Composer
Practising piano amongst Glennda's paintings
Sally knew that if she wanted it done, it was best to do it herself. So began the outpouring of notes...
In the Summer of 2007 I fell in love.
Glennda was a shift worker, as I was too in a way, and our courtship was something of a nocturnal affair. I was living in what we now fondly refer to as The Fairy Treehouse, a top floor studio apartment in a shabby chic Art Deco apartment block in Sydney's Kings Cross. Gazing from my window through the topmost branches of the trees into the starry night sky, I would impatiently await her arrival after work. The block was too old to have a door buzzer system installed, so she would phone ahead to tell me she was on her way. With great excitement I would tear down three flights of stairs (the block was also too old to have a lift!) and out the front door of the building. Whilst I waited breathlessly for her on the cool slate doorstep, a frisky night breeze would tease the edges of my swishy Summer frock and… See? I can't talk about this time at all without lapsing into sickeningly sugary, nostalgic language. Gah!
It wasn't too long before we'd moved in together, taking up residence in our shopfront studio with my piano and her paintings and our fur babies (aka kitties). I felt that I wanted to somehow share the story of our courtship and took the first few tentative steps towards my very first composition.
I am a bit of a cheeseball and have always loved the Romantic poets; Shelley, Keats… and Byron. She walks in beauty, like the night suddenly had great significance for me, so I set about writing fragments of melody in my moleskin music book. Accompanying textures quickly followed and in a few weeks, the piece was complete. I felt absolutely elated!
We had a little soirée at our studio. She filled trays till they nearly overflowed with her tasty homemade finger food (she'd been a chef in a past existence). I organised a choir made up of friends I'd met over many years of music making in Sydney and we performed the piece I'd written. People were crying with joy. My friend Michelle was there, the director of the Leichhardt Espresso Chorus, a local community choir with a strong commitment to contemporary Australian music. She liked it and asked if she could buy it for her choir, and thus my composing career was born! Since then, I've had works performed by lots of ensembles including Gondwana Choirs, VOX (Sydney Philharmonia Choirs), Acacia Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Moorambilla Voices, the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education, Woden Valley Youth Choir, Canberra Youth Orchestra, Hunter Singers, Kompactus (Canberra's compact chorus), and a whole lot of schools. And finally, after all these years, I've an ABC Classics album of my compositions to share with the world, I was flying which you can stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
But that very first piece, She Walks in Beauty, which I wrote to show my girl how much I love her.... and that's the whole reason why I started composing.
Keep scrolling to check out some of my compositions, to listen, to watch, to buy scores and perform them yourself.
In the Summer of 2007 I fell in love.
Glennda was a shift worker, as I was too in a way, and our courtship was something of a nocturnal affair. I was living in what we now fondly refer to as The Fairy Treehouse, a top floor studio apartment in a shabby chic Art Deco apartment block in Sydney's Kings Cross. Gazing from my window through the topmost branches of the trees into the starry night sky, I would impatiently await her arrival after work. The block was too old to have a door buzzer system installed, so she would phone ahead to tell me she was on her way. With great excitement I would tear down three flights of stairs (the block was also too old to have a lift!) and out the front door of the building. Whilst I waited breathlessly for her on the cool slate doorstep, a frisky night breeze would tease the edges of my swishy Summer frock and… See? I can't talk about this time at all without lapsing into sickeningly sugary, nostalgic language. Gah!
It wasn't too long before we'd moved in together, taking up residence in our shopfront studio with my piano and her paintings and our fur babies (aka kitties). I felt that I wanted to somehow share the story of our courtship and took the first few tentative steps towards my very first composition.
I am a bit of a cheeseball and have always loved the Romantic poets; Shelley, Keats… and Byron. She walks in beauty, like the night suddenly had great significance for me, so I set about writing fragments of melody in my moleskin music book. Accompanying textures quickly followed and in a few weeks, the piece was complete. I felt absolutely elated!
