, Chamber Made Opera, the Australian National Academy of Music, the Victorian College of the Arts, the Musical Society of Victoria, and his music has featured at the Edinburgh Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Melbourne Fringe, Metropolis Festival, Totally Huge New Music Festival and Castlemaine Festival. Also a trained pianist and tubist, Luke is a founding member and co-director of new music ensemble, Quiver, dedicated to innovative performances of contemporary art music.
In addition to composing concert music, Luke is passionate about collaborations with other artists and organisations on theatre, film, mixed-media and experimental art projects, such as the Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Aphids, Theatreworks, and La Mama Theatre. His original music/sound-designs for theatre in particular are highly acclaimed and have attracted several Green Room Award nominations.
Luke has received support from the Australian Council for the Arts, the Cybec Foundation, Besen Family Foundation, IETM (international network for contemporary performing arts) and the Royaumont Foundation (France). His teachers have included Brian Ferneyhough, Liza Lim, Brett Dean, Chris Dench and David Young. Luke is currently a Masters (Research) candidate at the University of Melbourne.
Luke is represented by the Australian Music Centre (http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/paulding-luke)
Sally Whitwell
Award winning pianist Sally Whitwell maintains a busy freelance career as performer, conductor, composer and educator from her base in Sydney.
Sally’s most recent solo release All Imperfect Things; solo piano music of Michael Nyman won the 2013 ARIA Award for Best Classical Album as well as Best Engineer for ABC Classics very own tonmeister Virginia Read, the first time that a woman has ever won this award. Additionally, her debut album Mad Rush: solo piano music of Philip Glass won her the 2011 ARIA for Best Classical Album. Her sophomore album The Good, the Bad and the Awkward is a truly unique compilation of film music where she played not only piano but toy piano, harpsichord, recorder and melodica. Sally plans to record a fourth album in 2014 featuring her own compositions in the art song, choral and chamber music genres.
Recent solo concert appearances for Sally have included the world premiere of the Philip Glass Complete Piano Etudes for Perth International Arts Festival and Ten Tiny Dancers, an all-singing-all-playing-all-dancing cabaret piano recital for the Famous Spiegeltent season at Arts Centre Melbourne. In 2014, Sally will travel to Los Angeles and New York City to perform again with Philip Glass. She will also be touring extensively within Australia, including shows for Adelaide Fringe Festival, concerts at Riversdale for the Bundanon Trust and various trips to regional centres on the NSW South Coast and Byron Bay. As a vocal advocate for classical music by women composers, Sally is currently curating a chamber music concert series in her home town Canberra. In Her Shoes features music by women creatives across the centuries, which she’ll be performing with Acacia Quartet, cellist Sally Maer and soprano Nadia Piave.
Sally other great love is choral music. Currently she is a staff conductor and pianist for Gondwana Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir with whom she has performed throughout Australia and in Europe, Asia and the Americas. She has devised semi-theatrical choral shows for Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Bel A Cappella and Door in the Wall, composed new works for (and with) Sydney Children’s Choir, Leichhardt Espresso Chorus, Woden Valley Youth Choir (ACT), St Ursula’s College Toowoomba (QLD) and had her choral works performed by Gondwana Choirs, Canberra Choral Society, Brisbane Birralee Voices, Moorambilla Voices, various ensembles from the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education and Kompactus – Canberra’s Compact Chorus. She’s looking forward to presenting workshops on collaborative composition at the 2014 Queensland Choral Conference presented by Australian National Choral Association.
You can find Sally’s more personal bio here, follow her on facebook here, tweet her on twitter here, and tumble over her on tumblr here.
David Chisholm
A multi-award winning composer whose works have been acclaimed and performed both nationally and internationally, David is a passionate, eloquent advocate for new work.
David is the founder and director of the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music, and an Artistic Associate (Composer) at Malthouse Theatre, and lectures and tutors in composition at Monash University.
He is currently a PhD Candidate at Melbourne University.
David has an international practice defined through diverse and hybrid collaboration for which he has won three Green Room Awards, a French Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Award, a Highly Commended Paul Lowin Prize, a Mention at 36th Bourges International competition of electroacoustic music and electronic art, a Special mention in the X Media Forum, 31st International Film Festival, Moscow, the Medibank Private State and National Arts Awards and The Channel Ten National Young Achiever of the Year.
