What does it mean to create music? How do we encounter and interpret new works? How do we strive to invent new sounds, and how do we wrestle with the past to bring fresh interpretations?
The Artistic Research cluster is made up of composers and performers who actively engage with these questions. Our research is embodied: it emerges during the acts of performance, composition, improvisation and interpretation. Our research is realised in live performance and recordings of all types.
Established to mark the centenary of the Conservatorium, Sydney Conservatorium of Music offered a program of professional development aimed at fostering and empowering women composers. The program ran from 2016-2021, with a new intake every second year.
The program's focus was on developing the compositional work and professional skills of the participants. Their compositions were workshopped and performed, with intensive group and individual sessions over two years. The compositions went on to form part or all of each participant's portfolio for her degree.
Established to mark the centenary of the Conservatorium, Sydney Conservatorium of Music offered a program of professional development aimed at fostering and empowering women composers. The program ran from 2016-2021, with a new intake every second year. The program's focus was on developing the compositional work and professional skills of the participants. Their compositions were workshopped and performed, with intensive group and individual sessions over two years. The compositions went on to form part or all of each participant's portfolio for her degree.
This project offered a platform to composers and performers to investigate the string quartet medium in a speculative register re-thinking performance techniques and technologies and taking in diverse cultural vantage points and aesthetics.
A grant from Create NSW enabled the commissioning and recording of works from Dr Benjamin Carey, Dr Fiona Hill, Sonya Holowell and Eric Avery working with partner ensemble, the US-based JACK Quartet.
Activity was carried out online during the COVID period and in person at SCM in 2024. Outcomes include scores, audio and video recordings, and interview documentation. Eric Avery's work was further developed with the Penny Quartet and will be performed by the Flinders Quartet. More information as well as audiovisual material can be found on Liza Lim’s zeitgeist website.
This creative development grant supported the composition of Sound Touch: a show-length work for percussion and electronics exploring vibration and the body. Funds received from the then Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia) facilitated bringing together a collaborative creative team, running a series of workshops and building custom-made instruments and vibration technologies.
The grant also enabled the creation of audio-visual materials that leveraged additional funds and a presenting partner to bring the completed work to the public via an 8-show season at Phoenix Central Park. For more information visit the project website.
This prize supported research and development of significant artistic research projects, with major outputs being Carey’s Patch Programming the Paperface, an artistic research project involving the development of the vinyl album METASTABILITY (Hospital Hill, 2023), being a suite of works written for the historical Serge ‘Paperface’ modular synthesiser.
METASTABILITY has been a successful non-traditional research output, with numerous reviews, feature articles, radio broadcasts/interviews, as well as being named finalist in the 2024 APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards.
Other outputs and activities supported by the SOAR prize included the publication of an article in Contemporary Music Review (Routledge/Taylor and Francis), Ontogenesis, a work for piano, keyscanner and Buchla modular synthesiser, commissioned by Dr Zubin Kanga (forthcoming - 2025), La Machine Ouverte, a new electroacoustic chamber work for ELISION Ensemble (forthcoming - 2025), as well as funding to attend invited residencies at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) (Stockholm, Sweden), and NYU Tandon School of Engineering (NYC, USA).