We had a little soirée at our studio. She filled trays till they nearly overflowed with her tasty homemade finger food (she'd been a chef in a past existence). I organised a choir made up of friends I'd met over many years of music making in Sydney and we performed the piece I'd written. People were crying with joy. My friend Michelle was there, the director of the Leichhardt Espresso Chorus, a local community choir with a strong commitment to contemporary Australian music. She liked it and asked if she could buy it for her choir, and thus my composing career was born! Since then, I've had works performed by lots of ensembles including Gondwana Choirs, VOX (Sydney Philharmonia Choirs), Acacia Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Moorambilla Voices, the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education, Woden Valley Youth Choir, Canberra Youth Orchestra, Hunter Singers, Kompactus (Canberra's compact chorus), and a whole lot of schools. And finally, after all these years, I've an ABC Classics album of my compositions to share with the world, I was flying which you can stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
But that very first piece, She Walks in Beauty, which I wrote to show my girl how much I love her.... and that's the whole reason why I started composing.
Keep scrolling to check out some of my compositions, to listen, to watch, to buy scores and perform them yourself.
The Birds - for Soprano and Piano
I lived for a couple of years in a little top floor Art Deco apartment in Sydney’s Kings Cross. There were always birds sitting on my window sill because of the huge Jacaranda tree outside. I was at a bit of a crossroads in my life at that time, and would spend at least an hour daily walking in the neighbourhood, along those twisting, sloping streets and slowly eroding sandstone staircases so typical of Sydney’s harbourside suburbs. On the wall by such a staircase very close to my home was a tiny red spray painted bird with little music notes emanating from his beak.
Birds seemed to be making appearances everywhere in my life at that time, which I took as some kind of message from the universe. I was reading quite a lot of Christina Rossetti that year, enjoying her writings about birds and all that they symbolised for her; beauty and sadness, hope and joy. There was a quiet optimism in her words, sometimes veiled but always present, which propelled me to write this song cycle The Birds.
Stream on Spotify
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Birds seemed to be making appearances everywhere in my life at that time, which I took as some kind of message from the universe. I was reading quite a lot of Christina Rossetti that year, enjoying her writings about birds and all that they symbolised for her; beauty and sadness, hope and joy. There was a quiet optimism in her words, sometimes veiled but always present, which propelled me to write this song cycle The Birds.
Stream on Spotify
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Sifting the Stars - for Soprano and Piano
In 2015 I was commissioned by Sydney Philharmonia Choirs to create a Christmas show for kids. Being me, I decided that I wanted to make it a narrative because I’m ambitious that way. It was called Cog in the Machine (a family Christmas tale with a twist) and alongside the carols was a gentle commentary on the commercialisation of the festive season, and how our priorities of family celebration are often overshadowed by the extravagance of gift giving.
One of the main characters in the story is a smart, sassy teenage girl called Stella. She loves science, particularly astronomy (hence the name!) and it was therefore a family tradition for her to put the star on the top of the Christmas tree each year. This particular Christmas, she has a bit of a disagreement with her mother and as she’s putting the star on the tree, she goes into a kind of dream sequence, floating about the galaxies inside her head, trying to process her adolescent need for independence and protection in equal amounts. It’s a coming of age song, I suppose.
Watch on Youtube
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
One of the main characters in the story is a smart, sassy teenage girl called Stella. She loves science, particularly astronomy (hence the name!) and it was therefore a family tradition for her to put the star on the top of the Christmas tree each year. This particular Christmas, she has a bit of a disagreement with her mother and as she’s putting the star on the tree, she goes into a kind of dream sequence, floating about the galaxies inside her head, trying to process her adolescent need for independence and protection in equal amounts. It’s a coming of age song, I suppose.