David’s work has been appeared at Venice Biennale, Villa Medici Roma, Edinburgh and Melbourne Festivals, Moscow Museum of Art, ISCM World New Music Days, MONA FOMA, Danscenen Copenhagen, Monaco Dance Forum, Australian Centre for Photography and he has been performed and recorded by International Contemporary Ensemble, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Argonaut Ensemble, Arcko Symphonic Project, Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Tasmanian and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, Golden Fur, Aria Co, Latitude 37 with Ashley Smith, Silo String Quartet, Atticus String Quartet, The Australian Ballet/Sonic Art Ensemble. He has collaborated with musicians Tristram Williams, Richard Haynes, Jennifer Chou, Mauricio Carrasco and Eric Lamb, soprano Jessica Aszodi, poets Yves Bonnefoy, Anzhelina Polonskaya and Elizabeth Campbell, cross‐media artists Emmanuel Bernardoux, Boris Eldagsen, Natascha Stellmach, and Sharon Huebner, director Matthew Lutton, conductors Maxime Pascal, Eric Dudley and Timothy Phillips, choreographer Phillip Adams, choreovideographer Cazerine Barry, designers Studio Periscope, sound artists Myles Mumford and Jethro Woodward and producer Sarah Greentree.
Learn more here!
Thanks to ArtsHub for telling everyone else what we all already knew! Homophonic! One of the not to be missed shows of this years Midsumma Festival! The door’s now open for you to snaffle up your ticket to one of the five hottest shows in town!
Come on in!
Anna-Louise Cole was born in Melbourne. She holds a BA Hons and a BMus Hons from the University of Melbourne majoring in Music Performance (Voice) and German, and also studied in Austria and Germany, through scholarships from the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst and Melbourne Abroad.
Anna-Louise made her debut with Melbourne Opera as Zerlina in Don Giovanni in 2006, and has subsequently performed roles including Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte), Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Frasquita (Carmen), Serpina (La Serva Padrona), Suor Dolcina (Suor Angelica), Annina (La Traviata), Johanna (Sweeney Todd), der Friedensbote (Rienzi) and Cherubino (La Nozze di Figaro).
Anna-Louise has appeared as a chorus member and soloist with companies including Opera Australia, Victorian Opera, Melbourne Opera, Melbourne Lyric Opera, More Than Opera, the AIMS Festival Orchestra and others in both Austria and Australia, as well as the Kronos Quartet as the soprano soloist in the Australian premiere of Sun Rings for the Melbourne Festival in 2011.
Anna-Louise has won prizes and been a finalist in a number of national and international singing competitions, including the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna, the Lady Fairfax New York Scholarship, the Audi German Opera Scholarship, the Acclaim Awards and the Herald Sun Aria, and won the American Institute of Musical Studies Award and the Sundell Study Award from Opera Foundation Australia in 2008.
Anna-Louise has worked privately and in masterclasses with major Australian and international artists including Richard Bonynge, AC CBE, Yvonne Kenny AM, Barbara Bonney, David Aronson, Philip Mayers, Bodo Igesz, Richard Divall OBE AO, Sylvia Greenberg, Gabriele Lechner, Sharolyn Kimmorley, Anna Connolly, Raymond Connell and Rosamund Illing. She is currently in the studio of Raymond Lawrence. In 2014 she will be appearing in both Rienzi and La Traviata for Melbourne Opera, and in the choruses of both Carmen and Eugene Onegin for Opera Australia.
Ben Opie is an oboist whose talents extend across the entire repertoire for oboe. His passion for contemporary music has led him to work with ensembles such as Ensemble Parallelle, Enseble Offspring, Sydney Chamber Opera, Magik*Magik Orchestra and co-directing Inventi Ensemble with Melissa Doecke. He has had extensive training in historically informed performance practice, studying with leaders in the field such as Susan Harvey, Geoffrey Lancaster and Genevieve Lacey. He has performed at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music since its inception in 2013, and in 2015 presented a mixed media presentation of new works including a world premiere work by Melody Eotvos for flute, oboe, electronics and video. He also gave the Australian premiere of Penderecki’s Capriccio with Arcko Symphonic Ensemble in 2015. Ben has commissioned many new works for oboe and gives both national and international premieres on a regular basis.