Watch on Youtube
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Some World Far From Ours - for Soprano and Piano
A principle source of inspiration for composers is surely a performer of great talent and skill. Percy Bysshe Shelley proves that this is true not only for composers but for poets as well. His dear friend Jane Williams -- the never proven conjecture is that she was actually his lover -- could sing like a bird and also play flute, harp and guitar. In Some World Far From Ours, I so enjoyed bringing some musical life to a text that praises a musician from a poet who understands how a singing voice can transport a listener in a was that speech cannot.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Warm Where Snowflakes Lie - for Soprano and Piano
Through my music, I try to bring to people a sense of optimism about the world. Music has the power to uplift, to exalt, to fill people with joy and hope, so I am drawn to texts that do a similar thing. Christina Rossetti’s poem The Key-Note has this optimism, even with a gentle sting in the proverbial tail. She appreciated that everything has a season, that life happens in cycles, that in the face of the darkest Winter there is always the hope of Spring, a hope made real by the appearance of the red-breasted robin in the snow. This song is for anyone who has ever felt hopeless, disenfranchised, or unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Echo - for Choir (SATB) and Piano
I greatly enjoy working in community music. Really, I’m happy to work with musicians of any age or level of experience. Anyone. I’m just as happy to play in New York with Philip Glass as I am to play Mexican Woodpecker with a room full of eight year-olds (if you don’t know Mexican Woodpecker, that’s what the internet is for!). What really counts is commitment and enthusiasm. I worked for a while with a community choir here in Sydney, Polyphony. They have enthusiasm in buckets which, as a composer, I find very inspirational. I wrote this piece for them. It’s a bittersweet evocation to the memory of someone who has departed this world.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
She Walks in Beauty - for Choir (SATB or SSA) and Piano
In the summer of 2007, I fell in love. I was living in what she and I now refer to as The Fairy Treehouse, a top floor studio in a shabby chic Art Deco block in Sydney’s Kings Cross. The block was too old to have a door buzzer (!) so she’d phone when she was on her way. With great excitement I would tear down three flights of stairs (the block was also too old to have a lift) and out the front door. Whilst I waited breathlessly on the cool slate doorstep, a frisky midnight breeze would tease the edges of my swishy summer frock and... See? I can’t talk about this time without lapsing into sickeningly sugary, nostalgic language. Forgive me, I was in love. And still am.
She Walks in Beauty is the first thing I ever composed and is inspired by our nocturnal courtship.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Watch on Youtube
Buy scores at Sheet Music Plus (SATB or SSA)
She Walks in Beauty is the first thing I ever composed and is inspired by our nocturnal courtship.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Watch on Youtube
Buy scores at Sheet Music Plus (SATB or SSA)
Starlight Steeple - for Choir (SATB) and Piano
I work a good deal with young musicians, which means I have the great privilege of meeting a lot of inspirational music educators, like my friend Annie Kwok. Kwokkie, as she is affectionately known, commissioned a choral work from me for her school in Adelaide in 2010. In response to my request for a text from the kids, something that was personally meaningful to them, I was thrilled to receive a parcel in the post from them, a book called The Persistence of Yellow by Monique Duval. The text for Starlight Steeple particularly appealed. It seemed the perfect reflection of what Kwokkie does, pulling down the barriers that might stop a kid from expressing creatively. So I dedicate this song to her and to every lucky kid who’s enjoyed her enthusiastic, colourful teaching.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
To Your Shore - for Double Choir (SATB) and Piano
My cultural heritage is mixed: I was born of a Caucasian Australian father of Welsh descent and a Chinese mother from Penang who settled in Australia after some years in Brunei. Thus I find myself frequently pondering the immigrant experience. I wrote the text of To Your Shore to act as kind of twin soliloquies: the first from a person on a boat catching first sight of land, the second from another person standing on the shore ready to welcome the ship they spy on the horizon. I tried to evoke a mixture of trepidation and hope you might feel whilst on your way to a new life in a place where you don’t yet speak the language, where society’s customs and traditions are different, where the climate and the environment feel so very foreign to you, but where you might have a chance at building a happier life.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Happy Place - for Solo Voice, Choir (SA), Ukuleles, and Toy Xylophones
I’m a lesbian who came-of-age/came-out in the mid 1990s, which means I caught the tail end of those lesbian stereotypes you used to hear about. It made me feel like I’d never inherited The Lesbian Gene. I was never one of the herbal tea sipping, yoga loving, hemp textiles wearing, hippie happy clappy campers of that time. I had girlfriends who were and I tried to humour them sometimes but it was always a strain.