Ben has been working with orchestras around the world consistently for his entire career, his diverse expertise and experience make him very much in demand as an orchestral musician. Ben has performed in Germany, France, Bahrain, America and Australia as a soloist, collaborative and orchestral musician. He holds degrees from the Australian National University, the Johannes Gutenberg Hochschule für Musik and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
His work across the globe has earned him multiple awards and recognitions in the field of music, such as the Phyllis C Wattis Foundation Scholarship (USA), the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Award for New Music (USA), the 42nd International Summer Course for New Music Scholarship, Darmstadt (Germany), the Carmel Music Competition Finalist (USA) and the Inaugural Double Reed Challenge, section Oboe winner (Aus).
Ben has collaborated with many different art forms, including visual artists, poets, video installation artists, dancers, sound artists and radio documentary producers. Throughout his career he has been passionate about all art forms.
Ben has been engaged as an expert leader in his field, tutoring students from the Australian Youth Orchestra Young Symphonists program, several of the Melbourne Youth Music programs, masterclasses at the Australian National University, and was the oboe specialist for Graham Abbott’s ABC Classic FM Keys to Music broadcast. He was guest artist at the 2014 Australian Double Reed Society Conference and 2015 New Zealand Double Reed Society Conference and received an invitation to present at the 2015 International Double Reed Society Conference in Tokyo.
Since founding Inventi Ensemble with Melissa Doecke in 2014, they have built up a strong program of concerts including starting a monthly community chamber music series in Melbourne’s outer East, weekly interactive music workshops in immigration detention centres, touring concerts to Central and South Australia, participating in numerous festivals around Victoria and Australia and presenting many community focused music workshops.
Matthew Horsley (b. 1986) is a multi-instrumentalist and composer currently based in Melbourne. Hailing from Brisbane, he holds a Bachelor of Music from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and a Master of Music Performance (by Research) from the Victorian College of the Arts.. He is currently completing a PhD in ethnomusicology at Monash University.
Matthew has an avid interest in Irish traditional music, specialising in the uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes). As the recipient of a JUMP Mentoring grant, he traveled to Ireland in 2014 where he studied with renowned piper Mikie Smyth and performed a solo recital for Irish National Heritage Week. His first uilleann piping album, Australian Waters, was released in 2015. He was a finalist in the Performance of the Year category at the 2018 Australian Art Music Awards.
Matthew has performed extensively across classical, experimental, popular, jazz and folk genres, with artists such as Steve Reich, the Australian Art Orchestra, Speak Percussion, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Ludovico’s Band, Topology and Clocked Out. He performs regularly with Irish traditional music trio Trioc, Balkan folk ensemble Anja & Zlatna and in a duo with recorder player Ryan Williams.
Homophonic! is back! for it’s 3rd fabulous year. 24th and 25th of January at the La Mama Carlton Courthouse. 7:30 pm.
Tickets can be purchased here!
3 Shades Black, La Mama, and the Midsumma Festival are proud to present Homophonic!, an evening of new classical music by queer composers. Celebrating sapphic symphonists, homosexual harmonies, and the long and proud tradition of composers being as gay as the day is long.
Classical music has a rich heritage of LGBT musicians and composers, and this concert is celebrating the legacy of artists such as Tchaikovsky, Poulenc, Copland and Cage, by performing the work of 20th and 21st century queer composers, in an exciting program that is sure to entertain and enlighten even the most experienced concert goer.
We’re bringing the disco ball to the concert hall! Come along to hear some of Melbourne’s most in demand classical musicians play some outlandishly fabulous music, and experience the sound world of the LGBT composers of today.
Featuring music by: David Chisholm*, Naima Fine*+, Wally Gunn*+, Joelle Leandre, Luke Paulding*, Ethel Smyth, Sally Whitwell* and Charles Wuorinen.
*Australian Composer
+Premiere performance
Performers: Anna-Louise Cole, Aviva Endean, Laila Engle, Phoebe Green, Miranda Hill, Matthew Horsely, Zachary Johnston, Jennifer Mills, Jennifer Morrish, Ben Opie, Luke Paulding, Zoey Pepper, Dan Richardson.
Directed by Miranda Hill.
3 Shades Black 