I had this one girlfriend who made me go camping once, a gathering with her hippie pagan friends. It was all inoffensive enough, I was having a very nice time sitting in the shade reading my book. Rather stupidly, I made the mistake of letting someone rope me in to a thing called Drumming The Boundary.They thought I’d be good at it, being a professional musician. I thought it would probably please my girlfriend if I got involved, so I agreed to go along.
To my surprise, the drums they’d set up were great instruments, some really top quality djembes that you’d be paying some good money for, so I made the rash assumption that the leader of this activity actually knew what she was doing. We were instructed to start drumming a heartbeat together, whereupon I discovered that these are people who couldn’t even play a plain old crotchet beat in ensemble. But they seemed to think they were playing in time, swooning and swaying and closing their eyes to ‘feel’ the music. It was starting to make me giggle. These were presumably the same lesbians I’d seen out in Sydney nightclubs who couldn’t dance in time with an electronic beat that repeatedly hits you over the head with its obviousness?! Once I’d had that thought, I couldn’t help my giggle becoming a full-blown guffaw. The dreadlocked hempy lady in charge glared at me, telling me I needed to relax into really feeling the heartbeat. Could she not see that it was because my whole body was shaking with hysterical laughter at their arhythmic playing? Honestly...
I guess I just really don’t like hippies. There, I said it out loud. I tried, I tried really hard, but I just prefer my city life. It’s my Happy Place.
Listen on Soundcloud
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
I had this one girlfriend who made me go camping once, a gathering with her hippie pagan friends. It was all inoffensive enough, I was having a very nice time sitting in the shade reading my book. Rather stupidly, I made the mistake of letting someone rope me in to a thing called Drumming The Boundary.They thought I’d be good at it, being a professional musician. I thought it would probably please my girlfriend if I got involved, so I agreed to go along.
To my surprise, the drums they’d set up were great instruments, some really top quality djembes that you’d be paying some good money for, so I made the rash assumption that the leader of this activity actually knew what she was doing. We were instructed to start drumming a heartbeat together, whereupon I discovered that these are people who couldn’t even play a plain old crotchet beat in ensemble. But they seemed to think they were playing in time, swooning and swaying and closing their eyes to ‘feel’ the music. It was starting to make me giggle. These were presumably the same lesbians I’d seen out in Sydney nightclubs who couldn’t dance in time with an electronic beat that repeatedly hits you over the head with its obviousness?! Once I’d had that thought, I couldn’t help my giggle becoming a full-blown guffaw. The dreadlocked hempy lady in charge glared at me, telling me I needed to relax into really feeling the heartbeat. Could she not see that it was because my whole body was shaking with hysterical laughter at their arhythmic playing? Honestly...
I guess I just really don’t like hippies. There, I said it out loud. I tried, I tried really hard, but I just prefer my city life. It’s my Happy Place.
Listen on Soundcloud
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Nocturnes - for Choir (SSAA) and Piano
‘I just love how you write all that ravishing music about oceans and rivers and the night sky’, she said.
Um... Do I? I quickly opened my compositions folder on my desktop. My fingers scrolled down the files and... she was absolutely right! A disproportionate amount of my vocal music is about bodies of water and/or nocturnal themes. It started with the very first piece I ever wrote back in 2008, a setting of Byron’s She Walks in Beauty, and continues to this day. It’s totally a subconscious thing though, I don’t even realise that it’s happening, so I guess it must be my True Compositional Voice? Who knows.
At any rate, I’m embracing my dark leanings in these Nocturnes. The first movement, Pinprick Flicker, is a metaphor likening the stars to punctuation marks dancing in the sky. The second movement, Cloudless, is about how the reflection of the moon on water can look so solid, like a path you could walk upon. The third movement Lunatic Fringe is a kind of midnight fire-lit ritual dance and is dedicated to every single misogynist online who has ever said to me “Why are you so angry? So shrill? Such a feminazi? You’re embarrassing yourself!” Someone should be embarrassed in those conversations. Rest assured, that someone is definitely not me.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Um... Do I? I quickly opened my compositions folder on my desktop. My fingers scrolled down the files and... she was absolutely right! A disproportionate amount of my vocal music is about bodies of water and/or nocturnal themes. It started with the very first piece I ever wrote back in 2008, a setting of Byron’s She Walks in Beauty, and continues to this day. It’s totally a subconscious thing though, I don’t even realise that it’s happening, so I guess it must be my True Compositional Voice? Who knows.
At any rate, I’m embracing my dark leanings in these Nocturnes. The first movement, Pinprick Flicker, is a metaphor likening the stars to punctuation marks dancing in the sky. The second movement, Cloudless, is about how the reflection of the moon on water can look so solid, like a path you could walk upon. The third movement Lunatic Fringe is a kind of midnight fire-lit ritual dance and is dedicated to every single misogynist online who has ever said to me “Why are you so angry? So shrill? Such a feminazi? You’re embarrassing yourself!” Someone should be embarrassed in those conversations. Rest assured, that someone is definitely not me.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Two Love Songs - for Choir (SSA)
I entered into a composition competition in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2014. It was a part of something called the Festival of Love presented by Southbank in London, a festival celebrating the enactment of the Same Sex Couple Act in the United Kingdom. This issue is close to my heart as my partner is from the UK and we are as gay as a row of rainbow striped teepees.
During the festival, members of the public passing through Southbank Centre were asked to write down a couple of sentences about something they love. Those texts were then posted on the internet and composers were invited over a period of just 24 hours, to set them to music for a cappella female vocal trio Juice. I was absolutely thrilled that one of my compositions, Going Somewhere, was selected for performance.
Although I will likely never meet the authors of these texts Ella from Brixton, nor Susie from Hammersmith, (I mean, they didn’t even leave their surnames!) I like to think I have a creative connection to them. Just like Ella, i really enjoy being on my little island-of-me as I walk through the city or sit on a train, the stimulus of the flow of energy and people around me is something I very much enjoy. I also really love Susie was able to find her place in the world at trapeze school. This world is so richly diverse in its opportunities, there’s surely got to be something for everyone.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
During the festival, members of the public passing through Southbank Centre were asked to write down a couple of sentences about something they love. Those texts were then posted on the internet and composers were invited over a period of just 24 hours, to set them to music for a cappella female vocal trio Juice. I was absolutely thrilled that one of my compositions, Going Somewhere, was selected for performance.
Although I will likely never meet the authors of these texts Ella from Brixton, nor Susie from Hammersmith, (I mean, they didn’t even leave their surnames!) I like to think I have a creative connection to them. Just like Ella, i really enjoy being on my little island-of-me as I walk through the city or sit on a train, the stimulus of the flow of energy and people around me is something I very much enjoy. I also really love Susie was able to find her place in the world at trapeze school. This world is so richly diverse in its opportunities, there’s surely got to be something for everyone.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Choosing Our Own Adventure - for Treble Choir (SA) and Piano
Canberra in the 1980s was a pretty fun place to be for a little kid. Well, i liked it. Playtime was very outdoorsy, with Lake Burley Griffin and other large tracts of bushland only twenty minutes from anywhere, it was easy to be somewhere beautiful pretty quickly. There was lots of bike riding, roller skating, tree climbing, skipping stones on the water, and running through waist high piles of autumn leaves. The change of seasons is so colourfully vivid in Canberra, it just makes you want to be outside to taste it!
I’ve tried to capture that playfulness in this song which I dedicate to my big brother James with whom I spent so many of those childhood weekends. The name of the piece pays tribute to a series of books we loved to read, Choose Your Own Adventure.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
I’ve tried to capture that playfulness in this song which I dedicate to my big brother James with whom I spent so many of those childhood weekends. The name of the piece pays tribute to a series of books we loved to read, Choose Your Own Adventure.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Daybreak - for Treble Choir (SSA) and Piano
During the Winter of 2016, I journeyed to my hometown Canberra for a job interview and audition. It was for the head of the new Music Academy at Canberra Girls Grammar School, my old school. Which was kind of weird. As part of my specifically designed interview/audition experience, I was required to run a composition workshop, and this song Daybreak is the result of that.
It was an odd experience to return to the scenes of my youth, to see how much everything had changed. So many new buildings, so many of the old buildings repurposed, so many more opportunities afforded to the girls at the school now than we could ever have dreamed in the late 80s and early 90s. It was pretty early in the morning when I arrived, the winter mist just beginning to clear to one of those perfect sunny cold Canberra days. The school is directly down the road from Parliament House, and as the mist cleared to reveal that magnificent flagpole above the treetops surrounding the school, I decided that the joy and optimism of a new day would be the perfect subject for our composing collaboration.
The girls were very generous with their ideas. The song was finished within a few days and I sent it back to the school. I think they liked it? It was hard to tell from their response. I didn’t get the job. (No surprise to me, as I have almost never been successful at auditions and job interviews. Fortunately people just know my work, ask me to do stuff, and I just say yes. Haha.) But I’m a big believer in creativity as a way of healing. I still really like our song we wrote, those lovely girls and I, so I am releasing it into the wild.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
It was an odd experience to return to the scenes of my youth, to see how much everything had changed. So many new buildings, so many of the old buildings repurposed, so many more opportunities afforded to the girls at the school now than we could ever have dreamed in the late 80s and early 90s. It was pretty early in the morning when I arrived, the winter mist just beginning to clear to one of those perfect sunny cold Canberra days. The school is directly down the road from Parliament House, and as the mist cleared to reveal that magnificent flagpole above the treetops surrounding the school, I decided that the joy and optimism of a new day would be the perfect subject for our composing collaboration.
The girls were very generous with their ideas. The song was finished within a few days and I sent it back to the school. I think they liked it? It was hard to tell from their response. I didn’t get the job. (No surprise to me, as I have almost never been successful at auditions and job interviews. Fortunately people just know my work, ask me to do stuff, and I just say yes. Haha.) But I’m a big believer in creativity as a way of healing. I still really like our song we wrote, those lovely girls and I, so I am releasing it into the wild.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Growing Into Me - for Treble Choir (SA), Piano, and Optional Wood Percussion
On a particularly blustery Winter's day, I went to the National Arboretum in my home town of Canberra, Australia, with a bunch of very lovely kids from the Woden Valley Youth Choir (WVYC). Their director Alpha Gregory had asked me to come and do a composition workshop with the kids, to which I had replied with an enthusiastic "YES!".
I'd done this kind of thing with WVYC before, but this time around I wanted to take it somehow to the next level, to give the piece a real sense of place, a specific and experiential connection to the local community or landscape, and the Arboretum seemed a natural choice for me for an inspirational excursion. I had a family connection to it myself at the time, my cousin Emma worked there and was very passionate about it. Also, it is an outdoorsy kind of place and I have such fond memories of outdoorsy exploratory kinds of activities filling my entire childhood, a very typically Canberran thing. I'm sure the WVYC kids have a similar experience and I hope they know how lucky they are!
So we put on our winter coats and scarves and hiked up the mountain, being sure to not only look at what was there, but also to listen, to touch, to smell. It was truly a multi sensory experience. Then we all went down to a local church hall and talked about what we saw and heard and smelt and the kids were just bursting with wonderful ideas for our new song. I've incorporated as many of their ideas as possible into the completed product, as well as my own over-arching theme; the oldest of the trees at the National Arboretum are only a couple of years older than some of the children in the group, so it seemed a nice parallel to make, their growing up alongside each other. It is my hope that the writing of this piece bonds these children to this important and magical place, so ripe with possibility, and that the connection is a lasting and meaningful one for them. It certainly will be for me.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
I'd done this kind of thing with WVYC before, but this time around I wanted to take it somehow to the next level, to give the piece a real sense of place, a specific and experiential connection to the local community or landscape, and the Arboretum seemed a natural choice for me for an inspirational excursion. I had a family connection to it myself at the time, my cousin Emma worked there and was very passionate about it. Also, it is an outdoorsy kind of place and I have such fond memories of outdoorsy exploratory kinds of activities filling my entire childhood, a very typically Canberran thing. I'm sure the WVYC kids have a similar experience and I hope they know how lucky they are!
So we put on our winter coats and scarves and hiked up the mountain, being sure to not only look at what was there, but also to listen, to touch, to smell. It was truly a multi sensory experience. Then we all went down to a local church hall and talked about what we saw and heard and smelt and the kids were just bursting with wonderful ideas for our new song. I've incorporated as many of their ideas as possible into the completed product, as well as my own over-arching theme; the oldest of the trees at the National Arboretum are only a couple of years older than some of the children in the group, so it seemed a nice parallel to make, their growing up alongside each other. It is my hope that the writing of this piece bonds these children to this important and magical place, so ripe with possibility, and that the connection is a lasting and meaningful one for them. It certainly will be for me.
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Treasure Chest (a Chocolate Song) - for Treble Choir (SA) and Piano
I was commissioned by the Canberra International Music Festival in 2016 to write a work for children’s chorus. The concert was a Mothers’ Day event, sponsored by a couple of local boutique chocolatiers, so the works on the program were all chocolate and coffee themed, including J S Bach’s Coffee Cantata and a bunch of songs from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The festival’s Artistic Director Roland Peelman asked me if I could write a new piece on this theme.
So I got thinking about chocolate and about Mothers’ Day and about how when you’re a little kid and have no earnings, you still give your mum a present for her special day (that is, your dad pays for it and you sign the card!). And if it’s chocolate, you might give her your favourite chocolate instead of hers, and all you are really waiting for is for her to offer you one. When I was a child, I always used to think of chocolate boxes as treasure chests, full of shining precious things only consumed on very special occasions. Because they were such a rarity, you really had to savour each sweet taste and gooey texture. I ’m sure from this song, you’ll be able to tell that I am a big sweet tooth!
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
So I got thinking about chocolate and about Mothers’ Day and about how when you’re a little kid and have no earnings, you still give your mum a present for her special day (that is, your dad pays for it and you sign the card!). And if it’s chocolate, you might give her your favourite chocolate instead of hers, and all you are really waiting for is for her to offer you one. When I was a child, I always used to think of chocolate boxes as treasure chests, full of shining precious things only consumed on very special occasions. Because they were such a rarity, you really had to savour each sweet taste and gooey texture. I ’m sure from this song, you’ll be able to tell that I am a big sweet tooth!
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Passacaglia - for Solo Piano
At the end of July 2016, I was in my hometown Canberra for a job interview. I was sick as a dog with laryngitis for the interview and audition. Imagine me trying to take a choir rehearsal with no voice? It was never going to happen for me and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.
Halfway back to Sydney on the bus, I get a text from my dear friend Emma. I don’t remember the exact words, but the gist of it was “No easy way to say this. We lost Jeff today”. Jeff being Emma’s beloved husband and all round awesome human.
It was truly devastating. I didn’t know what to do. I felt terribly guilty for thinking of myself and my employment failure all day instead of thinking of Emma and Jeff, even though that was completely irrational. Didn’t want to call because I knew she’d have enough stuff to deal with. Couldn’t turn around cos Public Transport. Had lost the ability to formulate sentences because in that situation, there are no words. So I fell back into the place where I express most clearly. Music. And into my native habitat, the piano. The piece came flowing out very quickly. I hardly stopped to edit. Normally I would try to plan a composition a bit, so that it’s structurally sound. I didn’t do that but somehow it just emerged fully formed.
I sent it to Emma who asked if I could come and perform it at the memorial service. But I couldn’t make it to the memorial. And you know what the saddest thing is? I can’t even now remember why, which means it can’t have actually been that important. Instead I created an electronic file of the piece, with more sounds than just piano. I hope it worked ok. Emma told me later that after the funeral when she suddenly found herself alone, she just played it over and over again on repeat.
So I guess it did its job, but now it’s ready to make its own way in the world in its original version for solo piano. I hope it can bring some solace to others in grief.
Listen on Soundcloud
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Halfway back to Sydney on the bus, I get a text from my dear friend Emma. I don’t remember the exact words, but the gist of it was “No easy way to say this. We lost Jeff today”. Jeff being Emma’s beloved husband and all round awesome human.
It was truly devastating. I didn’t know what to do. I felt terribly guilty for thinking of myself and my employment failure all day instead of thinking of Emma and Jeff, even though that was completely irrational. Didn’t want to call because I knew she’d have enough stuff to deal with. Couldn’t turn around cos Public Transport. Had lost the ability to formulate sentences because in that situation, there are no words. So I fell back into the place where I express most clearly. Music. And into my native habitat, the piano. The piece came flowing out very quickly. I hardly stopped to edit. Normally I would try to plan a composition a bit, so that it’s structurally sound. I didn’t do that but somehow it just emerged fully formed.
I sent it to Emma who asked if I could come and perform it at the memorial service. But I couldn’t make it to the memorial. And you know what the saddest thing is? I can’t even now remember why, which means it can’t have actually been that important. Instead I created an electronic file of the piece, with more sounds than just piano. I hope it worked ok. Emma told me later that after the funeral when she suddenly found herself alone, she just played it over and over again on repeat.
So I guess it did its job, but now it’s ready to make its own way in the world in its original version for solo piano. I hope it can bring some solace to others in grief.
Listen on Soundcloud
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
The Insomnia Waltz - for Violin and Piano
I suffer terribly from insomnia. I usually get up and read a book, play a computer game, or can exorcise my thoughts with pen and paper, after which I find myself in dreamland pretty quickly. Either that or I wind up endlessly pacing around my studio, our cats watching me with some amusement.
Thus it was with The Insomnia Waltz. Half of a reasonably good tune was running laps in my brain in the wee small hours. I got up, wrote it in my manuscript book, immediately went back to bed and fell asleep. In the morning, I read through the fragments of melody, put them together, and ended up with this frustratingly meandering stopstart of a piece for violin and piano.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score on Sheet Music Plus
Thus it was with The Insomnia Waltz. Half of a reasonably good tune was running laps in my brain in the wee small hours. I got up, wrote it in my manuscript book, immediately went back to bed and fell asleep. In the morning, I read through the fragments of melody, put them together, and ended up with this frustratingly meandering stopstart of a piece for violin and piano.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score on Sheet Music Plus
Road Trip - for Flute and Piano
The inspiration for Road Trip comes from the train commute I used to make weekly from Sydney to a university teaching job in Newcastle. I so enjoyed the gentle evolution of the landscape on this journey each week; urban quickly gives way to suburban, thence to mountainous bushland tumbling down into the Hawkesbury River. The train clings to the shoreline around Brisbane Waters, sparkling blindingly in the early morning sunshine, then snakes through more bushland, cuts through leafy suburbia and finally emerges into the industrial steel heart of Newcastle.
Structurally, Road Trip is a motivic evolution, a four note motif that continually evolves and extends and transforms itself, in much the same way as I feel the landscape evolves around the silver bullet of a train hurtling down the tracks.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
Structurally, Road Trip is a motivic evolution, a four note motif that continually evolves and extends and transforms itself, in much the same way as I feel the landscape evolves around the silver bullet of a train hurtling down the tracks.
Stream on Spotify or on Apple Music
Buy a score at Sheet Music Plus
